Ongoing experimental programs, in association with the Canadian Institute of Particle Physics (IPP), include the CDF experiment at Fermilab, near Chicago, studying very high energy proton-antiproton collisions, and the ZEUS experiment, at DESY, which studies high energy electron-proton interactions. From 1999 onwards experiments, such as these two at Fermilab and DESY, will be the only experiments collecting data at the high energy frontier until the large hadron collider (LHC) comes into operation at CERN in 2005. The experimental group is also taking a leading role in the ATLAS experiment, which is constructing a general purpose detector for the LHC that is being built in Geneva, Switzerland. The main aim of this research is to discover the Higgs Boson that is thought to give particles their masses. ZEUS and CDF provide a number of exciting opportunities for graduate research at the M.Sc. and Ph.D. level for Toronto students, with the possibility of gaining essential instrumentation and hardware on either upgrades to these experiments or on our extensive ATLAS instrumentation effort. More information on the opportunities for graduate students in our groups can be found here .
Members of the theory group have a wide range of interests. Research areas include quark model phenomenology, dynamical symmetry breaking and gauge theories that include string theory and quantum gravity. The astrophysics effort in the Department focuses on experiment and observation, ranging from nuclear astrophysics performed at the TRIUMF TISOL and ISAC facilities to observations of the cosmic microwave background radiation using high altitude balloons. With members of the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA), the department's research effort is one of the strongest in North America and provides a very attractive environment for graduate research.