RESEARCH FIELD

Particle Physics

Particle physics investigates the most fundamental constituents of matter and the forces between them, described by the Standard Model validated over fifty years of experimental tests. The discovery of the Higgs boson at the LHC completed the Standard Model but left major questions unanswered: the nature of dark matter and dark energy, the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe, the origin of neutrino masses, and why gravity is so much weaker than the other forces. Deep underground detectors like XENONnT and LZ search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter candidates. The Muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab measures the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon with persistent deviation from Standard Model predictions that may hint at new physics. Future colliders will extend the energy and luminosity frontier.