Brian Shuve (he/him)
Associate Professor of Physics
Harvey Mudd College
301 Platt Blvd.
Claremont, CA 91711
bshuve-AT-g.hmc.edu
I'm a physicist doing research in the area of theoretical particle physics, and my work seeks to answer questions about the fundamental workings of nature: What is matter made of on the most basic level? How do the interactions of elementary particles shape the structure of the Universe and everything in it? What is the mysterious dark matter that fills the Universe but does not seem to be made of the same stuff as we are? I also research new ways in which particle colliders and other experiments can shed light on some of the deepest questions we have about the nature of our world.
I am a member of the Physics Department faculty at Harvey Mudd College. Before coming to Mudd, I was a postdoctoral researcher in the particle theory groups at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Stanford and the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, and I did my Ph.D. work at Harvard University. In addition to my position at HMC, I am also a Visiting Fellow at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics and a Visiting Research Scientist at UC Riverside.
An up-to-date list of my publications can be found here. My research group is supported by the Research Corporation for Scientific Advancement through the Cottrell Scholars program, and previously by the National Science Foundation.
Group News:
November 2024: Our paper from the spring on the electroweak axion portal to dark matter has been published in Physical Review D! Congrats to all of our student co-authors: Stephanie Allen (‘25), Albany Blackburn (‘23, now a Ph.D. student at Berkeley), Oswaldo Cardenas (‘26), Zoe Messenger (‘26), and Ngan Steve Nguyen (‘21, now a Ph.D. student at Johns Hopkins)
May 2024: Our paper on the electroweak axion portal to dark matter is now on the arXiv! This work was done by an all-HMC team, including student co-authors Stephanie Allen, Albany Blackburn, Oswaldo Cardenas, Zoe Messenger, and Ngan Steve Nguyen.
April 2024: Three members of our group went to APS April Meeting in Sacramento! Antonia Hekster (‘25) presented on her work on UV freeze-in leptogenesis, and Oswaldo Cardenas (‘26) and Zoe Messenger (‘26) presented on their work on electroweak axion-portal dark matter. Congrats on a successful conference!
March 2024: Congrats to Tanvi Krishnan (‘24), who was awarded a DOE CSGF fellowship!
October 2023: Our group visited the APS Far West Section Meeting at UCSD. Our students presented three posters on projects in progress: Antonia Hekster presented on her work with Conor Floyd (‘25) on UV freeze-in leptogenesis; Oswaldo Cardenas (‘26) and Zoe Messenger (‘26) presented on their work on electroweak axion-portal dark matter; and Isabel Godoy (‘26) and Ashley Kim (‘26) presented their education research on new applets for teaching theoretical mechanics. All the presentations were very successful, and Antonia won the SPS undergraduate poster award - well done everyone!
April 2023: We had a successful visit to APS April Meeting in Minneapolis! Albany Blackburn gave a talk on our recent work on long-lived particles at B-factories; Tian Dong (‘24), Coleman Gliddon (‘23), and Derek Li (‘23, now at Stanford University) presented posters on our ongoing work on freeze-in leptogenesis; Tanvi Krishnan (‘24) presented her previous summer’s work at SLAC on assessing trigger efficiencies for the ICARUS experiment; and fellow Mudder Audrey Cole (‘24) presented her previous summer’s work at Vanderbilt assessing new search strategies for leptoquarks at the LHC. Congrats to all the Mudd students who participated!
March 2023: Congrats to Albany Blackburn, who was awarded an NSF GRFP fellowship!
January 2023: Our paper, an update to the public leptogenesis code ULYSSES, is now on the arXiv! This is work done in collaboration with Alessandro Granelli at Bologna; Yuber Perez-Gonzalez and Jessica Turner at Durham University; and others.
August 2022: in summer 2018, Anna Barth (‘21, now at Cornell University) and Andrés Cook (‘21, now at University of Chicago) did outstanding work implementing a proposed search for dark Higgs bosons using CMS Open Data. Our experiences have now been included in the Snowmass report “Opportunities for theory studies with public collider data: Snowmass 2021”, led by Matt Bellis at Siena College with Anna and Andrés as co-authors!
June 2022: Albany Blackburn gave a talk on our recent work on long-lived particles at B-factories at the PPC 2022 conference.
June 2022: Congrats to former group member Anna Barth, who was awarded an NSF GRFP fellowship!
May 2022: Our paper from last fall, “Hidden sector neutrinos and freeze-in leptogenesis”, has been published in Physical Review D! Congrats to our all-HMC team, including student co-authors Ina Flood (‘20, now a Ph.D. student at University of Maryland), Rafael Porto (‘22, now a Ph.D. student at Rutgers University), Jane Schlesinger (‘21, now a Ph.D. student at University of Minnesota), and Maxwell Thum (‘23).
May 2022: Our paper from this winter, “Freeze-in leptogenesis via dark matter oscillations”, has been published in Physical Review D! This work was done with collaborators at Williams College: Justin Berman (‘21, now a Ph.D. student at University of Michigan) and David Tucker-Smith.
April 2022: Our paper from last fall, “Search for an Axionlike Particle in B Meson Decays”, has been published in Physical Review Letters! This analysis was conducted by the HMC BaBar group in collaboration with Bertrand Echenard at Caltech. Student co-authors include Ina Flood and Ngan Steve Nguyen; early work on the analysis was done by master’s student Michael de Nuccio (originally at Pisa, now Ph.D. student at DESY).
April 2022: Rafael Porto gave a talk on our recent paper on hidden-sector neutrinos and freeze-in leptogenesis at the 2022 APS April Meeting.
March 2022: Congratulations to Albany Blackburn, who was awarded a Goldwater scholarship!
January 2022: Our pre-print studying freeze-in leptogenesis via dark matter oscillations is on the arXiv!
November 2021: Our pre-print for a BaBar search for axion-like particles in B decays is on the arXiv!
October 2021: Rafael Porto gave a talk on our recent paper on hidden-sector neutrinos and freeze-in leptogenesis at the 2021 APS Far West Section Meeting.
September 2021: Our paper from this spring, “Multi-track displaced vertices at B-factories”, has been published in the Journal of High Energy Physics! Here’s hoping for an exciting discovery at BaBar or Belle II. Co-authors include Mason Acevedo (‘22), Albany Blackburn, Mavis Stone (‘23), and Nikita Blinov (University of Victoria & Fermilab).
September 2021: Our pre-print on the implications of hidden-sector interactions for freeze-in leptogenesis is on the arXiv!
May/June 2021: We have several talks by group members on behalf of the BaBar Collaboration, including a talk at WIN21 by Steve Nguyen on our search for axion-like particles in B decays at BaBar, and a talk at PHENO 2021 by Brian on tests of lepton flavor universality at BaBar.
May 2021: Our pre-print on long-lived particles at B-factories is on the arXiv!
April 2021: We had a successful APS April Meeting 2021, with virtual poster presentations on tests of low-scale leptogenesis by Rafael Porto, Jane Schlesinger, and Maxwell Thum, and long-lived particles at B-factories by Albany Blackburn and Mavis Stone.