Pisa, 8 March 2019High energy physics at Scuola Normale, a research area that involves 3 professors of the Faculty of Sciences – Luigi RolandiAugusto Sagnotti and Roberto Contino – has secured a high level of funding in the PRIN 2017 round, funding that the Ministry of Education, University and Research awards to research of relevant national interest.

The three projects presented by the three professors will all receive a contribution from the Ministry, having obtained the highest scores placing them among the 15 that have been admitted to funding in the PE2 sector (Particle, nuclear, plasma, atomic, molecular, gas and optical physics).

More precisely, Professor Rolandi, Full Professor of Experimental Physics, was awarded € 449,720 for the project “Precision Electroweak Physics at the CERN Large Hadron Collider”, realized together with the University of Milano and the Pisa section of INFN: it is an experimental and theoretical programme to exploit the potential offered by the exceptional performance of the CERN’s LHC in Geneva, which will allow for the collection of a very large sample of data.

Professor Sagnotti, Full Professor of Theoretical Physics, has obtained € 653,400 for the project “Supersymmetry Breaking with Fields, Strings and Branes”, which will also involve research units from the University of Milano Bicocca, the University of Padova and the Milano Section of INFN, as well as a colleague from the University of Torino and one from the Bologna section of INFN. The project is dedicated to supersymmetry breaking and the attempt to extend the standard model along the directions leading to string theory.

Finally, Professor Contino, Associate Professor of Theoretical Physics, was awarded € 362,170 for the project “New Avenues in Strong Dynamics: from the Early Universe to the Lab”, which will also involve research units from the Universities of Pisa and Padova and INFN. The project will address some of the deepest open questions that arise in the description of the early Universe, such as the nature of Dark Matter and the origin of the asymmetry between matter and antimatter.

The three projects presented by the three professors were ranked among the best 15 proposals in the PE2 sector (Particle, nuclear, plasma, atomic, molecular, gas and optical physics) and will all be funded by the Ministry.