Topics in Physics Beyond the Standard Model

This award funds the research activities of Professors Christopher Carone and Marc Sher at the College of William & Mary.

A major goal of elementary particle physics is to understand the spectrum of elementary particles as well as their fundamental interactions. This is the central focus of the work of Professors Carone and Sher, who construct and study theories that address some of the most profound unsolved mysteries in particle physics. These theories often lead to testable predictions in experiments like the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which was built in order to search for undiscovered particles and to study their properties.

The LHC is best known for the discovery of the Higgs particle whose existence is related to the origin of the masses of the other known elementary particles. The LHC operates at the frontier of experimentally accessible energies. The theoretical work of Professors Carone and Sher is also relevant at lower-energy experiments, such as neutrino experiments and precise measurements of the properties of muons (elementary particles which act as heavier versions of the electron).

Research in these areas advances the national interest by promoting the progress of science in one of its most fundamental directions: the discovery and understanding of new particles and new physical laws. In their research, Professors Carone and Sher will explore several new theories that are experimentally testable. These include theories in which the observed Higgs boson is accompanied by additional Higgs bosons, leading to effects that may be discerned in LHC experiments and in precision tests of the muon properties.

These also include theories that explain the observed structure of the masses of the elementary particles through symmetries, as well as theories which provide a new description of the nature of gravity. This project is also envisioned to have significant broader impacts. Professors Carone and Sher will provide critical training for both undergraduate and graduate students beginning research in a technical field, giving them skills that translate to the broader technical workforce.

They will also continue presenting public lectures on their research results, giving interviews about new results to interested media, and promoting high-energy physics in the southeastern United States.

More technically, Professors Carone and Sher will study the consequences of asymptotic safety in flavor models based on the Froggatt-Nielsen mechanism and they will explore whether the requirement that couplings evolve to nontrivial ultraviolet fixed points leads to interesting constraints on the structure and parameter space of these theories. They will consider the problem of axion quality in flavorful axion models, exploring whether axion compositeness can address this problem and whether interesting composite flavorful axion models can be found using the AdS/CFT correspondence and SUSY dualities.

They will study two-Higgs models in which vector-like leptons can solve the discrepancy with the muon magnetic dipole moment. In addition, they will study models in which electromagnetism is broken at high energies and study the electroweak phase transition. Finally, Professor Carone will study nonlocal gravity models in hopes of improving their high-energy behavior while Professor Sher will examine the possibility that matter oscillations of solar neutrinos in the Moon can be detected either during eclipses or by an orbiting neutrino detector.

This neutrino tomography could also lead to the first experimental studies of the interior of Jupiter.

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.