Physics at the Frontier: From Colliders to Cosmology

This award funds the research activities of Professors Will Kinney, Dejan Stojkovic, Doreen Wackeroth, and Ciaran Williams at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. The PIs will conduct a wide-ranging research program which aims to provide answers to key open questions at the frontier of particle physics, cosmology, and gravity research. Research topics include the physics of cosmological inflation, the physics of black holes, Dark Energy, the properties of the Higgs boson, and precision predictions for the Large Hadron Collider and future accelerators. This research aligns with NSF's mission to promote the progress of science and advance the national welfare as it is aimed at extending our understanding of the origin and structure of the universe, and the properties of fundamental particles and fields. The group will also involve students in their research, and thereby provide training for junior physicists beginning research in this field. The PIs will continue to conduct public outreach, including public lectures, planetarium shows, interactions with the press and other media, and engagement with the Science & Art Cabaret series, now in its twelfth season. More technically, Professor Kinney's research will involve investigation of so-called "swampland" criteria within the context of early universe physics. He will constrain the physics of inflation with new observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background and Large-Scale Structure, and explore resolutions to the Hubble constant tension. Professor Stojkovic will continue the development of the comprehensive event generator BlackMax which is currently used by the LHC collaborations in searches for exotic physics. He will also investigate observable consequences of cosmological phase transitions, and establish quasars as standard candles. Professor Wackeroth will focus on providing improved predictions for a variety of processes involving electroweak (EW) gauge bosons at the LHC in order to increase the sensitivity of precision tests of the SM to signals of new physics. This will be achieved by calculating higher-order electroweak and QCD radiative corrections and by working on conceptional problems such as the treatment of the heavy quark (Q) mass in Q-initiated processes. Professor Wackeroth will also study the impact of EW corrections on low-energy neutrino-Nucleon scattering processes relevant to future neutrino experiments. Finally, Professor Williams will develop new techniques for multi-loop calculations which will allow for the calculation of the Mixed QCD-EW corrections to di-photon production. Professor Williams will compute both the quark initiated and gluon initiated channel at two-loop order. The gluon channel will allow for a determination of the EW corrections to the Higgs-continuum interference at this order, thereby yielding the most precise possible studies of Higgs interferometry at the LHC. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.