Theoretical physicist Jordy de Vries of the University of Amsterdam and Nikhef has been awarded an ERC grant for precision calculations on, among other things, three forms of beta decay. Without larger accelerators, this could still answer a number of physical puzzles.
According to De Vries, precision research offers an alternative route in particle physics, where large particle accelerators usually play a leading role. However, the largest accelerators have not yet discovered any truly new phenomena that go beyond the current Standard Model.
This leaves some big questions unanswered: why, for example, there is no antimatter in the universe, or why neutrinos have mass. De Vries believes that subtle deviations in the various measurements of beta decay could offer new leads for theorists.
According to De Vries, low-energy experiments can be linked to a number of puzzles in high-energy physics and cosmology through greater precision. To test this idea, he has received a Consolidator Grant of €2 million from the European Research Council (ERC) for his CRUNS project.
This will enable him to set up a team of two postdocs and three PhD students over the next five years. They will develop new theoretical methods to calculate the different versions of beta decay much more accurately. This will make it easier to detect any deviations from the theory in the results of experiments. He is focusing on beta decay and the electron dipole moment.
Beta decay is the radioactive decay of neutrons in atomic nuclei, resulting in the creation of a proton and an electron. In theory, there are three known forms of this, which De Vries refers to in his proposal as common, rare and unseen: common, rare, and unseen.
In normal beta decay, a neutron breaks down into a proton and an electron, plus an antielectron neutrino. In extremely rare beta decay, two neutrons decay simultaneously, one of the slowest processes ever measured in a laboratory. Unseen is the so-called neutrinoless double beta decay, which exists in theory but has never been measured.
There are numerous experiments worldwide that study beta decay without accelerators. Nikhef is involved in, among other things, the XENONnT experiment in Italy, which, alongside the hunt for dark matter, also looks at double beta decay. In Groningen, an experiment is being built to measure the electron dipole moment with extreme precision; De Vries is providing the theoretical calculations for this.
