Physics of the Standard Model and beyond SM 

Scientific activities of the various Research Units

Bari Unit

• Analyses in flavour physics, within and beyond the Standard Model, with focus on the measurements at LHC and at the flavour factories: Models based on extended gauge group, namely 331 models and models with additional U(1) symmetry and cancellation of the gauge anomalies simultaneously involving leptons and quarks of all generations.
• Determination of the relevant hadronic quantities, evaluation of the uncertainties in the various observables, identification of the signatures of BSM effects.
• Charm and beauty spectroscopy of the hidden and open heavy quark systems,  analyses of the newly observed hadrons which do not to fit in the standard classification, selection of signatures allowing their proper identification.
• Development of holographic methods for the strong coupling regime of gauge theories, with focus on the applications to QCD: evolution towards equilibrium of a strongly interacting plasma, chaotic effects.

  Catania Unit

• Vacuum stability analysis. 
  Investigation of the role of black holes on the stability of the vacuum, mainly in connection with the presence of NP.
• Study of the feasibility and the potentiality of an embedding of SM in asymptotically safe theories gravity, in particular of the possibility of disclosing a link across gauge, Yukawa and scalar self-couplings.
• Renormalization and RG techniques as tools for investigating important issues in particle physics.
  Phenomenological implications of PT-symmetric quantum field theories for BSM models, mainly in connection with the implementation of supersymmetry, Higgs mechanism, spontaneous symmetry breaking, non-abelian gauge symmetry.  Application of the same RG techniques to the Naturalness problem .

• Cosenza Unit

• Dynamics of first order phase transitions in the early universe 
• On-shell techniques applied to Effective Field Theories

Lecce Unit

• Grand Unified Theories  based on SO(10), with a combined analysis of both their scalar and
  flavour sectors, structure of their effective actions. Quiver models and connection with gravitational waves. Investigation of the vacuum and thermal effects in the phase transitions for this class of models, and to the production of stochastic gravitational waves in the early Universe.
• CFT in momentum space. Role of nonlocal anomaly actions in the description of the breaking of the conformal symmetry in conformal extensions of the Standard Model. Analysis of conformal anomaly actions, both in non-supersymmetric and supersymmetric contexts; study of the impact in the production of gravitational waves. Implications of such actions in condensed matter theory.
• Holographic cosmology, studies of models describing a holographic phase of gravity using the AdS/CFT correspondence.
• Hadron colliders phenomenology

Napoli Unit

• Study of b-anomalies and investigation of specific elementary and composite SM extensions leading to minimal and unified explanations of them.
• Impact of composite extensions of the SM on flavour dynamics, symmetries and phenomenology. Fundamental theories of composite dynamics;  implications on the existence of new complex phases and real parameters hiding in the flavour observables where NP can be discovered.
• Cut-off free SM extensions. Study of the possibility  to embed the SM (similar to the case of grand unifications or Pati-Salam extensions) in a larger symmetry group with extra matter that are constrained to lead to an UV finite theory, i.e. a theory governed by either a safe or a free (or a combination of both) asymptotics in the UV.
• Nonleptonic charm decays and CP violation effects in charm to access BSM physics. Study of the possibility to disentangle SM and BSM effects in CP violating observables in charm.

Abstract

Understanding the ultimate laws of nature requires a strong interplay between theory and experiment. The QFT-HEP research, within the INFN line of Theory Particle Phenomenology, aims at making striving progress in bridging the gap between theory and experiment in particle physics and in its connection with cosmology, in line with the well established INFN international leadership in the field.

Despite its astonishing success, the Standard Model (SM) is an incomplete theory of fundamental interactions, since it is unable to account for dark matter, the observed matter-antimatter asymmetry and it does not include gravity. Additionally, there are tantalising experimental tensions with the SM, mainly in the quark and lepton flavour sectors, which further hint towards the existence of physics Beyond SM (BSM).

The researchers of this team  adopt both a bottom-up and a top-down approach. The top-down approach consists in employing and improving QFT tools such as Renormalization Group (RG) techniques, vacuum stability analyses, gauge unification principles, conformal symmetry and its breaking, to formulate motivated extensions of the Standard Model and to compute, in novel ways, physically relevant observables. Within the bottom-up approach efforts are devoted to identify and study observables sensitive to New Physics (NP), in particular in flavour physics, to interpret the observed tensions with the SM and constrain NP scenarios. More generally, the ultimate goal is to explore new paradigms in the way novel theories of nature are formulated and tested.

The team involves 5 Units with recognized experience in the field. The main research topics are:

Flavour physics in the Standard Model and Beyond (Bari, Cosenza, Lecce, Napoli)

Vacuum stability analyses (Catania, Lecce)

Conformal and GUT extensions of the Standard Model and topological transitions (Cosenza, Lecce, Napoli)

Phenomenological applications of AdS/CFT methods (Bari, Cosenza, Lecce)

RG flows and their application to NP (Catania)