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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
Nicole works at the interface of particle physics with astrophysics and cosmology. Her current interests include dark matter, the cosmological matter-antimatter asymmetry and neutrino physics. She leads the theory program of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics. More →
Associate Professor Matthew Dolan
Matthew’s research is on the phenomenology of Beyond-the-Standard Model physics. He is interested in the phenomenology of all aspects of dark matter, and in the development of new analysis methods which can be applied to collider physics. More →
Dr Andrea Thamm
Andrea’s work focuses on physics beyond the Standard Model. She is interested in models which address open questions in the Standard Model, such as the hierarchy problem, the strong CP problem and the quest for dark matter, and their phenomenology at current and future experiments. Andrea is also passionate about improving equity and diversity in the theoretical particle physics community. More →
Professor Raymond Volkas
Ray has worked on many aspects of physics beyond the standard model in his career. His current interests centre on the construction of theories for neutrino mass generation and their associated flavour physics effects, the particle nature of dark matter, and baryogenesis. More →
Research fellows
Dr Michael Baker
Michael works on physics beyond the Standard Model, with a focus on dark matter. He is particularly interested in novel production mechanisms of dark matter, the properties of dark matter in the early universe and the experimental signatures of promising candidates. More →
Dr Peter Cox
Peter’s research is focused on dark matter model-building and direct detection. He is particularly interested in possible connections between dark matter and other long-standing problems of the Standard Model. Peter also works on other aspects of beyond the Standard Model physics. He is an Australian Research Council DECRA fellow. More →
Dr Stephan Meighen-Berger
Stephan’s research focuses on atmospheric particle shower phenomenology, mainly neutrinos. He is particularly interested in how to extract Standard Model and beyond the Standard Model physics from experimental data. For that, he uses data from high- and low-energy experiments.
Dr Jayden Newstead
Jay works on particle dark matter phenomenology, mainly focusing on the direct detection of dark matter. He is also interested in looking for beyond standard model physics with coherent elastic neutrino-nucleus scattering. More →
PhD students
 Joshua Ellis |
Maaz HayatPublications |
Fred Hiskens |
Tim Martonhelyi |
Ayodele Ore |
Alex Ritter |
Iman Shaukat AliPublications |
Alexei Sopov |
Aidan SymonsPublications |
 Michael Virgato |
 Joshua WoodPublications |
MSc students
Jeongoh Park |
 Nimrod Shapir |
Alumni
Students
| Innes Bigaran | PhD 2022 | Postdoc at Northwestern/Fermilab |
| Leon Friedrich | PhD 2021 | Postdoc at UMass Amherst/TD Lee Institute |
| Isaac Sanderson | PhD 2021 | Industry |
| 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 | Postdocs at Kings College London, Fermilab |
| Giorgio Busoni | 2015 — 2018 | Postdocs at MPI Heidelberg, Australian National University |
| 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
- Dipan Sengupta (U. Adelaide)3:30pm Mar 29, 2023: Unitarizing scattering amplitudes in theories of compact Extra Dimensions
- Natalia Tapia (Utah U.)10:00am Apr 12, 2023: TBA
- Ellen Sirks (U. Sydney)3:30pm May 3, 2023: TBA
- Rick Gupta (Tata Institute)3:30pm 24 May, 2023: TBA
Past
- 2023
- Cristina Mondino (Perimeter Institute)10:00am Mar 15, 2023: Dark photon superradiance: Electrodynamics and multimessenger signals
- Stefano Profumo (UC Santa Cruz)10:00am Mar 1, 2023: The Primordial Black Holes Variations
- Marta Losada (NYU Abu Dhabi)11:00am Feb 24, 2023: Higgs physics, EDMs and Baryogenesis
- 2022
- Michael Klasen (U. Münster)11:00am Dec 22, 2022: Supersymmetric dark matter after Fermilab's (g-2)μ measurement
- Flip Tanedo (UC Riverside)10:00am Oct 26, 2022: Adventures in a Warped Dark Sector
- Kimberly Boddy (U. Texas)10:00am Oct 12, 2022: Searching for Dark Matter Interactions in Cosmology
- Matthew McCullough (CERN)4:00pm 28 Sep, 2022: The Higgs Boson Under a Microscope
- Seyda Ipek (Carleton)10:00am Sep 14, 2022: QCD and Baryogenesis
- Filippo Sala (LPTHE)4:00pm Aug 31, 2022: Heavy Dark Matter from Phase Transitions
- Graham White (IPMU)3:30pm July 6, 2022: Archaeology on the origin of matter
- 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)