CAREER: Searches for New Fundamental Symmetries at the Energy Frontier

Suny At Stony Brook, Stony Brook NY

Investigators

Abstract

The physics program of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland is in full operation, delivering proton-proton collisions at 7 TeV collision energy. This CAREER program led by Prof Dmitri Tsybychev is focused on the ATLAS experiment and there are three aspects. The first is the study of events containing W + Jets and W + Jets + missing ET in the final state with the objective of measuring the cross section for WL WL scattering at high mass. In the absence of some control at the electroweak scale this cross section becomes unbounded. The Higgs boson is a means to control this, but there may be other new physics at play. The challenge is that the WW cross section is very small and hence high energy and high luminosity are both required. The second aspect of the program is focuses on the upgrade of the ATLAS vertex detectors. At the very high interaction rates expected at the LHC, the highest resolution elements of the inner detector (in this case pixel layers) are fundamental to identifying and disentangling collision vertices, identification of decay vertices of long-lived particles and for the tracking of charged particles. The Tsybychev group is involved in the R&D, design and construction of 3D pixel sensors ? a novel, powerful, and potentially robust technology for inner tracking. The third aspect is the participation of this group in the broader aspects of the MARIACHI project based at Brookhaven National Laboratory and SUNY Stony Brook. Here the excitement of particle physics at the Energy Frontier through the ATLAS experiment and the excitement of studying cosmic rays and the Cosmic Frontier through MARIACHI come together for high school teachers and students on Long Island.