PhD project: Dark Matter Phenomenology
Supervisor: Dr Sarah Malik
A prospective candidate would have the opportunity to work on various topics in phenomenology from modeling the signatures of dark matter at current and future colliders to studying the potential applicability and impact of quantum computing to High Energy Physics.
Dark matter makes up a staggering 26% of the total matter-energy content of the Universe, yet we know very little about it. Deciphering its nature is one of the top goals of the Large Hadron Collider and future colliders and this project will study the phenomenology of simplified models of dark matter and the signatures they would produce at the LHC and beyond.
Collisions at high energy colliders typically involve hundreds of particles in the final state and can be very complex.
A challenge for the current and future runs of the LHC is the accurate modeling of particle collisions and simulations of the detector response. The emergence of practical quantum computers provide an interesting opportunity to study the potential applicability of quantum computing algorithms to describe processes in field theories and the simulation of high energy collisions. This interdisciplinary project will study the potential advantages quantum computers may provide in addressing some of the challenges in particle physics.
For more details please contact sarah.alam.malik at googlemail.com