Young scientists in physics at the University of Freiburg can now investigate the Higgs particle more precisely and dark matter more intensively: The German Research Foundation (DFG) has approved the continuation proposal for the Research Training Group "Mass and Symmetries after the Discovery of the Higgs Particle at the LHC" at the University of Freiburg. In the next four and a half years, the DFG will invest about 4.7 million euros in the training of Freiburg doctoral students.

Even after the Higgs particle has been discovered at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, fundamental questions of particle physics remain unanswered: Does this particle correspond in detail to the prediction of standard theory? How do its properties fit into extended theoretical models? Are there new symmetries in the microcosm and thus also new particles? Which particles form dark matter and how do they fit into theoretical models? Can dark matter particles be produced and detected at the LHC and can they be detected directly in astroparticle physics experiments? “During the first funding period, the researchers at the Freiburg Research Training Group have already made important contributions to answering these questions by analyzing the collected data of the ATLAS experiment at the LHC and by making precise theory predictions” says Prof. Dr. Markus Schumacher, spokesperson for the Research Training Group.

In the coming funding period, these investigations will be extended by a ten-fold increase in the data set and continued with higher precision, explains the Freiburg Professor of Experimental Particle Physics. The research activity will be extended in a complementary way by the new integration of the astroparticle-physics search for particles of dark matter with the XENONnT experiment in the underground experimental laboratories Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso in Italy and the CAST experiment at CERN. 55 Freiburg physicists, among them 35 doctoral researchers, from the fields of theoretical and experimental particle and astroparticle physics will in close cooperation investigate the Higgs particle more precisely and search for new particles, especially those of dark matter, in mass regions that have not been accessible up to now.

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