Overview

On overview of the facilities maintained by the Institute of Particle Physics and Astrophysics is available here.

In-depth information on the our research activities is available here.

Research Topics

The institute's main research projects address fundamental questions in the following research fields:

Experiments at the frontier of high-energy interactions between fundamental particles

Experiments at the high-energy frontier at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at external page CERN in Geneva (CH), run by large international collaborations, in particular the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment.
Groups Dissertori, Grab, Wallny

Experiments in neutrino physics

Experiments in neutrino physics use the external page CNGS (CERN Neutrino to Gran Sasso) neutrino beam line, and the high intensity neutrino beam T2K (Tokai to Kamioka) in Japan.
Group Rubbia

Experiments in astroparticle physics

The original objective of measuring highest energetic gamma-rays from galactic and extragalactic objects is to understand the origin(s) of the enigmatic cosmic rays. While this question is still open, the unexpected richness of the sky resulted in the emerging new field of very-high energy Astronomy to better understand the sources themselves. In addition, also cosmological and fundamental physics questions are addressed. These include Dark Matter, Lorentz Invariance Violation, Existance of Intergalactic Magnetic Fields as well as the Density of diffuse extragalactic IR light as an archive of all light ever emitted. For this, we are actively involved in the external page MAGIC and external page FACT telescopes, located at the Canary Island La Palma, and the upcoming next generation external page CTA observatory
Group Biland

In addition, we explore the nature of Dark Matter with dedicated detectors.
Group Rubbia

Precision particle physics experiments at low energies

Precision particle physics experiments at low energies concentrate on studying fundamental symmetries and interactions with neutrons and muons. This is done within international collaborations running experiments at external page PSI within its laboratory for particle physics external page LTP. Group Kirch

Cosmology

The cosmology group seeks to answer fundamental questions about the Universe: What is the nature of Dark Matter and Dark Energy? What are the initial conditions for the formation of cosmic structures? Is General Relativity valid on cosmological scales? Since its formation in July 2011, the group has grown to incorporate a broad range of expertise including observations, data analysis, theoretical interpretation, software development, hardware design and teaching. The group thus endeavors to play a leading role in cosmology, a dynamic field entering a new phase of high precision that calls for a broad and integrated approach.
Group Refregier

Solar Physics

The solar physics research areas are being driven by the missions that ETH and PMOD/WRC have played a part in defining and building such as Solar Orbiter (launched in 2020), the JAXA Solar-C mission (launch ~2026), and the ESA Lagrange mission (launch ~2026). The science goals are focussed on understanding the physical phenomena on the Sun that impact the Earth, through magnetic fields, plasma and energetic particles.
Solar Orbiter is a key space mission, being successfully launched in 2020 and is a focus of research alongside other space and ground-based facilities. Solar Orbiter will measure the sources of solar wind, and then directly measure the solar wind as it passes the spacecraft. The main areas of research are (1) Creation of fast solar wind: The fast solar wind is known to come from coronal holes. Coronal holes, although described as ‘holes’ since they are dark in EUV and X-ray wavelengths, do show activity on small-scales, such as jets, plumes and bright points. (2) Creation of slow solar wind: The slow solar wind is highly variable and is known to come from a range of sources, from high out in the streamers to low down in the corona. (3) What triggers solar flares: Solar flares are sudden releases of energy caused by the reconnection of magnetic field lines at regions of strong magnetic activity in the solar atmosphere (known as active regions). These events can accelerate particles to very high energies and emit very strong bursts of radiation across the electromagnetic spectrum.
Group Harra

Experiments in Exoplanets and Habitability

How unique is our Earth? The activities in our group are guided by the long- term goal to empirically assess the uniqueness of Earth – as a habitable planet – in the context of exoplanet research.
To enable the detection and characterization of terrestrial exoplanets and assess their habitability we carry out astronomical observations on state- of-the-art telescopes, contribute to the development of key technologies and instruments for world- leading facilities and design powerful data processing algorithms and statistical frameworks to interpret the data.
Group Quanz

Ion beam physics

The Laboratory of Ion Beam Physics (LIP) is a worldwide leading group in developing new instrumentation for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) and Ion Beam Analyses (IBA). A strong emphasis is put into studying the physics of atomic ions at low energies in order to develop new compact facilities for AMS and IBA. The LIP is jointly operated by ETH (D-PHYS and D-EAPS), external page PSI, external page EMPA, and external page EAWAG.

Group Synal/LIP

Simulations of Planet Formation

How do the Solar System come to be? How do planetary systems form in general? What are the steps for terrestrial planet formation and for gaseous giant planet formation? How do moons form around planets? These are the questions we address with computer simulations of hydrodynamics and N-body gravitational solvers. We combine various physical effects (gravity, gas interaction, gas-solids interaction, radiative transfer, thermodynamics, etc.) of these scientific problems and carry out the computations on the largest supercomputing facilities in Switzerland. We do not only use our simulations to understand planet formation theory, but also to create observational predictions from these. These mock observations can then be used to compare the simulations with real telescope data, in order to help interpreting those and to plan future observations.

Group Szulagyi

Simulations of Black Hole Disks

Every galaxy holds a Super-massive black hole in their center. Galaxies collide often during their lifetime, hence their supermassive black holes are possibly merge eventually too. When such galaxy collisions happen, the two black holes start to dance around each other, quickly getting into each other close vicinity, however in the last phase their merger seem to slow down based on simulations so far. In fact, it is still a question, whether, and on what time-scale such super-massive black holes are merging. If they merge, they will emit gravitational waves, which might be detected in the future (so far, only mergers of stellar-mass black holes were detected). With hydrodynamical simulations we can study these merging black hole pairs and determine their characteristics and the timescales involved. The code and simulations are developed in the group, which we then run on large supercomputers in Switzerland.

Group Szulagyi