This award funds the research activities of Professors Kaustubh Agashe, Zackaria Chacko, Rabindra N. Mohapatra and Raman Sundrum at the University of Maryland, College Park. Their work will develop new theoretical mechanisms and models at the juncture of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics, and result in new templates for experimental exploration in diverse arenas. The experimental frontier ranges from searches for new particles at the CERN Large Hadron Collider and future colliders, to Dark Matter detection experiments, to particle physics signatures in the Cosmic Microwave Background and Large Scale Structure in the universe, to searches for gravitational waves from early universe phase transitions. This research seeks to improve our understanding of the fundamental laws of nature, lying at the root of the natural sciences, and thereby to benefit the national interest and our scientific civilization. In their research, the principal investigators will study several of the most promising theoretical frameworks for going beyond the standard model of particle physics, in which it is augmented by (a) extra 'warped' dimensions of spacetime, (b) 'mirror sectors' with similar structure to the standard model and mirror symmetries that relate them, (c) 'left-right' symmetric structure. They will also study the physics and cosmology of neutrinos, as well as models of "cosmic inflation", the growth spurt of the early universe. This project is also envisioned to have significant broader impacts. The PIs will involve graduate students and postdocs in their research, and thereby provide critical training for junior physicists beginning research in this field. They also intend to give public and high school lectures on their research results and aid in the development of materials for the scientific media.
More technically, Professors Agashe and Sundrum will explore the physics of the warped extra-dimensional phase transition in the early universe, and its gravitational wave and collider phenomenology, as well as its role in generating the observed matter/antimatter asymmetry. Professor Sundrum will also develop theories of high-scale cosmic inflation compatible with the most recent precision cosmological data. The left-right symmetric scenario will be studied by Professor Mohapatra for its possible impact on flavor physics, neutrino physics and the matter/antimatter asymmetry. The physics of neutrinos will be studied by Professor Chacko in scenarios in which they are associated with compositeness, time-dependent couplings, or couplings to light Goldstone bosons.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
