image caption:

Experimental High Energy Physics

The experimental group (Cox, Conetti, Dukes, Hirosky) participates in major research collaborations at the world’s leading particle accelerators in the U.S. and in Europe where we are able to study the most fundamental interactions of matter to elicit the inner workings of the natural world. The group is housed in its own building a short walk from the main physics building. This superb laboratory has an electronics lab, mechanical shop, a large assembly area, and powerful computing capabilities. For details on the activities of our HEP experimental group, see our website at: http://faculty.virginia.edu/hep/

Read More about Experimental High Energy Physics at UVa >

The Theoretical Elementary Particle Physics group acknowledges that the fundamental task of physics is to learn the rules of the basic interactions governing the behavior of matter and to search for new laws when present knowledge fails to answer the remaining mysteries of the observable universe. At the foundation of modern theories of particle physics is a deep and beautiful symmetry principle: the invariance of physical laws under symmetry transformations at every space-time point. Theories that show this symmetry are known as Yang-Mills or Gauge Theories. The Standard Model of Strong, Electromagnetic and Weak interactions is the most successful of these theories. It describes all known interactions of matter except gravity. The Electroweak part of the Standard Model is being tested to a high degree of precision. The Strong interaction part, the Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) Theory, which describes the interactions among the quarks, is being closely scrutinized, both perturbatively and nonperturbatively. The Standard Model is incomplete, however, since a number of fundamental puzzles, such as CP violation and the origin of masses, remain unsolved. The solutions to these problems probably lie outside the framework of the Standard Model. How does one solve the problem of masses? How does one solve QCD? These are among the topics under active investigation by Professors Fishbane, Hung and Thacker.

			Cox: Professor Cox has been involved in many experiments at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and CERN Lab in Geneva, Switzerland, studying electroweak interactions, quantum chromodynamics, heavy flavor production, and time reversal violation in the kaon system. Prof. Cox has acted as scientific spokesman for several of these experiments. He was a professor at Johns Hopkins University and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory before joining the University of Virginia faculty to found the experimental particle physics ... More>
			Dukes: Professor Dukes’ research is in experimental Elementary Particle Physics where he has worked on experiments at all of the major accelerator laboratories in the world, and held visiting positions at: Brookhaven National Laboratory, CERN Lab in Geneva, Switzerland, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and the SSC. He is currently the head of the Antimatter Asymmetry Group at the University of Virginia, and scientific spokesperson of the HyperCP experiment at Fermilab. More>
			Group: What are the most fundamental pieces of our Universe? What are their properties and how do they interact with each other to form the structure and the phenomena that we observe? More>
			Hirosky: Professor Hirosky’s research explores the Standard Model of Elementary Particle Physics at the world’s highest energy accelerator laboratories in the U.S. and Europe. Studies of the basic constituents of matter, searches for new states of matter, and precision tests of their fundamental interactions are performed by observing the collisions of ultra-relativistic particles at these unique facilities: the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, near Chicago; and CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research in Geneva Switzerland. Both the accelerator complexes and detector ... More>
			Neu: Prof. Neu's research interests focus on understanding the fundamental building blocks of the Universe. More>