The key scientific objectives of our team is the exploration of potential transversal collaborative axes between the other teams of IPHU and the pure theory research. The data coming from the frontier of particle physics experiments, astronomical observations including gravitational waves, and cosmological surveys present a series of puzzles offering potentially crucial insights for the advancement of theoretical understanding. Conversely, theoretical explorations might suggest new perspectives that could motivate experimental or observational research that would not be apparent without the conceptual standpoint that theoretical investigations open.
Our present standard model of particle physics and the concordance model of cosmology contain unsatisfactory aspects which drive efforts on the theoretical front. The fundamental understanding of the nature of dark energy and dark matter and of the primordial universe remain to a large extent open. Different models inspired in particle physics, addressed in terms of effective field theories and with the potential of linking the extensions of the standard model with the resolution of cosmological puzzles, offer rich phenomenology. Nevertheless, it might be that some of these problems could only be resolved if questions related to the quantum nature of gravity and matter at the Planck scale are better understood.
The interaction between experimental and observational scientists and theoreticians can suggest new grounds for collaborations in a bidirectional manner: on the one hand present theoretical models need the testing of their phenomenology via available data or possible new analysis of the data, on the other hand, understanding of what the data tell us about nature can offer empirical motivation for new theoretical speculation that could help in the construction of models beyond the established understanding in the areas of particle physics and quantum gravity.
The key objective of our team is to foster interactions and cross fertilization between these two often too independent communities with the hope of producing progress on both the frontiers of observational and experimental physics and the theoretical understanding.
List of the main missions/projects associated to this theme:
- Bi-annual international meeting ("Quantum in the Sky"?)
- Short- and long-term invited researchers
- Shared with other IPhU working groups: meetings in IPhU labs, regular announcements (publications, conferences, jobs) in IPhU Newsletter
