High Energy Physics
What is High Energy Physics?
In high energy physics we seek to understand the nature of space and time, the characteristics of the forces governing the interactions of matter and energy, and the origins of the properties of the elementary particles. Modern theories of particle physics purport to explain the origin of mass, and hope to unify the descriptions of all the forces, including gravity. With the discovery that "normal" matter constitutes only 5% of the total energy in the universe, the study of dark matter and dark energy has attracted great interest.
What are we doing in High Energy Physics at Illinois?
Our group at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is active on many fronts.
Particle phenomenology research aims to address fundamental questions about the laws of nature that can be tested in current and future experiments. Group expertise includes the development of new theories of dark matter and their possible signatures, modeling physics beyond the standard model and its predictions for a variety of low energy and collider experiments, and the connections between particle physics and early-universe cosmology. Our group collaborates extensively with the astrophysics, cosmology, and nuclear physics groups, leading to strong connections with the newly-established Illinois Center for Advanced Studies of the Universe (ICASU). We are also involved with the SQMS Center at Fermilab through research to detect new light particles and gravitational waves using quantum sensors.
The lattice gauge theory group studies the formulation of quantum field theories in a nonperturbatively precise way and the simulation of these theories and their phenomena. Our research includes the precision computation of QCD processes needed to decode measurements at collider and other experiments, the exploration of new applications of classical simulations, and the development of theories and observables that can be simulated on digital and analog quantum devices. The latter research includes close collaboration with experimental and theoretical groups in AMO and condensed matter, and the group is a part of the Illinois Quantum Information Science and Technology Center (IQUIST).
The theoretical effort also includes research into fundamental aspects of quantum field theory, string theory AdS/CFT, and quantum gravity. The AdS/CFT duality relates questions in quantum gravity to those in strongly interacting quantum many-body physics, and this effort includes strong interdisciplinary links to the condensed matter theory groups and IQUIST.
Our experimental high-energy physics program is focused on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. We are active in searches for beyond-the-standard model physics including supersymmetry, long-lived particles, and anomalous multi-boson production involving new resonances and final states involving Higgs bosons.
We also contribute to the ATLAS trigger system through Run 3 operations and upgrades to the Phase 2 trigger system, focusing on the development of novel charged particle tracking algorithms.
Our research benefits from our involvement with interdisciplinary centers such as the Illinois Center for Advanced Study of the Universe. We are developing machine learning approaches for a variety of analysis and reconstruction tasks, leveraging connections with the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, the Center for Artificial Intelligence (AI) Innovation, and the NSF-funded Accelerated AI Algorithms for Data Driven Discovery (A3D3) Institute.
Faculty
Compton Faculty Fellow
Compton Faculty Fellow