The goal of theoretical particle physics is to attain a fundamental description of the laws of physics, the constituents of matter and their interactions.

The standard model of particle physics was a huge step in this direction and has been one of the great scientific triumphs of the 20th century. However, many questions remain unsolved. Some examples are the nature of dark matter in the universe, the problem of mass generation, the nature of electroweak symmetry breaking, the role of supersymmetry and the quantization of gravity.

With the advent of the Large Hadron collider some of these questions may soon be answered. Furthermore, new physics which goes beyond the standard model, such as supersymmetry, additional strongly coupled sectors, l arge extra dimensions or TEV scale strings, might be discovered experimentally in the next decade.

The Theoretical Elementary Particle Physics Group at UCLA