UK Invests £72 Million on Particle Physics Research

Cutting edge particle physics research in the UK will receive £72m over the next four years enabling researchers to focus on answering some of the big questions we still have in understanding the Universe such as the mysteries of Dark Matter - the ‘stuff’ that is believed to make up a big percentage of our Universe but that cannot be seen.

The funding, announced by STFC in December, will support 17 UK university research teams to actively work on some of the “…unfinished business with understanding the universe” that Professor Tara Shears, who leads the University of Liverpool LHCb group, has talked about as being one of the current research challenges.

Professor John Womersley, particle physicist and Chief Executive of STFC said: “The UK’s Particle physicists are world leaders in expanding our understanding of some of the biggest and deepest questions in science. The support we are announcing today will enable this incredibly successful research community not only to analyse the new data coming from CERN but also to work on developing new applications for particle physics technology and to continue to inspire future generations with the excitement of discovering how the universe works.”

STFC funded physicists are working on the exploitation and development of all four of the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) detectors ATLAS, CMS, LHCb and ALICE, although the latter is funded through the STFC’s nuclear physics programme. They are also actively involved in some of the ground breaking experiments in the study of neutrino masses and mixing such as T2K (Tokai-to-Kamiokande in Japan), MICE (Muon Ionisation Cooling Experiment in the UK) and preparation for the next generation of experiments – the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) at Fermilab in the USA, and Hyper-Kamiokande in Japan.

The UK has also invested in leading roles in the SNO+ (Canada) and SuperNEMO (France) neutrinoless double beta decay demonstrator experiments, which continue to receive support along with experiments in precision muons, electric dipole moment and quark flavour physics.