Research

Particle physics and cosmology currently stand on the verge of new discoveries that may shake the foundation of our perception of the physical world. On the smallest of scales, we seek the origin of mass itself, the missing link in what is known as the Standard Model of particle physics which summarizes our current understanding of matter and forces. Below is shown the matter particles of the Standard Model.

On the largest of scales, we must reconcile the dark matter of the Universe with particle physics. That implies going beyond the Standard Model. What we seek are new concepts that can explain in one coherent framework the observations from the very smallest to the very largest distance scales. We stand at the remarkable moment in history when this dream might come true.

To probe the smallest scales, the world’s largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is colliding protons with unprecedented energies, already now 3.5 times higher than what has ever been achieved before.

On the cosmic scale, new ground-breaking data is arriving from the Planck satellite mission. This was successfully launched in May 2009 and has completed its first survey of the cosmic microwave background radiation over the entire sky. The second scan started February 14 2010.

We know that our present theories of the fundamental particles and their roles in the evolution of the Universe are incomplete. The strategy of the DISCOVERY center is to combine different scientific fields with the aim of establishing a more profound understanding and an enlargement of the Standard Model for the fundamental forces and particles of nature. Primarily, the center will seek to make progress via a close collaboration between theory and experiment. The theory part is focused, at least initially, exactly on the Standard Model – not on its enlargements. This is necessary, if a signal from any non-standard physics is to be convincingly established. Furthermore, DISCOVERY will pursue the connections between the accelerator-based observations and the new cosmological data that will emerge from the Planck mission.

DISCOVERY thus focuses on three scientific themes:

• The precise exploration of the unknown mechanism that breaks the electroweak symmetry, along with the predictions for various proposals for this mechanism.
• the exploration of detailed expectations of both the perturbative and nonperturbative aspects of QCD at the TeV scale—the energy scale appropriate for the Large Hadron Collider—and
• the search for connections between particle physics and cosmology in the discoveries made by the Planck mission’s measurements studies of the fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background radiation.