Sho Iwamoto / 岩本 祥

@ 國立中山大學物理系 NSYSU–Physics

[English/傳統中文]

Welcome! (English version)

Name
Sho IWAMOTO (岩本 祥)
Affiliation
Assistant professor, Department of Physics, National Sun Yat-sen University (NSYSU)
Ph.D. in Science (U. Tokyo, 2013)
Internet
Instagram, GitHub, Private website.
Contacts
iwamoto@g-mail.nsysu.edu.tw (GnuPG key)
NSYSU Science bldg. SC2006‒1

Topics

Office Hours

  • 2023‒2 semester: Mondays and Tuesdays, 15:10–17:10，Science bldg. SC2006‒1.
  • I welcome your visit, even not during the office hours.

2023‒2 Lecture : General Physics 2

An introductory course to wave mechanics and electromagnetism. The goal is Maxwell’s equations (in integral form) and the nature of light.

2023‒2 Lecture : Mathematics and Coding on Physics 2

An intermediate-level mathematics course designed for physics learners. Linear algebra, Fourier analysis, special functions, and methods of numerical analysis.

2023‒1 Lecture : General Physics 1

An introductory course to University Physics. Students are expected to comprehend fundamental concepts in physics but also learn how to study physical science in university individually based on English textbooks.

I will be in charge of General Physics 2 for MOES/DOP students in 2023‒2 semester, which assumes, in principle, students have attended this lecture.

Research

Sho Iwamoto is a researcher in theoretical particle physics (high-energy physics), cosmology, and astroparticle physics. His main interest is in “particle-physics models beyond the Standard Model” and their phenomenology of such models at collider experiments and astrophysical observations.

In 2012, our civilization has completed the establishment of the Standard Model of particle physics by discovering the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider. It was built by many theoretical physicists and checked by various experimental collaborations. Its validity is almost certain, because almost all phenomena observed at various experiments, including collider experiments, cosmic-ray observations, and astronomical surveys, support the Standard Model.

Only a few mysteries remain in particle physics, which however are very serious. The most big mystery is the existence of dark matter and dark energy. Namely, the Standard Model can explain only 5% of the total energy in the Universe. 26% of the energy is expected to exist as materials (i.e., in a form of unknown objects), which we call dark matter, and the remaining 69% is totally unknown (something with negative density???) and just called dark energy. This cosmological mystery might be solved by particle physics model beyond the Standard Model.

Another cosmological mystery is the non-existence of antiparticles. The Standard Model predicts the Universe should have particles and antiparticles in equal amount, and then, no galaxies, no stars, and no life should be formed. This is in contradiction, which means the Universe must have some mechanism beyond the Standard Model to break the equality (“baryogenesis mechanism”). In addition, experiments have observed a few phenomena that the Standard Model cannot explain. Namely, the non-zero neutrino masses, the muon g−2 anomaly, and the strong CP problem.

Sho’s interest is to explain these mysteries (or, at least, some of them) by particle-physics models beyond the Standard Model. In particular, dark matter, baryogenesis, neutrino mass, and the muon g−2 anomaly are his primary research topics. He is an expert in supersymmetric (SUSY) theories and collider physics, and is one of the worldwide leaders in phenomenology of non-colored SUSY-particle searches at the LHC. He is highly skilled in programming, numerical calculation, statistics, and mathematics.

For his activity as a researcher, see Research section in his personal website.

Random keywords

  • hep-ph … high-energy physics, particle physics, cosmology, astroparticle physics
  • physics beyond the Standard Model … neutrino mass, grand unification theory, supersymmetry (SUSY), muon g−2 anomaly, flavor physics
  • collider experiments … Large Hadron Collider (LHC), Super-B factory, future colliders (ILC, CepC/SppC, FCC, …)
  • light-particles beyond the Standard Model … beam-dump experiments, International Linear Collider (ILC)
  • cosmology … thermal history of the Universe, baryogenesis, dark matter
  • dark matter … direct detection of dark matter at underground experiments, indirect detection of dark matter at cosmic-ray observations

Recent topics on my research

Curriculum Vitae

Full CV is available in PDF format.

Education
2001–2004
Saiki Kakujyo High School (Saiki-city, Oita, Japan)
2004–2006
College of Arts and Sciences, the University of Tokyo
2006–2008
Department of Physics, the University of Tokyo (B.S. in physics & the Bioinformatics Education Program)
2008–2010
Department of Physics, the University of Tokyo (High-energy physics theory group, M.S. in Physics)
2010–2013
Department of Physics, the University of Tokyo (High-energy physics theory group, Ph.D. in Science)
Career
2010–2013
JSPS doctoral-course fellow at the University of Tokyo
2013–2014
JSPS postdoctoral fellow at Kavli IPMU, the University of Tokyo
2014–2017
Postdoctoral Fellow at Technion—Israel Institute of Technology
2017–2019
Postdoctoral Researcher at University of Padua
2019–2023
Postdoctoral Researcher at ELTE Eötvös Loránd University
2023 Feb.–
Assistant Professor at National Sun Yat-sen University
Grants

Past Lectures

General Physics for first-year undergraduates

General Physics 1 discusses classical mechanics as an introduction to university lectures. General Physics 2 discusses basic electromagnetism and a bit more.

FeynLecture: Tools for BSM Physics (Graduate program)

A tutorial course on tools for particle physics: analytic calculation of transition amplitudes (Feynman diagrams) and Monte Carlo simulation of particle-physics models beyond the Standard Model. This course was given at Osaka University (Feb. 2012) and at Yonsei University (Oct. 2016).