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H2020Doctoral network2020–2025

HIDDeN · Hunting Invisibles: Dark sectors, Dark matter and Neutrinos

Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Duration
2020-10-01 → 2025-03-31
EU contribution
€3,945,093
Participants
13
Scheme
MSCA-ITN

Lines connect the coordinator with its partners. CORDIS does not always give exact coordinates for projects before 2014. These points are placed at city or country level.

Results in brief

Hunting Invisibles: Dark sectors, Dark matter and Neutrinos

The ultimate goal of HIDDeN was to focus on revealing the (a)symmetries that had yet to be discovered—hence, hidden (a)symmetries—and the particles on which they acted, in particular those in the invisible sector, made up of neutrinos, dark matter, and other elusive components. Although much had been discovered about what Nature was made of, most of the Universe and its workings remained hidden: Neutrinos are the most abundant known fermions in the Universe, but the reasons why they have mass and mixed remain unexplained; there is evidence of Dark Matter (DM), but it is still unknown which particle constituted it; particles and antiparticles behave differently (the so-called CP-violation) without a compelling reason; it is observed that, to a very large extent, only baryons exist in the Universe and not antibaryons, but the reason for this, and for why the Universe has not simply transformed into a gigantic cloud of photons, remained unclear; Dark Energy dominates the energy balance of the Universe, but its nature is still far from understood. These questions cannot not be answered within the commonly accepted picture of particles and interactions—the Standard Model (SM)—and represent the first (and so far only) evidence that the SM needs to be extended to a more fundamental theory containing new particles and interactions. The ultimate mission of HIDDeN is to uncover the hidden sectors implied by the existence of non-zero neutrino masses, DM, and the baryon asymmetry, and to develop the New Standard Model of particles and interactions. HIDDeN made very significant advances in answering this questions, providing new theoretical and experimental developments and obtaining important scientific results. The strong dissemination strategy of the project increased the impact of the project. HIDDeN has been able to attract highly talented young people to a research career at the forefront of scientific and technological developments, has helped them to develop their full potential via a structured and coherent training and has fostered their growth as individuals. The consortium consisted of 12 Beneficiaries from 5 EU Member States and one Associated country (Switzerland) with 25 Partner Organizations of which 13 world-leading scientific institutions, including the two leading particle physics laboratories, CERN and Fermilab, 5 Universities and Institutes from Developing Countries and 8 Private sector enterprises. The beneficiaries (partners) included 85 (>70) senior members and 46 postdocs (>30).

Data: CORDIS, © European Union

Project objective

Despite huge progress in particle physics and cosmology, most of the Universe’s building blocks and how they function remain hidden to us: Neutrinos are the most abundant known fermion but the reasons why they have mass and mix are unexplained; we have evidence of Dark Matter but we do not even know which particle makes it up; particles and antiparticles show to behave differently (the so-called CP-violation) without a compelling reason; we see that in the Universe there is mostly matter and very little antimatter, but we do not know why this is the case. Symmetries and their breaking will be the guiding principle to address those questions. HIDDeN will focus on revealing the (a)symmetries we have yet to discover, hence hidden (a)symmetries, and the particles on which they act, in particular the invisible sector, made of neutrinos, dark matter and other elusive particles. We will explore simultaneously the puzzles related to the CP symmetry in the lepton sector as well as in strong-interactions (the latter leading to axions and axion-like particles), (a)symmetries in the mass and mixing patterns of known particles, (a)symmetries responsible for the dark matter stability and its interactions. And we will address a key question: are all these sectors part of a new HIDDeN sector whose discovery will lead us to the New Standard Model? The mission of the HIDDeN ITN is to train the new generation of researchers to address these most fundamental questions via an ambitious multidisciplinary research and training program. We focus on phenomenological studies and include crucial links to experiments and industrial partners. We bundle world leadership in phenomenology research and our network includes representatives of key-experiments and laboratories on the field, such as CERN, Fermilab, SuperKamiokande, ADMX. An innovative aspect is the integration of a dedicated training program in outreach and journalism focussed on the Invisible Universe.

Original text from CORDIS.

Participants

  • ALMA MATER STUDIORUM - UNIVERSITA DI BOLOGNA · BolognaCoordinatorItaly
  • CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE CNRS · ParisFrance
  • EDICIONES EL PAIS S.L.U. · MadridCity levelSpain
  • GEORG-AUGUST-UNIVERSITAT GOTTINGEN STIFTUNG OFFENTLICHEN RECHTS · GottingenGermany
  • ISTITUTO NAZIONALE DI FISICA NUCLEARE · FrascatiItaly
  • KARLSRUHER INSTITUT FUER TECHNOLOGIE · KarlsruheGermany
  • RUPRECHT-KARLS-UNIVERSITAET HEIDELBERG · HeidelbergGermany
  • UNIVERSIDAD AUTONOMA DE MADRID · MadridSpain
  • UNIVERSITAT DE BARCELONA · BarcelonaSpain
  • UNIVERSITAT DE VALENCIA · ValenciaSpain
  • UNIVERSITAT ZURICH · ZurichSwitzerland
  • UNIVERSITY OF DURHAM · DURHAMUnited Kingdom
  • UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON · SOUTHAMPTONUnited Kingdom

Links

Data: CORDIS, © European Union