Physicists at Lancaster University will hunt for dark matter, measure ghostly neutrino particles, and search for cracks in the Standard Model of particle physics using some of the world’s most powerful detectors. This research addresses fundamental gaps in our understanding of the universe. The Standard Model cannot explain dark matter, why matter survived over antimatter after the Big Bang, or why neutrinos have mass. The Lancaster group works across five major experiments—ATLAS at CERN, the T2K and Hyper-K neutrino experiments in Japan, the DarkSide-20k dark matter detector, and the NA62 kaon experiment—to probe these mysteries directly. The work is fundamental science with no immediate practical application. However, similar curiosity-driven particle physics research has historically produced technologies that quietly underpin modern life: the World Wide Web, medical imaging (PET scanners), and accelerator-based cancer therapy all emerged from basic particle physics. Deeper understanding of neutrino properties or dark matter could, in the long term, reshape our grasp of how the cosmos works at its most basic level. In the shorter term, the group’s detector development and computing expertise (including GridPP contributions) advance technologies used in medical imaging, data analysis, and large-scale computing infrastructure that supports research across many fields.
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This is requesting funding for the continued exploitation and core development in experimental particle physics for the Lancaster University experimental particle physics group and its associated core activities. The detils are given in the case for support. The group’s research activities encompass the themes of Energy Frontier (ATLAS, ATLAS upgrade, future colliders), Flavour Physics (NA62), Neutrino Physics (DUNE, Hyper-K, MicroBooNE, SBND, T2K), Dark Matter (Darkside-20k), GridPP and Detector R&D. In each area, future/upgrade activities proceed in parallel with exploitation of current datasets and data-taking operations. Common interests within the group span these theme areas and focus on investigations of flavour oscillation, CP-violation, (in)direct searches for new physics, software development and computing. In the requested grant period, we will continue to pursue each theme area. ATLAS will complete Run 3 data taking, and we will play a leading role in Data Preparation and Computing, make high-precision tests of the SM with huge t-tbar and B-hadron samples, study the Higgs-boson in di-tau final states, refine our understanding of QCD, and search for new particles with intermediate lifetimes. Prior to Run 4, ATLAS upgrades will be installed. Lancaster will be crucial to the ITk Pixel upgrade, contribute strongly to integration and commissioning efforts and prepare for HL-LHC data preparation and computing operations. NA62 will continue taking data until Long Shutdown 3 and we continue leading overall coordination of physics analyses, central Data Processing activities, pursuing world-leading measurements of rare kaon decays and precision tests of lepton flavour universality. Lancaster will continue leading physics sensitivity studies for the HIKE experiment. T2K will continue to produce world-leading exclusions of the CP-conserving phase space and indications of the preferred value of delta_CP. Using data from the upgraded near detector, new samples that will provide stronger constraints on flux and cross-section uncertainties in the oscillation analysis will be developed. Hyper-K will begin data-taking in 2027, and Lancaster will continue its leading role in the DAQ, software development and oscillation analysis. Lancaster will be at the forefront of the first Hyper-K results. Using its full dataset, MicroBooNE will produce the next generation of searches for sterile neutrinos, cross-section measurements for SM processes, and searches for rare SM and BSM processes. SBND will collect all planned data during the grant period, and the first flagship measurements for high-statistics precision measurements will be published. Together with the other SBN detectors, they will produce the first search results for sterile neutrinos and BSM processes. DarkSide-20k will publish first dark matter searches and detector instrumentation technology articles.
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