Who are we ?

The UCLouvain Centre for Cosmology, Particle Physics and Phenomenology (CP3) hosts research on high energy particle physics, cosmology, phenomenology and theory of the fundamental interactions. It is strong on both the experimental and theoretical fronts. The aim of the Centre is to bring together researchers in these scientific fields and to encourage collaboration.

Both experimental...

Involved in CERN experiments since the 60's, the CP3 experimental group holds a strong expertise in instrumentation, software and data analysis techniques. Presently the efforts of the group focus on three major activities: the operation and exploitation of the CMS detector at the LHC, the design and prototyping of future detectors, and the commissioning and exploitation of the NA62 experiment at CERN.

... And theoretical.

Following a long tradition in theoretical research in the phenomenology of the elementary particles and their fundamental interactions, their unification, and the theoretical and mathematical problems that these issues raise, CP3 members' activities cover a wide range of fields in fundamental physics, from high energy particle physics to our Universe's history, from CP-violation in weak decays to tests of general relativity at cosmological scales. They also draw heavily on rich and fascinating fields in theoretical physics and mathematics.

Software developement

The Centre also has a long tradition is scientific software development. MadGraph, Delphes, Hector, MoMEMta, are examples of tools developed by members of CP3.

A diverse team for diverse fields

The students, PhD students, post-doctoral researchers often from abroad, and members of the Institute of Mathematics and Physics thus find a wide and rich range of activities related to particle and high energy physics, within which their scientific creativity and imagination find fertile ground to grow and happily blossom, thus contributing to this great intellectual and scientific human adventure which aims to decipher the intelligence that governs the construction of our Universe.


"Finally, may I add that ... I wanted most to give you some appreciation of the wonderful world and the physicist's way of looking at it, which, I believe, is a major part of the true culture of modern times. (There are probably professors of other subjects who would object, but I believe that they are completely wrong.)

Perhaps you will not only have some appreciation of this culture; it is even possible that you may want to join in the greatest adventure that the human mind has ever begun."

Richard P. Feynman (1918-1988), Physics Nobel Prize 1965
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1963)