3:30–4:30 pm Maria Goeppert-Meyer
From Symmetries to Signals: Unlocking the Particle Universe with Novel Instrumentation and Physics-Informed AI
David Miller, University of Chicago
Symmetries have long served as guiding principles in our quest to understand the fundamental nature of the universe, and they play a central role in both the theoretical frameworks and experimental strategies in particle physics. The theme of this talk is an exploration of how leveraging symmetries—both as tools for discovery and as features to uncover—can unlock new insights into physics beyond the Standard Model. I will discuss three recent efforts under this theme: The BREAD experiment, a new broadband platform for probing the existence of axions and other weakly coupled bosons from the microwave to the Terahertz. Searches for displaced axino signatures in the ATLAS experiment, where specialized event reconstruction techniques enable us to explore well-motivated supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model, including a novel axino interpretation. Finally, I will introduce PELICAN, a new physics-informed machine learning framework designed to incorporate Lorentz symmetry directly into deep learning architectures, offering new avenues for particle identification and measurement. Together, these efforts demonstrate how both clever experimental techniques and physics-aware AI can push the frontiers of particle physics.