Investigating the Physics of the Higgs Boson

The German Research Foundation DFG has approved RWTH’s proposal for the establishment of a new DFG Research Training Group concerned with the “Physics of the Heaviest Particles at the Large Hadron Collider.”

By funding Research Training Groups, the DFG supports outstanding and particularly innovative research projects. Specially qualified doctoral researchers, who are recruited internationally, are given the opportunity to work on their theses and produce solid findings in a challenging, collaborative research environment.

The new RTG will focus on investigating the heaviest particles seen so far, including the Higgs boson, which may hold the key to a new physics, and the top quark, the heaviest particle in the Standard Model. The Higgs boson is indispensable for the mechanism of mass generation of the known constituents of matter. In addition, previously undiscovered, heavy particles beyond the Standard Model are being researched.

The RTG seeks to contribute to a better understanding of the structure of the Higgs mechanism as a central component of the Standard Model of elementary particle physics. The Large Hadron Collider provides crucial insights that help answer the most fundamental questions about nature. Investigating the properties of elementary particles, the researchers combine theoretical investigations with experimental data provided by the Large Hadron Collider particle accelerator at CERN in Geneva.

The participating doctoral candidates are not only trained in basic research methodology, but are also enabled to solve complex problems within large international collaborations. They are supervised by a team of principal investigators, all professors from RWTH’s Institutes of Experimental and Theoretical Particle Physics. Spokesperson for the DFG Research Training Group is Professor Michal Czakon from the Institute for Theoretical Particle Physics and Cosmology.