Topics in Physics Beyond the Standard Model

This award funds the research activities of Professor Christopher Carone at William & Mary. The standard model of particle physics is a theory that provides an extremely successful description of the known elementary particles and their interactions. However, the standard model also leads to mysteries that currently remain unresolved and are likely related to physics at extremely small distance scales. Professor Carone will explore a range of novel possibilities for the particle physics in this regime. These may address a number of mysteries, such as why there are stable hierarchies between the widely different energies and distance scales found in nature, why the masses of known elementary particles have the inexplicable range of values that are observed, and whether the ultimate theory describing elementary particles may be of a special type that can be extrapolated sensibly to distances that are infinitely small. Such investigations advance the national interest by furthering the progress of science in the US via our understanding of the basic building blocks of the universe. Professor Carone will work with doctoral students on the project, providing them with training that will equip them to be valuable additions to either the academic or the broader STEM workforce. Professor Carone will also participate in outreach events that enrich high school teachers by giving them an awareness and exposure to particle physics research. More technically, Professor Carone will study novel higher-derivative quantum field theories that interpolate between Lee-Wick and nonlocal theories and that provide a new solution to the hierarchy problem. He will construct new models of elementary fermion masses that involve modular flavor symmetries, a possibility that is motivated by string theory. He will consider the constraints on well-motivated gauge extensions of the standard model that follow from asymptotic safety, the condition that couplings flow to nontrivial fixed points in the ultraviolet. He will also follow up on his recent work on regular black hole metrics, to understand a variety of astrophysical consequences that follow from the assumed nontrivial mass dependence of the regulator. 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.