▪ ​연구실 소개: 고에너지이론물리연구실 (이현민 교수님)

· 홈페이지 https://sites.google.com/site/cautheplab/

· 구성원

포닥 연구원: 슌타로 아오키 (Shuntaro Aoki), 카를로 브란키나 (Carlo Branchina)

박사과정: 아드리아나 멘카라 (Adriana Menkara), 김성식

석사과정: 성명중, 송준호, 심성보

학부연구생: 유준식, 한정학, 강준호​ 

▪ 연구방법

Physics beyond the Standard Model: 

Since the Higgs boson was at the LHC in 2012, the Higgs mass and couplings to the SM particles are measured to be consistent with the SM predictions. New heavy particles to Higgs boson would lead to huge quantum corrections to the Higgs mass, so there must have been an extreme fine-tuning to get the measured Higgs mass. This problem is called the hierarchy problem. We propose new solutions to the hierarchy problem and ways to test their consequences.

Cosmology: 

Cosmic inflation was introduced to solve the horizon and flatness problems in the Standard Big Bang Cosmology. It is based on an exponential expansion of the Universe shortly after the Big Bang. Inflation can explain the homogeneity and isotropy of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) as well as anisotropies of CMB due to quantum fluctuations generated during inflation. We build consistent models for inflation and compare the model predictions to CMB measurements such as Planck and look for a deep understanding of the early Universe through primordial gravitational waves.

Dark matter: 

Dark matter is the unknown component of matter in the Universe, which is supported by rotation curves of galaxies, gravitational lensing, collision of galaxy clusters. Weak interactions, similarly to those of neutrinos, may be responsible for communicating between dark matter and the SM, named the WIMP (Weakly Interacting Massive Particle) paradigm. Dark matter, pervading near the Earth, can be also probed by the recoil energy of nucleons in elastic scattering between dark matter and heavy nucleus underground. Recently, SIMP (Strongly Interacting Massive Particle) paradigm has strongly motivated a new species of dark matter with mass below GeV scale, solving small problems in galaxies and galaxy clusters due to strong self-interactions of dark matter. ​

▪ 최근 연구 주제/성과/수행과제

· A model of vector-like leptons for the muon g-2 and the W boson mass (Eur. Phys. J. C, 2022)

· Reheating and dark matter freeze-in in the Higgs-R^2 inflation (Journal of High Energy Physics, 2022)

· Models for self-resonant dark matter (Journal of High Energy Physics, 2022)

· Exothermic dark matter for XENON1T excess (Journal of High Energy Physics, 2021)

· Unitary inflaton as decaying dark matter (Journal of High Energy Physics, 2019)

· B meson anomalies and Higgs physics in flavored U(1)’ model (Eur. Phys. J. C, 2017)

· Cosmic abundances of SIMP dark matter (Journal of High Energy Physics, 2017)

· Communication with SIMP dark mesons via Z’-portal (Physics Letters B, 2015)

· Gravity-mediated (or Composite) dark matter (Eur. Phys. J. C, 2013)

· Stabilization of the electroweak vacuum by a scalar threshold effect (Journal of High Energy Physics, 2012)

· Discrete R symmetries for the MSSM and its singlet extensions (Physics Letters B, 2011)

· Unitarizing Higgs inflation (Physics Letters B, 2011)

· Power counting and the validity of the classical approximation during inflation (Journal of High Energy Physics, 2009)