Thesis

Beyond the Standard Model: interplay between particle and astroparticle physics

• Call:

  PT-CERN Call 2021/1

• Academic Year:

  2021

• Domain:

  Astroparticle Physics

• Supervisor:

  Filipe Joaquim

• Co-Supervisor:

  Ricardo Gonzalez Felipe

• Institution:

  Instituto Superior Técnico (Universidade de Lisboa)

• Host Institution:

  CFTP - Centro de Física Teórica de Partículas

• Abstract:

  The discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN Large Hadron Collider in 2012, provided the last missing piece of the Standard Model (SM) puzzle. The success of the SM lies in its elegant theoretical formulation but notably in its predictive power in remarkable agreement with experimental data. However, the work for particle physicists is still far from over. In fact, the SM fails at explaining the following phenomena: -Neutrino oscillations, which require massive neutrinos and lepton mixing. Due to the absence of right-handed neutrino counterparts, within the SM framework, neutrinos are strictly massless and consequently there is no mixing in the leptonic sector. -The excess of matter over antimatter in the Universe also known as the baryon asymmetry of the Universe, which is underdetermined within the SM. -The existence of dark matter (DM) which composes about 27% of the total amount of matter in the Universe, in comparison visible matter accounts for only 5%. The SM does not provide a viable DM candidate particle. From the theoretical viewpoint, the idea to simultaneously solve the above problems is not only appealing but is also natural since the SM must be the low-energy limit of a more complete theory. From the experimental point of view, the booming worldwide particle physics experimental programme provides very exciting prospects at better understanding the SM and its limitations, probing physics beyond the SM and looking for new physics hints. In line with this, the present PhD programme aims at contributing to the theoretical understanding of the above questions in the framework of theories beyond the SM. Additionally, our research will pay special attention to phenomenological studies and aims at testing SM extensions through confrontation with current and future experimental constraints. To achieve this, we will combine analytical and numerical methods adopted in (astro)particle physics and cosmology.