Research

The discovery of a Higgs boson at the LHC was an essential first step towards understanding the concept of electroweak symmetry breaking and its relation to the mass of elementary particles. It started a new era in particle physics that is driven by ongoing improvements of the LHC accelerator to obtain much more data and correspondingly increasing demands for particle detectors. The cluster will engage in exploiting this data and its implications for cosmology.

Area Coordinator: Georg Weiglein

Principal Investigators: Ties Behnke, Freya Blekman, Elisabetta Gallo, Erika Garutti, Ingrid-Maria Gregor, Christophe Grojean, Caren Hagner, Johannes Haller, Beate Heinemann, Gregor Kasieczka, Jan Louis, Gudrid Moortgat-Pick, Andreas Ringwald, Peter Schleper, Kai Schmidt-Hoberg, Géraldine Servant, Kerstin Tackmann, Georg Weiglein, Alexander Westphal

Key Researchers: Katharina Behr, Sarah Heim, Andreas Hinzmann, Sven-Olaf Moch, Klaus Mönig, Krisztian Peters, Daniel Pitzl, Jürgen Reuter, Christian Schwanenberger, Felix Sefkow, Georg Steinbrück, Frank Tackmann

While there is overwhelming observational evidence for the existence of dark matter, the nature of its constituents is unclear, and the possible ranges of their masses and couplings span many orders of magnitude. Building on experimental, observational, and theoretical expertise, the cluster will probe the possible interactions of dark matter particles in a variety of ways.

Area Coordinator: Kai Schmidt-Hoberg

Principal Investigators: Marcus Brüggen, Freya Blekman, Erika Garutti, Florian Grüner, Caren Hagner, Johannes Haller, Beate Heinemann, Dieter Horns, Gregor Kasieczka, Jochen Liske, Jan Louis, Gudrid Moortgat-Pick, Andreas Ringwald, Peter Schleper, Géraldine Servant, Günter Sigl, Georg Weiglein, Alexander Westphal

Key Researchers: Ralph Aßmann, Katharina Behr, David Berge, Sarah Heim, Katharina Isleif, Axel Lindner, Andreas Maier, Manuel Meyer, Carsten Niebuhr, Jens Osterhoff, Krisztian Peters, Martin Pohl, Christian Schwanenberger, Frank Tackmann, Ulf Zastrau

The recent discovery of gravitational waves opens a new era of astronomy, as gravitational waves provide a new channel for observing properties of the universe. The detection of gravitational waves and electromagnetic follow-up observations together with theoretical studies of their sources provide a direct link to the origin and distribution of matter in the universe as well as to the theory of gravity.

Area Coordinator: Marcus Brüggen

Principal Investigators: Robi Banerjee, Marcus Brüggen, Oliver Gerberding, Christophe Grojean, Florian Grüner, Dieter Horns, Jochen Liske, Jan Louis, Rafael Porto, Stephan Rosswog, Roman Schnabel, Géraldine Servant, Günter Sigl, Alexander Westphal

Key Researchers: David Berge, Francesco de Gasperin, Peter Hauschildt, Katharina Isleif, Thomas Konstandin, Marek Kowalski, Axel Lindner, Martin Pohl, Christoph Reinhardt, Joern Schaffran

The three main questions of the cluster – the quantum origin of mass, the nature of dark matter, and the relation of gravity to the quantum world – all raise major theoretical challenges. They require a coordinated effort and concrete tools at the interface of mathematics and physics, which will trigger advances in both theoretical physics and mathematics.

Area Coordinator: Vicente Cortés

Principal Investigators: Gleb Arutyunov, Tobias Dyckerhoff, Christophe Grojean, Julian Holstein, Jan Louis, Andreas Ringwald, Ingo Runkel, Volker Schomerus, Christoph Schweigert, Géraldine Servant, Jörg Teschner, Timo Weigand, Paul Wedrich, Alexander Westphal

Key Researchers: Sven-Olaf Moch, Georgios Papathanasiou, Elli Pomoni, Birgit Richter