Mary K. Gaillard
University of California, Berkeley
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Primary Section: 13, Physics Membership Type:
Member
(elected 1991)
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Research Interests
I am interested in pushing particle theory beyond the well-established Standard Model. My work in recent years has focused on how to test the symmetry breaking mechanism, by which particles acquire masses, at high colliders, and more specifically on supersymmetry and supergravity. Supersymmetry provides a possible mechanism for understanding the large hierarchy in scale between the masses of particles studied with accelerators and the "natural" scale of physics which is the Planck mass. Supergravity particularly when regarded as the "low energy" limit of superstring theory provides the best hope at present for unification of all forces. My current research attempts to tie superstrings to observable physics. I am studying effective supergravity theories for particle physics, with the goal of addressing the problems of supersymmetry breaking and electroweak symmetry breaking, as well as other aspects of particle physics and cosmology, in the context of superstring theory.
