What is radioactive decay?
Radioactive decay and radiation tend to have a certain place in our society with an association to things that are dangerous. However, unstable nuclei that emit radiation are all around us and constantly decaying. So what is radioactive decay? And why do we use it to search for answers to some of the most fundamental questions about our Universe? My group’s research does exactly this, and using nuclear beta decay specifically, is one of the most powerful tools at our disposal to probe the unanswered questions in nature.
What is the Standard Model?
In essence, we use experimental measurements of radioactive nuclear decay to search for new ways to describe the unexplained phenomena we observe in our Universe. In other words, we search for “new physics” or “physics beyond the Standard Model”. The Standard Model is among the most successful theories in all of science, however we know it is incomplete. Understanding how and where it fails is a significant challenge - even for modern experiments.
What is the status for these “new physics” searches?
The search for physics beyond the Standard Model is a very active field of research and includes experiments all the way to the highest energies at colliders such as the LHC at CERN. As a community, we are on the precipice of a revolution in physics - led by the large number of anomalous results in the data over the past two decades. The lepton sector of the Standard Model appears to be the best avenue to search deeper in, and an area where we focus heavily.
How do we do it?
Our work in this area is extensive, but has recently focused on the use of a state-of-the-art experimental tool called “superconducting quantum sensors”. We directly embed radioactive atoms into the sensors themselves and measure the low-energy radiation that is emitted to search for the creation of new particles - or exotic interactions - that have not previously been observed.
Shown here are a few recent overview talks given by Prof. Leach on the topic of his team’s research in tests of fundamental symmetries.