Peter Ballett

I'm Peter Ballett and I'm in my final year of study towards a PhD in Particle Physics at Durham University. My supervisor is Prof. S. Pascoli.

My research interests broadly lie in particle physics phenomenology and neutrino physics, with connections to flavour physics and model building. My work to date has been primarily focused on neutrino oscillation and the phenomenology of the next generation of long-baseline oscillation experiments. Along with the traditional questions around leptonic CP violation and the neutrino mass hierarchy, I have also studied the possibility of constraining models which exhibit discrete non-Abelian family symmetries. In addition to these topics, I am also interested in the origin of neutrino mass, lepton flavour violation and other BSM topics.

Discrete Family Symmetries

I am currently researching the potential of the next-generation of oscillation experiments for the study of models with discrete leptonic family symmetries. Models of this type have been very successful at producing phenomenologically viable mixing patterns but, as our knowledge of the PMNS matrix increases, will soon be subject to considerable experimental constraints. Understanding the ability of different proposed facilities to constrain models of this type will help us to establish design targets with concrete theoretical goals in mind.

This work has also involved a theoretical investigation into the possible parameter correlations in viable models of discrete flavour symmetries. Ultimately our analysis focused on a large class of models which can be succintly described by atmospheric sum-rules, including some previously unknown to the literature. More details of this work will be posted here shortly.

Low-Energy Neutrino Factory

In a recent project, Prof. Pascoli and I studied the performance of the Low-Energy Neutrino Factory (LENF) over a parameter space which connects the traditional LENF design to the standard neutrino factory. Understanding this parameter range allows the two designs to be viewed as extreme configurations of a more general experiment and furthers our understanding of the optimal LENF. A pre-print of our paper can be found on the arXiv. We have also made an exhaustive set of plots from this study available for download. Further details of these plots, or the paper itself, can be provided if requested.

Some of our work on the LENF has been included in the International Design Study for the Neutrino Factory (IDS-NF) as part of the Interim Design Report (IDR). Details of this project and the IDR itself can be found here.

Young Theorists' Forum 2011

I was on the organisation committee for the 4th Young Theorists' Forum held at Durham University on December 14–15th 2011. This was a two day conference attended by over 90 theoretical physics graduate students working in the fields of high-energy physics, gravitation and cosmology. Further information on the forum, including timetables and abstracts, can be found on the conference website or in the programme.

Talks & Posters

I have presented my work at the following events:

• Astroparticle seminar: II. Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Hamburg, May 2013.
• IDS-NF 10 at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, April 2013. Click here for slides.
• IPPP Internal Seminar in Durham, January 2013. Click here for slides.
• 8th UK Neutrino Network Meeting in Durham, December 2012.
• 4th EUROnu Plenary Meeting in Paris, June 2012.
• IDS-NF 8 in Glasgow, April 2012.
• Invisibles ITN pre-meeting in Madrid, March 2012.
• Lepton-Photon '11 in Mumbai, August 2011. This was a poster presentation.
• NuFact '11 in Geneva, August 2011.
• IoP NPPD 2011 in Glasgow, April 2011.