Particle Physics · The University of Manchester
Chasing the
invisible — at colliders, underground, and in the data.
I'm Darren Price, a particle physicist at the University of Manchester. I search for dark matter at the Large Hadron Collider and with the DarkSide experiment, work across electroweak physics, QCD, B-physics and neutrinos, and build AI tools for scientific discovery — working across several research communities at once.
Research themes
Dark matter
Direct detection with the DarkSide argon programme and dark-matter searches at the LHC, joined up through phenomenology that maps models onto what...
Explore →Electroweak physics
Weak boson fusion and scattering, anomalous gauge couplings and precision electroweak measurements as a laboratory for new phenomena.
Explore →QCD
Strong-interaction physics from vector-boson + heavy-flavour production to double parton scattering and jet physics at hadron colliders.
Explore →B-physics & quarkonium
Heavy-flavour spectroscopy — including the first new particle found at the LHC — rare decays, and CP-violation in the B-meson system.
Explore →Neutrinos
Heavy Majorana and sterile-neutrino searches at colliders, a heritage in neutrinoless double-beta decay, and coherent neutrino scattering with argon detectors.
Explore →Instrumentation
Cryogenic silicon photosensors and low-radioactivity readout electronics for next-generation rare-event searches, plus detector performance work.
Explore →Levitating sensors
Opto-mechanical levitated quantum sensors as an emerging route to ultra-low-threshold dark-matter detection — spanning instrumentation, dark matter and gravitational-wave sensing.
Explore →AI / Machine learning
Machine-learning methods for scientific discovery in the physical sciences — expressive generative models, simulation, inference and tools that let AI act as...
Explore →Recent
News & achievements
- EXAMPLE — Interviewed on BBC Radio about the hunt for dark matter
- Appointed Associate Dean for Public, Civic and Schools Engagement
- Elected Coordinator of the ATLAS Education & Outreach group
- Chair of the UKRI-STFC GridPP Peer Review Panel
Publications
- Search for dark matter particle interactions with electron final states with DarkSide-50
- Search for low-mass dark matter WIMPs with 12 ton-day exposure of DarkSide-50
- Search for dark matter–nucleon interactions via Migdal effect with DarkSide-50
- Sensitivity projections for a dual-phase argon TPC optimized for light dark matter searches through...
Talks
- Particle Physics: exploring the Universe with the Large Hadron Collider
- Discovering the unknown at the Large Hadron Collider: Dark Matter & More!...
- Discovering the unknown at the Large Hadron Collider: Dark Matter & More!...
- Levitating quantum sensors for low-energy rare-event detection
Latest writing
First piece coming soon.