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College News
29 September 2004
A matter of physics
The Royal Holloway Centre for Particle Physics has been awarded a £2 million grant to support its research into the behaviour of the tiniest particles of matter and the forces between them.The grant, from the UK 's Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), will facilitate further research in a number of major projects, with a central objective of colliding matter and examining the debris that is produced by these collisions. Through this research, the physicists will attempt to answer fundamental scientific questions about the universe, matter and anti-matter.
The Centre's 30 members, including six academic staff, have been working at a number of international research laboratories using large particle accelerators to collide particles together at speeds close to the speed of light. In one such project, based in Stanford , California , researchers are colliding electrons and positrons to create matter and anti-matter particles. These particles decay in a form of radioactivity, and the tiny differences in their behaviour are being examined by the researchers, in a bid to understand why the Universe contains only matter, when it is thought that equal quantities of both matter and anti-matter existed at the time of the Big Bang.
Professor Mike Green, Head of the Centre for Particle Physics and Dean of Science at Royal Holloway, University of London said: “The PPARC award follows a detailed review of our previous work, which was rated as world-leading. We have an excellent and extremely dedicated team of researchers, many of whom have been invited to give talks about their work throughout the world in recent years.”
The grant will also be instrumental in funding a research group who are preparing for the operation of a new accelerator and detector at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN) near Geneva , Switzerland , in 2007. Protons (the nuclei of hydrogen nuclei) will be accelerated in a circle about 27km in circumference and made to collide head on. Particles emerging from the collisions will be detected in a complex detector approximately 30m long and 22m in diameter. One of the objectives of this project is to search for and hopefully discover the Higgs boson, a particle unobserved to date but predicted to exist in order to provide mass to all other objects in the Universe.
A third major project is the development of technology for an accelerator to be built even further into the future called the International Linear Collider, which will be some 30km long. The Royal Holloway group has world leading expertise in measuring the positions of particles, accelerated in bunches less than a micron in size, to enable them to be steered and collided together.
Royal Holloway, University
of London, Press Office:
Christine Long
Press & PR Officer
01784 443967, christine.long@rhul.ac.uk
Vicky Cousins
Assistant Press & Communications Officer
01784 414480, victoria.cousins@rhul.ac.uk
Editor's Notes
PPARC
The Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council is the UK 's strategic science investment agency. By directing, coordination and funding research, education and training in particle physics and astronomy, PPARC delivers world-leading science, technologies and people for the UK . For further information visit www.pparc.ac.uk/
The Department of Physics at Royal Holloway
Ranked as the second best teaching department in the country by The Guardian , The Department of Physics at Royal Holloway is one of the major centres for Physics teaching and research in the University of London . It has an international reputation for its research, which ranges from fundamental studies in the basic properties of matter at the lowest temperatures and highest energies to advanced industrial applications of Physics. Its expertise across the whole subject - combined with an excellent record for teaching - enables it to offer a wide and attractive range of undergraduate degree programmes covering different areas of Physics. Its high standards are supported by excellent specialist facilities. Visit www.rhul.ac.uk/physics
