At the same time the cosmic frontier was being explored by the Planck mission of ESA’s Horizon Programme. Planck led to unprecedented heights in the understanding of the early universe and the origin of cosmic structure. Many more state-of-the-art experiments are searching for direct or indirect traces of a mysterious form of non-luminous matter. This dark matter is five times more abundant than atoms, the bright matter.

We aim to

discover the origins of the bright and dark side of the universe.

Any known force of nature is described by a gauge theory. Quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the force responsible for the very existence of protons and neutrons, is a time-honoured example of a gauge theory. It provides the bulk of all the luminous matter. Therefore, we also have the ambition to:

Illuminate coloured gauge theories of fundamental interactions

Progress on coloured dynamics will unleash a vast number of new fundamental theories that can describe the dark and bright fabric of the universe.

These are the most ambitious goals in particle physics and cosmology. To achieve these goals, we:

• Capitalise on the new discoveries to select the new fundamental models of nature
• Tackle coloured dynamics via supercomputers and ingenious analytic methods
• Search for a unified and coherent answer to the dark and bright origin of the universe by integrating and coordinating the efforts of the cosmology, particle physics and dark matter units at the centre and their international partners.