Clusters of Excellence

The existence of dark matter and the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the Universe point to gaps in our understanding of the world around us. Even though virtually all the measurements that we can make in particle physics can already be described in detail by the Standard Model, deciphering the structure of subatomic matter is one of the most pressing questions in fundamental physics. Specifically, researchers are wondering where new phenomena of fundamental physics might be hiding.

Some of the most intriguing measurements in recent years have involved interplay between the strong (“color”) and weak (“flavor”) interaction. It is this interplay that the researchers in the Cluster of Excellence being proposed together with TU Dortmund University, the University of Siegen and Forschungszentrum Jülich now want to investigate in more detail in a close partnership between theory and experimentation. They will focus on the physics of quarks and the question of how these fundamental building blocks of matter form complex bonding states and are also intending to explore the properties of the Higgs boson and continue the hunt for the axion. With the masses of the six known quarks spanning several orders of magnitude, the experimental infrastructure needed to study them ranges from experiments at low-to-medium energy levels at the ELSA particle accelerator in Bonn all the way through to ultra-high-energy experiments using the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva, which will also offer an opportunity to investigate the Higgs boson.

Speaker:
Prof. Dr. Jochen Dingfelder, Elementary Particle Physics, Institute of Physics, University of Bonn;
Speaker for the Research and Technology Center for Detector Physics

Universities involved:
TU Dortmund University, University of Siegen

Institutions involved:
Forschungszentrum Jülich

The structure and development of our Universe is shaped by countless phenomena that follow some very different timescales, ranging from fractions of a second to billions of years. This Cluster of Excellence, which is being proposed in partnership with the University of Cologne, brings the various processes of astrophysics together through a combination of observations using new instruments, theory backed by innovative simulation and data science methods, and laboratory astrophysics. The aim is to come up with a complete description of the evolution of matter and energy flows over time. Within the Bonn/Cologne region, the cluster initiative is based in a internationally acclaimed center of expertise for radio astronomy, underpinned by four main pillars: (1) building state-of-the-art detectors and instruments for international telescopes; (2) leading large-scale observation programs; (3) running a world-class laboratory for astrophysics; and (4) simulating the dynamic evolution of planets, stars and galaxies on high-performance computers.

Speaker:
Prof. Dr. Stefanie Walch-Gassner, Astrophysics, University of Cologne

Speaker in Bonn:
Prof. Dr. Cristiano Porciani, Astrophysics, University of Bonn

Universities involved:
University of Cologne (applicant)

Institutions involved:
Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy, Bonn
Forschungszentrum Jülich
German Aerospace Center (DLR), Bonn