particle physics

Particle physics is basically research regarding sub-atomic particles, including the work carried out using particle accelerators, such as CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that spans the Switzerland/France border near Geneva. Among the fairly recent progress was detection of the Higgs boson by that instrument.

Particle physics and astrophysics/cosmology are interdependent, and universities sometimes group these fields together. Particle physics findings are used to model astrophysical and cosmological phenomena, which, in turn, act as particle-physics experiments, providing data from phenomena beyond that which particle physicists have been able to produce on Earth. Thus, consistency between findings is constantly checked. The connection between the fields is ubiquitous but some areas where it is clear is in the study of neutrinos and the study of dark matter, and projects aiming to detect them, neutrino detectors and dark matter detectors.