Physicists at the University of Southampton are collaborating with experts in Croatia's largest multidisciplinary scientific research centre to help unlock understanding of Dark Matter.

Professor Stefano Moretti and Professor Alexander Belyaev have been awarded International Exchanges funding from the Royal Society to partner with Ruder Boskovic Institute's Dr Tania Robens on the ground-breaking research.

The two-year award will combine the complementary expertise of researchers from Southampton and Zagreb to devise novel search strategies for Beyond Standard Model (BSM) physics. The teams' findings will be used to decode the true dynamics of new physics once Dark Matter signals are observed at the Large Hadron Collider or future accelerators.

Professor Moretti says: "So far, the so-called Standard Model of particle physics is the best explanation for the dynamics of matter and forces in our universe. However, there are fundamental aspects of nature on which it falls short. In particular, astrophysical measurements lead us to believe that there is a significant proportion of new matter in the universe that cannot be 'seen' by standard experiments - aptly named 'Dark Matter' (DM).

"One important ingredient in the quest for new physics is the interpretation of current experimental results which may already constrain the viability of DM models, so that this will be the first step of our endeavour. Armed with this knowledge, we will then proceed to select suitable DM models and exploit new ideas on how to look for their collider signals. Our studies, driven by theoretical physicists yet connecting to experimental analysis, will be a key ingredient to make progress in understanding DM."

The Nobel-prize-winning discovery in 2012 of a Higgs boson, the last particle completing the Standard Model, heralded the beginning of a new and exciting era in exploring the unknown physics that may lie beyond it.

The NExT Institute, directed by Professor Moretti, fosters interactions between theory and experiment in an interdisciplinary and multi-sited environment to accelerate advances in the field. The partnership, which was founded by the Southampton High Energy Physics (SHEP) group and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in 2006, expanded last year to welcome King's College London to its six member organisations.

The new International Exchanges collaboration will include four male and three female physicists involved at all levels from PhD to professor.

Professor Belyaev says: "Being part of the NExT Institute, Southampton is an ideal place for joint theoretical and experimental projects. Its members are world leaders in both model building and phenomenology as well as developers of key numerical tools for BSM physics, while Zagreb has world-leading experience in exploring the parameter space of DM models with extended scalar sectors. This project will benefit from the unique experience of these two teams in not only devising novel search strategies for BSM models of DM, but also deploying sophisticated Monte Carlo simulations leading to real data analyses."

Scientists at the University of Southampton and Queen?s University Belfast are calling for a $1 billion investment to test quantum mechanics in space.

Writing in Nature, the experts say that combining quantum physics and space could deliver 'truly unforeseen possibilities'. The comment piece encourages the scientific, engineering, industrial and political communities to join forces and make the vision a reality.

Professor Hendrik Ulbricht, of Southampton's School of Physics and Astronomy, says: "It is clear that any new technological developments for space have to be made on the international stage, so a strong multinational consortium has to be formed."

He adds: "The University of Southampton with its expertise in optomechanics, transitioning scientific experiments from the lab to real-world application, and its close links to UK space industries could play a major role in this endeavour."

Researchers want to test ever-larger particles for quantum wave behaviour. Doing this in space removes experimental hurdles seen on Earth, such as gravity and noise, meaning larger particles can remain stable for longer as they develop their quantum behaviour.

Professor Mauro Paternostro, Head of the School of Mathematics and Physics at Queen's, says: "The scientific legacy of the 20th century is two-fold - on one hand there is quantum mechanics, which has helped us to explain the fundamental principles of the microscopic world. On the other hand, we have the space programme, which has made space exploration a reality.

"If scientists in these two areas were to join together we could deliver truly unforeseen possibilities."

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