Mark B. Wise
California Institute of Technology
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Primary Section: 13, Physics Membership Type:
Member
(elected 2007)
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Research Interests
Although I have done some research in cosmology and nuclear physics my research interests are primarily in theoretical elementary particle physics. The study of elementary particles provides access to the laws of nature at their most fundamental level. Currently we have a theory for the strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions of elementary particles that has been extensively tested in experiments. It is usually called the standard model. Even with this theory many features of the data not explained. For example, the quark and lepton masses are free parameters in the standard model and are not predicted. Furthermore the theory has some unattractive aspects the most noteworthy of them being the extreme fine tuning need to keep the Higgs mass small compared to the ultraviolet cutoff for the theory. This is sometimes called the hierarchy problem. My own research breaks into two parts. One part is using the standard model to predict experimental observables. Just because you have a theory doesn't mean it's straightforward to use it to compare with experiment. Usually such comparisons involve expansions in some small quantity. One area I have done considerable research on is the development of methods to make predictions for the properties of hadrons that contain a single heavy quark. The other part is research on physics that is beyond what is in the standard model. In particular I have worked on the development of extensions of the standard model that solve the hierarchy problem, for example, low energy supersymmetry.
