Professor; Director, Leinweber Center for Theoretical Physics
About
Professor Pierce is a theorist who studies extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics. Among the questions he explores are: What makes up the dark matter? Why is gravity so weak when compared with the other forces? What explains the excess of matter over anti-matter in our universe?
There are numerous extensions of the Standard Model that attempt to answer these questions. Some solutions involve the addition of new forces. Others appear even more exotic, positing the existence of extra dimensions, or, as in the case of supersymmetry, a doubling of all known particles. To evaluate which of these possibilities gives the correct answer requires data. Professor Pierce is particularly interested in connecting models of new physics with their signatures at upcoming and on-going experiments. The Large Hadron Collider is providing a wealth of data relevant to physics beyond the Standard Model. Understanding the theoretical implications of this data is an exciting project.
Selected Publications
Electroweak Baryogenesis and Higgs Signatures, (Timothy Cohen, David E. Morrissey, Aaron Pierce) Phys. Rev. D 86, 013009 (2012), arXiv: 1203.2924
Singlet-Doublet Dark Matter, (Timothy Cohen, John Kearney, Aaron Pierce, Neal Weiner), Phys. Rev. D 85, 075003, (2012), arXiv: 1109.2604
Momentum Dependent Dark Matter Scattering, (Spencer Chang, Aaron Pierce, David Tucker-Smith), JCAP 1001, 006, (2010) arXiv:0908.2192
Dark Matter in the Finely Tuned Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model, (Aaron Pierce), Phys. Rev. D 70, 075006, e-Print Archive: hep-ph/0406144 (2004).
Top Quarks and Electroweak Symmetry Breaking in Little Higgs Models, (Maxim Perelstein, Michael E. Peskin, Aaron Pierce), Phys. Rev. D
69, 075002, (2004) hep-ph/0310039
Field(s) of Study
- Theoretical Particle Physics
