Ruth Pöttgen

My research is about trying to better understand the Universe by studying the smallest building blocks of matter. Our current best model of the universe implies that the large majority (more than 80%) of its matter content is dark matter, a substance that is only “visible” to us because of its gravitational effects. Although first hints of its existence were discovered almost a hundred years ago, we still do not know what this form of matter is made of. We only know that it is not the same type of building blocks that make up normal matter. We call such building blocks (fundamental) particles, and as particle physicists we aim to identify all existing particles and how they interact with each other. My main research activity at the moment is to, within an international collaboration, develop a new experiment called LDMX (the Light Dark Matter eXperiment) that will provide new possibilities to explore what the building blocks of dark matter might be.