The ORIGINS PhD Awards for outstanding doctoral theses in the field of astrophysics, nuclear and particle physics as well as biophysics are awarded once a year. The selection committee, our Cluster Emeriti, evaluates the scientific quality, the scope of the research and the future prospects of the nominated works. The doctoral prizes are each endowed with 2,000 euros.
Strong interaction and cosmic antimatter
The dissertation "Novel technique to access the strong interaction in three-body systems and Re-evaluated cosmic ray antinuclei fluxes” by Dr. Laura Šerkšnytė presents two studies: on the one hand, the measurement of the strong interaction in three-body systems using the femtoscopy technique, and on the other hand, the estimation of the cosmic ray antinuclear fluxes resulting from collisions between ordinary cosmic rays and the interstellar medium. The dissertation presents the first measurements of three-baryon correlations in non-bound systems. To achieve this, Laura extended the femtoscopy technique to systems with three baryons for the first time. The selection committee was deeply impressed by the scientific achievement and also appreciated the “manner of presentation in terms of accessibility, simplicity and clarity of language, which allows even non-specialists to understand and appreciate the work”.
The evolution of the universe
Dr. Andrija Kostić's dissertation "Forward modeling the large-scale structure from the effective field theory to dark matter constraints and future survey optimization” deals with new methods for determining cosmological parameters and dark matter from observations of galaxy clusters and gamma rays. The work covers several topics at the interface of astrophysics, particle physics and statistics. In order to exploit the full potential of spectroscopic sky surveys, Andrija uses the technique of "forward modelling". With this, he evolves cosmological models from the initial conditions at the time of the emission of the microwave background radiation to the current observation of the distribution of galaxies. The dissertation lays the groundwork for a full Bayesian cosmology based on effective field theory, i.e. quantum field theory models. It thus provides, among other things, improved boundary conditions for the probability with which dark matter interacts with itself. In addition, it shows how existing information about cosmic structures can be used to identify regions in the sky that promise the greatest potential for discovery. "The work contains an impressive theoretical breadth and depth," emphasized the selection committee.