Research, teaching and public engagement in Physics at UW–Madison
Could there be more particles like the Higgs boson? For the first time, the CMS experiment has searched for the decay of the Higgs boson into two more Higgs-boson-like particles with unequal masses. Written by: Ashling Quinn ’23 and Anagha Aravind (physics PhD student), originally published by the CMS Collaboration Some theories suggest that the Higgs …
Congrats to UW–Madison physics Prof. Sau Lan Wu, who announced her retirement effective January 1, 2026. One of the first two women on the physics faculty when she joined as an assistant professor in 1977, her nearly 50-year career stands as one of the most consequential in modern experimental particle physics. “Sau Lan is truly …
Interdisciplinary physicist Mariel Pettee uses techniques grounded in machine learning to study a range of topics that span high energy physics and astrophysics, with an ultimate goal of developing a better understanding of the fundamental physical building blocks of our Universe. Originally from Dallas, TX, Pettee was a physics and mathematics undergraduate at Harvard University, …
The combined results add to physicists’ understanding and validate the impressive collaborative effort between two competing — yet complementary — experiments. This story was published by Fermilab When the universe began, physicists expect there should have been equal amounts of matter and antimatter. But if that were so, the matter and antimatter should have perfectly …
This story, written by physics grad student Ganesh Parida, was originally published by the CMS collaboration CMS scientists are on the hunt for a new, heavy particle that decays into a pair of Higgs bosons. Using the final state with two bottom quarks and two tau leptons, the search sets the most stringent limits to date …
This post is modified from the original The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research (OVCR) hosts the Research Forward initiative to stimulate and support highly innovative and groundbreaking research at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The initiative is supported by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) and will provide funding for 1–2 years, depending on …
This story, featuring physics graduate student Shivani Lomte, was originally published by the CMS collaboration The CMS Collaboration hunts for Higgs bosons recoiling against dark matter particles Dark matter is one of the most perplexing mysteries of our universe, accounting for roughly 27% of its total energy. Dark matter does not emit, absorb, or reflect light, …