Discovery Scenarios

Matter Unification

In the everyday world, forces move things around and break things apart. In the subatomic world, forces can also transform one kind of elementary particle into another. These transmutations suggest that the particles that make up matter are related in fundamental but mysterious ways. One possibility is that there was only one kind of matter particle at the time of the Big Bang, which then took on many seemingly different forms as the universe cooled down. This would mean that the 45 different kinds of matter particles that are known today are really the same particle in different guises. This idea is called matter unification.

If superpartner particles are discovered at the LHC, physicists will be able to make definitive tests of matter unification. The orderly patterns of particle masses and interactions enforced by supersymmetry would provide new ways of structuring matter. In particular, these patterns would relate measurements at the Terascale to the much higher energies where matter unification may be manifest. Experiments at a linear collider would have the precision to exploit this relationship, focusing like a telescope on the first instant of the Big Bang.

The discovery of matter unification would have profound implications. It would mean that all ordinary matter eventually falls apart, sealing the ultimate fate of the universe. It would also require the existence of new fundamental forces of nature, forces that would produce a strange particle alchemy beyond anything yet observed.