This project will support five principal investigators, Kaustubh Agashe, Zackaria Chacko, S. James Gates Jr., Rabindra N. Mohapatra and Raman Sundrum, to continue their on-going theoretical investigations into the nature and origin of the constituents of matter and the forces operating between them as well as the possible existence of extra hidden space dimensions. The PIs will use existing mathematical tools developed for this purpose and seek new ones. They plan to study the nature of the Higgs boson, a major discovery of the past year in the field, the particle that gives mass to matter, and the possible existence of its companion particles that may be indicating any new symmetries or possibly giving mass to tiny particles filling the universe called the neutrinos. This is expected not only to broaden our understanding of the known subatomic phenomena but also in the process, discover new ones that can be tested in machines such as the Large Hadron Collider. The ultimate goal of this research is to seek a fundamental unity among the forces and matter and their impact on the evolution of the Cosmos. These investigations will throw light on such questions as the origin of matter and dark matter in the universe as well as the origin of dark energy and dark radiation.
The combination of big picture excitement,intellectual challenge and connections to diverse experiments makes this project an excellent training ground. The project is therefore weighted towards supporting two students and two postdocs. There is a substantial component of education and outreach to broaden the impact of the research, including research for undergraduate and high school students, with an emphasis on students from historically black colleges. The work in this project will be disseminated even more broadly through public and school lectures, and media broadcasts and interviews.
