New Professors 2023
47 new professors were inaugurated at Uppsala University on November 17, 2023. Of them one came from the Department of Physics and Astronomy.
Carlos Pérez de los Heros, High Energy Physics
Research Presentation
My research lies in the borderland between particle physics and astrophysics. I am a member of the IceCube Collaboration, an international research group that built the first and largest neutrino detector in the world. Neutrinos are elementary particles produced in dense and violent objects in the Universe, such as the environment around black holes or fusions of neutron stars. The idea behind a neutrino detector is to open a new window to the Universe by means of a new messenger that is not electromagnetic in nature, in contrast to those used by traditional telescopes. IceCube first discovered neutrinos of astrophysical origin in 2013. But neutrinos are particles that are interesting in themselves, and my research is focused on exploring the boundaries of particle physics using neutrinos reaching the Earth from far away in the cosmos, and with energies millions of times higher than those achievable in human-made accelerators.
In my research, I use neutrinos to search for physics not described by the Standard Model – our current theory of elementary particles and their interaction. Astrophysical neutrinos can be used to search for dark matter, to test the validity of the basic laws of physics beyond current precision levels, and to search for new particles predicted in theories that expand the Standard Model of particle physics. These searches for anomalies in our current understanding of fundamental physics can help us to establish the nature of dark matter, and help us to understand the early evolution of the Universe.