The Focus Group for Fundamental Physics at the TUM-IAS explored the limitations of the current standard model of particle physics in order to arrive at a more powerful theory. As the first results of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN are already available and will be improved in the coming years, it is likely that a number of open questions in physics will be answered, setting the future direction of research in fundamental physics. The TUM-IAS Focus Group of Fundamental Physics is already using the first experimental data of LHC to construct and test specific scenarios of physics beyond the standard model. These activities got recently strong support from the European Research Council which awarded the Advanced Grant (1.6 Mill Euro) to Andrzej Buras, the leader of the Focus Group. In this context the project "Towards the Construction of the Fundamental Theory of Flavour" will be executed in the period 2011-2016 with participation of first class researchers, in particular the Hans Fischer Senior Fellow, Gino Isidori.
The group leaders were:
Prof. Andrzej Buras of TUM expects fruitful years for particle physics as a consequence and spends this time as a Carl von Linde Senior Fellow at the TUM-IAS. He is acting as a "convener" for further fellows in order to expand this area of research at the TUM-IAS and leading a group at TUM that explores the consequences of models with supersymmetry and extra dimensions in flavour physics.
Dr. Martin Gorbahn was a Carl von Linde Junior Fellow at the TUM-IAS working also in close contact with the group of Prof. Andrzej Buras. He has two main objectives for his research group: Firstly to complement direct searches for new particles with improved analyses of precision flavour physics data to facilitate the tests of the standard model and various new physics scenarios. Secondly to search for and construct specific scenarios of new physics, which could be falsified by the ongoing experiments.
Dr. Gino Isidori joined TUM-IAS as Hans Fischer Senior Fellow in 2009. He is working in close contact with the other members of the Fundamental Physics group, establishing also a research link between TUM-IAS and his home institution (INFN Frascati Laboratories, Italy). Our main objective is to build extensions of the Standard Model at the TeV scale, trying to provide a consistent description of how the electroweak and the flavour symmetries are broken.
Prof. Stefan Pokorski has been a Hans Fischer Senior Fellow at TUM-IAS since 2009. His research is focused on the quest for a deeper theory of elementary interactions, beyond the Standard Model. For some time now particle physicists, cosmologists, and astroparticle physicists have been grappling with several of the most challenging and fundamental questions in science, such as the origin of mass of elementary particles, the nature of the so-called dark matter, and as yet inexplicable bias of our universe toward matter over antimatter. With the Large Hadron Collider experiments at CERN, we have good reasons to anticipate experimental discoveries beyond the Standard Model at the TeV mass scale, which would indicate the correct direction for the theory. The goal of our Fundamental Physics focus group is to search for such theoretical extension of the Standard Model.
TUM-IAS funded doctoral candidate:
Emmanuel Stamou (PhD in 2013)
Postdocs:
Luca Merlo, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, (2010-2012, TUM)
Robert Ziegler, CNRS, France (2010-2013, TUM)
Publications by the Focus Group
