Our mission is experimental research in Particle Physics, as well as training new researchers.
The research is pursued through analysis of data from the experiments we participate in, development of new experiments, and R&D on hardware and software tools for Particle Physics.
Together with our colleagues in many international collaborations, we work on the construction, operations, maintenance and upgrades of our experimental installations, most of which are based at the European Particle Physics laboratory CERN outside Geneva, Switzerland.
The necessity to process very large amounts of research data using modern computational methods lead to the emergence of e-Science, which refers to research and creation of dedicated scientific computer and software solutions. We are among world leading contributors to e-Science solutions for Particle Physics.
All our researchers participate in the teaching activities at the Department of Physics, and the PhD students assist in supervising undergraduate projects, as well as in physics labs and exercise sessions.
What are the fundamental constituents of the Universe, and what are the forces that act among them?
Particle Physics is the science that studies most fundamental principles governing our world, namely, fundamental forces and fundamental constituents of matter upon which these forces act. This concept is formulated mathematically, leading to a set of theories and models. The field of Particle Physics evolves through experimental explorations to discover new constituents, test and validate theories, as well as through development of new theories and models.
Our current understanding of the field is encapsulated in the Standard Model of Particle Physics, which has an exceptional predictive power and was experimentally proven to be correct. However, this model is incomplete, and leaves open many questions, yet to be explored. Through our experiments, we put the predictions of the Standard Model at test, and seek a more complete understanding of the Universe, venturing beyond the Standard Model.
In order to achieve our ambitious research goals, we join global research collaborations, such as ATLAS and ALICE at CERN. These two collaborations built and now operate dedicated complex detectors at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and collect data since 2008. Our future plans lie with the continuous improvement of the LHC and the experiments all the way through 2035, and with launching new experiments at CERN and elsewhere.