High energy physics involves the study of the fundamental building blocks of nature at the shortest distances. These are the fundamental particles that are described by quantum fields such as the Higgs field found at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Our group studies theories beyond the Standard Model of particle physics both from theoretical and phenomenological perspectives.
For our latest developments/activities in this area, please see the listing below.
Gr@v warmly congratulates the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration for the first direct image of a black hole. This discovery has had a worldwide impact, including news coverage in Portugal with the contribution of Gr@v and former Gr@v members.
Axions can play very important roles in cosmology. They are interesting candidates for dark matter, dark energy, inflation but also, in the case of the QCD axion, a natural solution to the strong CP problem.
In a recent paper "Spontaneous scalarisation of charged black holes: coupling dependence and dynamical features", [arXiv:1902.05079], by Gr@v members A. Pombo and E. Radu, in collaboration with a group at IST-Lisbon (P. Fernandes, C. Herdeiro and N. Sanchis-Gual), fully non-linear evolutions of the process of spontaneous scalarisation of charged black holes.
Gr@v member Valério Ribeiro was part of an international team of researchers studying thermonuclear eruptions in the Andromeda galaxy. The team published, in Nature magazine, the discovery of a super-nova remnant which is bigger than most supernova remnants. They found that the super-nova remnant was the consequence of yearly repeated eruptions over millions of years. Few of these systems are known in the galaxy due to the fact that we suffer from dust obscuration.