SYNOPSIS

Fundamental Physics Group at Sabancı University is a physics theory lab under the Physics Program in Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences. Research activities in the group are focused on the effects of quantum fields at low energies (quantum tunneling) and high energies (fifth force and emergent gravity).  In the low-energy regime, the research involves building tunneling time models (entropic and Bohmian times) and applying them to

  • Proton tunneling as the reason for point mutations in DNA, and
  • Tunneling time delay across Josephson junctions as the speed limit for quantum computers.

In the high-energy regime, the first focus point is the fifth force mediated by a massive Z’ vector boson. The Z’ as gauge boson of extra U(1)’ groups from the GUTs and strings is well-known. The low-energy experiments like Atomki and high-energy experiments like LEP and LHC have searched for such massive vectors and put bounds on their masses and couplings. The Fundamental Physics Group at Sabancı University is focused not on such gauge-Z’ bosons but on geometric-Z’ bosons originating from non-metricity vector in metric-affine gravity. The geometric-Z’ can reveal itself in black hole and other compact objects. It can give also observable signals at the FCC and ILC. The  group is focused on smoking-gun signals as such.

In the high-energy regime, the second focus point is symmergent gravity in which curvature arises by promoting the gauge- and Poincare-breaking scales in flat spacetime to affine curvature in the philosophy of the Higgs mechanism and gravity emerges from affine dynamics in a way restoring the gauge symmetry. The symmergent gravity gives a natural completion of the Standard Model as the new particles it predicts do not have to couple to the Standard Model particles. Fundamental Physics Group at Sabancı University is performing a wide-range research on symmergent gravity focusing mainly on

  • Black holes (and, in future, stellar objects and wormholes),
  • Inflation (affine inflation, Starobinsky-type inflation, polynomial inflation),
  • Weakly-coupled particles at the LHC and FCC as signatures of symmergent dark sector, and
  • Feebly-coupled particles like neutrinos and dark matter as signatures of symmergent black sector.

 

INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATIONS

  • CMS Experiment at CERN-LHC (through ITU; 2022 –  )
  • European Technology Platform on Nanomedicine (2022 –  )
  • COST Action CA21106 – COSMIC WISPers (2022 –   )

 

COMPLETED AND ON-GOING RESEARCH PROJECTS

  • Tunneling Time (Sabancı University; 2020 — )
  • Higgs Mass Constraints on New Physics    (TÜBİTAK; 2019 — 2021 )
  • Search for Light Scalar Quarks at CMS     (TAEK/ITU; 2017 — 2021)
  • Finger-Printing Higgs Fine-Tuning at Colliders    (TÜBİTAK; 2015 — 2017)
  • Anomaly Detection and New Particle Searches      (TÜBİTAK; 2013 — 2015)
  • Search for Light Top Squarks at CMS     (TAEK; 2012 — 2014)
  • A New Mechanism for Pulsar Kicks    (TÜBİTAK; 2010 — 2012)
  • Search for Supersymmetric Forces at CMS (TAEK; 2009 — 2011)
  • Search for Dark Matter at CMS    (TÜBİTAK; 2005 — 2007)
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