FOR 1873:  Quark Flavour Physics and Effective Field Theories

• Subject Area: Physics
• Term: from 2012 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 214254430

According to our current understanding of particle physics and cosmology, all visible matter in the universe can be described in terms of fundamental fermionic particles, the quarks and leptons. The different fermion species ("flavours") differ in their couplings to the ubiquitous Higgs boson, which - most probably - has recently been observed at the "Large Hadron Collider" at CERN (Geneva, Switzerland). The different couplings are the reason for the different fermion masses. Why we observe exactly three fermion generations with very different masses but otherwise identical interactions remains an open question. The solution of this "flavour puzzle" plays an important role in contemporary high-energy particle physics research. The flavour puzzle is closely related to the problem how the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe has emerged. The purpose of the Research Unit is to systematically investigate the theoretical framework of flavour physics with a focus on the quark sector. The extraction of fundamental parameters from experimental data is difficult since free quarks do not occur in nature, but only processes with hadrons, i.e. quarks bound by the strong interaction, can be observed. Hence, a systematic analysis of strong interaction effects is mandatory in order to obtain for reliable theoretical predictions for a quantitative determination of fundamental flavour parameters. The essential objectives of the Research Unit therefore are: (1) to improve the calculational tools for the theory of strong interactions, (2) to increase the precision of theoretical predictions for flavour phenomena, (3) to contribute new ideas for our theoretical understanding of the flavour structure in the standard model of particle physics and its possible extensions. The physical insights that will be obtained from the comparison of precision flavour experiments (at relatively moderate energies) and theoretical predictions are complementary to the phenomenological investigations of collider experiments at the high-energy frontier.

• DFG Programme: Research Units

Projects

• Charmless B-decays in Soft-Collinear Effective Theory (Applicant Bell, Guido )
• Higher Order Corrections to Nonleptonic and Rare Decays (Applicant Huber, Tobias )
• New Physics and Flavour Symmetries (Applicant Feldmann, Thorsten )
• Precision Heavy Quark Expansion (Applicant Mannel, Thomas )
• Precision Predictions for Flavour-Changing Neutral Current Decays (Applicant Hiller, Gudrun )
• QCD Sum Rules and Hadronic Matrix Elements (Applicant Khodjamirian, Alexander )
• Zentralprojekt (Applicant Mannel, Thomas )

• Spokesperson: Professor Dr. Thomas Mannel