Fundamental questions
Particle physics studies the world at the smallest possible distance scales and the highest achievable energies, seeking answers to fundamental questions about the structure of matter and the composition of the universe.
Ten years after the UK researchers’ contribution to the Nobel Prize winning detection of the Higgs boson, some of the questions that the community is working to answer are:
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what is the universe made of and why?
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what is the underlying nature of neutrinos?
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why is there an imbalance between matter and antimatter in the universe?
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how can we detect dark matter?
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are there any new particles or particle interactions we can find?
Continued UK leadership
Professor Grahame Blair, STFC Executive Director for Programmes, said:
STFC continues to support the experimental particle physics community in the UK in answering fundamental questions about our universe.
The grants are vital in supporting technicians, engineers and academics in their skills and expertise in the field, all while encouraging career development in fundamental research with both universities and international collaborators.
This investment underpins the UK physics community and enables continued UK leadership in the field of experimental particle physics.
UK particle physics on the international stage
STFC funds UK particle physicists working on a wide range of experiments globally.
Through the grants, the council supports UK researchers working in CERN and its Large Hadron Collider (LHC) detectors, including:
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A Toroidal LHC Apparatus (ATLAS)
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Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS)
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Large Hadron Collider beauty (LHCb)
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NA62.
Research teams funded by the UK are working on solving ground-breaking challenges in particle physics, including the:
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race to detect dark matter
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investigation of neutrino oscillations
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search for proton decay.
These are all key questions in fundamental physics to which we still do not have answers.
Cutting-edge experiments
The STFC-funded academics are actively involved in cutting-edge experiments in these areas, such as:
