What happens in very strong fields? Around the Schwinger limit, the quantum vacuum materialises as virtual photons break into electron-positron pairs. This phenomena appears in a variety of extreme-conditions physics disciplines in nature. In LUXE, similar conditions will be created in a controlled experiment for the first time by colliding high-energy electrons and high-intensity laser pulses.
Join us in a new lab for solid-state detector R&D for high-energy physics experiments and beyond. The lab allows advanced operations and capabilities like assembly of the sensors and electronics, electrical-characterisation of the sensors, bonding of the sensors with electronics, operating the detector as a unit with laser beam, cosmic-rays, radioactive sources, or in beam facilities.
The standard model of particle physics is humanity's most successful theory. However, it does not describe all phenomena in nature, like gravity, dark matter and more. Many attempts to account for these shortcomings with new "exotic" physics have been made, e.g. models involving extra-dimensions. We focus on searches for such new physics signatures at high masses.
The standard model of particle physics is constantly being confronted with data in ever-increasing precision. In most cases, the data agrees well with the theory. There are some long-standing exceptions, notably what looks like lepton non-universality. This will essentially change the way we think of the world, if confirmed. We focus on such measurements in B-meson decays.
