NSF Award
2210067
This award funds the research activities of Professor Christopher B. Verhaaren at Brigham Young University.<br/><br/>Our understanding of nature’s smallest scales is truly remarkable. The Standard Model of particle physics has been confirmed by a wide variety of impressive experimental tests. Nevertheless, the Standard Model must be extended to address the big questions of particle physics. These include understanding dark matter and why there is more matter than anti-matter in the Universe. This research advances the national interest by engaging in a primary scientific goal: the discovery and understanding of physical laws. This understanding may relate to new particles with only small connections to the Standard Model. Such particles are often said to belong to a dark sector because they are challenging to detect. Professor Verhaaren builds models of dark sectors that can answer the big questions of particle physics and determines how to test these ideas experimentally. This work will also lead to significant broader impacts. Professor Verhaaren will include graduate and undergraduate students in this research, providing essential training for beginning physicists seeking to enter and impact this field. He is also developing new course curricula intended to both aid new students as they learn about these topics and prepare interested undergraduate and graduate students to engage in scientific research.<br/><br/>More technically, Professor Verhaaren will develop the theory and phenomenology of richly varied dark sectors. This includes models that seek to understand the electroweak scale, and attributes of the Higgs boson, through new symmetries. The symmetry partners to Standard Model particles may reside in a dark sector and can provide an explanation of dark matter. Solitons of dark sector fields may also make up some or all of the cosmological dark matter. These less-studied possibilities have novel aspects and physical effects. Often, their study requires original theoretical and numerical methods to determine and describe their characteristics. Developing these theoretical methods serves the dual roles of advancing our understanding of quantum field theory as well as making concrete predictions of how these dark sector objects can be discovered experimentally.<br/><br/>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.
