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What are the fundamental constituents of the universe and the laws that govern them?
These are the big questions that the theoretical particle physics group are trying to answer. We have diverse research interests that range from astroparticle and cosmological physics that describe the physics of the early universe, to the physics of the Standard Model and beyond that describes the fundamental interactions and matter of the subnuclear world. Group members have played a major role in exploring neutrino physics and the identity of dark matter. Research areas of the Standard Model include the physics of the famed Higgs boson and elucidating why there is more matter than anti-matter in the universe. We also explore frontiers Beyond the Standard Model such as supersymmetry and extra dimensions, and how they may be discovered experimentally.
These are exciting times for particle physics as we are in the middle of the era of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment at CERN. The LHC has already discovered the Higgs boson; what it finds next could provide the answers to some of the most fundamental questions regarding the quantum Universe.
Faculty
Professor Nicole Bell
Associate Professor Matthew Dolan
Dr Andrea Thamm
Professor Raymond Volkas
Research fellows
Dr Michael Baker
Dr Peter Cox
Dr Jayden Newstead
PhD students
Innes Bigaran | Publications | i.bigaran@student.unimelb.edu.au |
Joshua Ellis | Publications | jellis@student.unimelb.edu.au |
Fred Hiskens | Publications | fhiskens@student.unimelb.edu.au |
Tim Martonhelyi | Publications | tmartonhelyi@student.unimelb.edu.au |
Ayodele Ore | Publications | ayodeleo@student.unimelb.edu.au |
Alex Ritter | Publications | rittera@student.unimelb.edu.au |
Alexei Sopov | Publications | sopova@student.unimelb.edu.au |
Michael Virgato | Publications | mvirgato@student.unimelb.edu.au |
Joshua Wood | Publications | jwood5@student.unimelb.edu.au |
MSc students
Iman Shaukat Ali | ishaukatali@student.unimelb.edu.au |
Maaz Hayat | maazh@student.unimelb.edu.au |
Aidan Symons | symonsa1@student.unimelb.edu.au |
Alumni
Students
Leon Friedrich | PhD 2021 | Postdoc at TD Lee Institute/UMass Amherst |
Isaac Sanderson | PhD 2021 | |
John Gargalionis | PhD 2021 | Postdoc at IFIC Valencia |
Tomasz Dutka | PhD 2021 | Postdoc at KIAS |
Stephen Lonsdale | PhD 2018 | Postdoc at IBS Korea |
Rebecca Leane | PhD 2017 | Postdocs at MIT, SLAC; Staff at SLAC |
Amelia Brennan | PhD 2017 | Data analyst |
Jackson Clarke | PhD 2016 | Industry |
Peter Cox | PhD 2016 | Postdocs at IPMU Tokyo, U. Melbourne |
Iason Baldes | PhD 2015 | Postdocs at DESY, U. Brussels |
Ben Callen | PhD 2014 | Data scientist |
Nadine Pesor | PhD 2014 | Quantitative analyst |
Ahmad Galea | PhD 2013 | Postdoc at U. Oslo |
Jayne Thompson | PhD 2012 | Postdoc at Nat. U. Singapore |
Thomas Jacques | PhD 2011 | Postdocs at Arizona State, U. Geneva, SISSA |
Damien George | PhD 2009 | Postdocs at NIKHEF, U. Cambridge |
Sandy Law | PhD 2009 | Postdocs at Chung Yuan Christian U., Nat. Cheng Kung U. |
Alison Demaria | PhD 2007 | Industry |
Postdocs
Sandra Robles | 2017 — 2021 | Postdoc at Kings College London |
Giorgio Busoni | 2015 — 2018 | Postdoc at MPI Heidelberg |
Tyler Corbett | 2015 — 2018 | Postdoc at Niels Bohr Institute |
Zhao-Huan Yu | 2015 — 2018 | Faculty at Sun Yat-sen U. |
Yi Cai | 2012 — 2017 | Faculty at Sun Yat-sen U. |
James Barnard | 2012 — 2016 | Data scientist |
Andrew Spray | 2012 — 2015 | Postdoc at IBS Korea |
Anibal Medina | 2012 — 2015 | Postdoc at IPhT Saclay; Faculty at La Plata U. |
Tirtha Sankar Ray | 2012 — 2014 | Faculty at IIT Kharagpur |
Michael Schmidt | 2010 — 2014 | Lecturer at U. Sydney; Faculty at UNSW |
Donatello Dolce | 2010 — 2012 | Lecturer at U. Camerino |
Kalliopi Petraki | 2009 — 2012 | Postdoc at NIKHEF; Faculty at LPTHE, Sorbonne U. |
Benedict von Harling | 2008 — 2012 | Postdocs at SISSA, DESY, IFAE Barcelona |
Archil Kobakhidze | 2007 — 2012 | Faculty at U. Sydney |
Nicholas Setzer | 2008 — 2011 | Postdoc at U. Granada |
Shrihari Gopalakrishna | 2010 | Faculty at IMSc Chennai |
Upcoming
Past
- 2022
- Kyohei Mukaida (KEK)3:30pm May 11, 2022: Leptoflavorgenesis
- Kohei Kamada (RESCEU, U. Tokyo)3:30pm Apr 27, 2022: Magnetogenesis, Baryogenesis, and Wash-in Leptogenesis in Pseudoscalar Inflation
- Michael Nee (Oxford)2:00pm Apr 26, 2022: The Boring Monopole
- Vera Gluscevic (UCLA)10:00am Apr 13, 2022: Probing dark matter mass and interactions: from the early universe to near-field cosmology
- Benjamin Roberts (U. of Queensland)3:30pm Mar 30, 2022: Dark matter induced atomic ionisation
- Alexander Millar (Stockholm)2:00pm Feb 25, 2022: Axion-photon conversion in neutron star magnetospheres
- 2021
- Ciaran O'Hare (Sydney)4:00pm Oct 27, 2021: Venturing into the neutrino fog
- Volodymyr Takhistov (IPMU)4:00pm Oct 13, 2021: Exploring Depths of the Dark: Neutrinos, Axion Explosions and Multiverse Black Holes
- Zahra Tabrizi (Virginia Tech)10:00am Sep 29, 2021: EFT Constraints from Neutrino Experiments
- George Zahariade (IFAE)4:00pm Sep 15, 2021: Quantum Mechanics of Gravitational Waves
- Nicholas Rodd (UC Berkeley)3:30pm Sep 1, 2021: New ideas for the axion dark matter program
- Hank Lamm (Fermilab)11:00am June 9, 2021: The Long Story Short: Quantum Simulations for High Energy Physics
- Rupert Coy (ULB)3:30pm May 26, 2021: The domain of thermal dark matter candidates
- Kai Schmitz (CERN)4:00pm May 12, 2021: NANOGrav and Cosmic Strings from Cosmological B-L Breaking
- Konstantin Springmann (TUM)4:00pm April 21, 2021: Axions in dense objects
- Joshua Eby (Kavli IPMU)3:30pm March 17, 2021: Axion Stars: Towards the Planck Scale
- Tongyan Lin (UCSD)11am March 3, 2021: Dark matter scattering in dielectrics
- 2020
- Ariel Rock (Wisconsin–Madison)1.15pm December 9, 2020: Unconventional Taste: Flavor via Unexpected Origins
- Clara Hormigos-Feliu (TU Dortmund)5pm November 25, 2020: Asymptotically safe models with Higgs and flavor portals
Organisers:
Peter Cox (peter.cox@unimelb.edu.au)
Jayden Newstead (jayden.newstead@unimelb.edu.au)