Inside INdiana Business is reporting the U.S. Department of Energy has awarded a $2.6 million grant to fund the High Energy Physics Group at Purdue University. The school says the grant will support the expansion of ongoing research in elementary particle physics.
The High Energy Physics Group collaborates with scientists throughout the world on the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland. The group will also lead new research on what is known as the Mu2e experiment at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago.
“The Mu2e project is searching for new particles and new phenomenon,” said John Finley, co-investigator and department head of physics and astronomy at Purdue. “In particular, looking for heavier particles that are not predicted by the current Standard Model. That would be a big breakthrough in the sense of revealing some new physics that we don’t understand.”
Norbert Neumeister, principal investigator for the grant and a professor of physics and astronomy at Purdue, says the one of the big themes with the group is to search for new particles that could explain the dark matter content of the universe.