Physicists at the University of Birmingham are building new silicon tracking detectors for CERN’s upgraded Large Hadron Collider and expanding a dark matter search programme at the UK’s Boulby Underground Laboratory. This work addresses fundamental gaps in our understanding of the universe. The experiments—ATLAS, LHCb, and NA62 at CERN—probe the nature of matter, antimatter, and the forces that govern particle interactions. The dark matter programme tackles the question of what makes up most of the mass in the cosmos, a substance that has never been directly detected. The group is also developing instrumentation for a future US Electron-Ion Collider to study the internal structure of protons and neutrons. This is fundamental science with no immediate practical application. However, the detector technologies developed here—particularly silicon tracking—have historically led to spin-offs in medical imaging, security scanning, and industrial sensors. A deeper understanding of dark matter or the imbalance between matter and antimatter could, in the long term, reshape our grasp of how the universe formed and why it looks the way it does today.
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The Birmingham Particle Physics group has a well-established internationally-leading record in many aspects of energy frontier and flavour physics, fast-evolving areas that are fundamental to our field. Our tightly focussed effort on three complementary running CERN experiments, ATLAS, LHCb and NA62, as well as wide-ranging involvement in their corresponding upgrades, continues to yield outstanding science. With the LHC programme having reached maturity, we are following future opportunities with a strategy of emphasising detector R&D, particularly silicon tracking, with wide-ranging possible applications. We have fast-growing Dark Matter activities, in particular engaging strongly with current and future opportunities in the UK at the Boulby Underground Laboratory. Our reputation in the exploration of nucleon structure is also enabling us to build a strong activity in the US Electron-Ion Collider (EIC). The next grant period fully incorporates the expected extent of LS3, when our long-term programme of work on Phase 2 ATLAS upgrades will see the delivery of the trigger and inner tracking systems ready for the new HL-LHC era, and the planned new phase of kaon physics at CERN will require completion of Birmingham-led upgrades and new detectors. The group is well-placed to tackle these challenges, together with an increasingly vibrant Dark Matter programme and longer-term commitments that include instrumentation for the LHCb upgrade, EIC construction and work towards future colliders at the energy frontier.
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