Wochenübersicht

Questions that drive searches for physics beyond the Standard Model include the physical origin of the cosmic baryon asymmetry and of dark matter. Quark dynamics, as realized through the theory of quantum chromodynamics (QCD), can appear in these studies in very different ways. In this talk, I develop these possibilities explicitly, first describing the role of QCD in ultra-sensitive searches for new physics, particularly at low energies, and then turning to how its features could be exploited in describing the undiscovered universe, along with the essential observational and experimental tests that could confirm them.

The Standard Model Higgs becomes tachyonic at high energy scales according to current measurements. This unstable regime of the Higgs potential can be realized in the early Universe during high scale inflation, potentially with catastrophic consequences. In this talk, we will discuss a crucial inherent feature of such configurations that has so far remained ignored: Higgs particle production out of vacuum induced by the rapidly evolving Higgs field, which gets exponentially enhanced due to the tachyonic instability. We will discuss various theoretical and observational implications of this effect.

The presentation covers the aspects of the use the accelerators for the hadron therapy. It includes the summary of the advantages of hadron use for radiation treatment of cancer, the technological solutions used for the beam acceleration, dose delivery and application, and an overview over the types of commercially available systems. Following that, the presentation concludes by describing the newly established the PARticle Therapy REsearch Center (PARTREC) in Groningen. Using the superconducting cyclotron AGOR and being embedded within the University Medical Center Groningen, providing proton beams of up to 190 MeV and ion beams (up to Pb) with energies up to 90 MeV/nucleon for pre-clinical research in medical physics and radiobiology.