This award funds the research activities of Professors Ikaros Bigi, Antonio Delgado, and Christopher Kolda at the University of Notre Dame.
The LHC is now taking data at an impressive rate. This data is likely to demonstrate the need to modify the Standard Model of particle physics in order to accommodate new particles and perhaps even new interactions. Professors Bigi, Delgado, and Kolda propose to analyze this possibility within the framework of exotic models such as supersymmetry, strongly coupled Higgs sectors, or extra dimensions. A careful study of how the new data can be accommodated into models of new physics will be performed. Special attention will also be paid to the implications of new physics for processes that lead to a violation of flavor symmetries --- situations which are very rare in the Standard Model but which nevertheless can provide the smoking gun for a new model of particle physics.
This project is also envisioned to have significant broader impacts. Professors Bigi, Delgado and Kolda will continue their activities teaching physics at the undergraduate and graduate levels, lecturing at graduate physics summer schools, organizing workshops and conferences around the world, teaching particle physics to high school teachers and students through QuarkNet, using new technologies to better advise and retain STEM majors at Notre Dame, and preparing STEM graduate students for careers in academia.
