Description:
The International Max Planck Research School for Precision Tests of Fundamental Symmetries (IMPRS-PTFS)
is a combined effort of the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in collaboration with the University of
Heidelberg.
The PhD school offers highly qualified students the possibility to perform
research in a variety of fields: scientists involved in the IMPRS attack the
frontiers of our knowledge on fundamental physics from all sides, be it with
low-energy neutrino and Dark Matter investigations, ultraprecise ion traps and
storage rings, or with high-energy LHC physics. Both theoretical and experimental
perspectives are covered in the school.
Typical questions we deal with are: what is behind the mechanism responsible for the
breaking of electroweak symmetry? Are fermions and bosons related by
supersymmetry? What lies behind the existence of generations of quarks and
leptons? Are lepton number or baryon number conserved quantities? Is CPT and
Lorentz invariance conserved? Are fundamental constants really constant? What are
the properties of the quark-gluon plasma and of chiral symmetry at high
temperatures? How is the matter-antimatter symmetry violated and how does it lead
to the baryon asymmetry of the Universe? What are the properties of Dark Matter
and Dark Energy?
The theoretical and experimental description and interpretation of the involved
systems in a fundamental manner requires sound and in particular very broad
knowledge of a variety of research fields. In this exciting and timely scenario we
will provide students a solid education in the above mentioned fields of research,
with particular emphasis on inter- and crossdisciplinarity. Regular seminars and
workshops will further broaden the intellectual horizon of the students, giving
them excellent perspectives for the future.
The webpages of the IMPRS give information on the involved faculty and the application procedure.