Research in Elementary Particle Physics

University Of Chicago, Chicago IL

Investigators

Abstract

Particle physics considers a vast range of scientific questions, from subatomic to cosmic scales. The University of Chicago Group supported through this award investigates such questions through experimentation at the highest available collision energies at the Large Hadron Collider (the LHC) at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland. These studies are relevant to the understanding of the Universe at its most fundamental level in the fleeting fraction of a second just after the Big Bang, and to why we see the Universe as we do now. The Chicago group is making significant technical and analytical contributions to the ATLAS experiment, one of the major detectors at the LHC. The integration of research, education, outreach and diversity is also an essential aspect of the Chicago group's mission. Activities focus on coherent themes that address several primary audiences: the research community (REU programs and the recent ICHEP2016), neighborhood (Enrico Fermi Summer Interns Program), the general public (film documentaries) and diversity and inclusion (Expanding Your Horizons Program, Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics). The group's location on Chicago's South Side brings important opportunities for engaging underserved and underrepresented minority communities in science. The specific technical contributions being made by the Chicago group include leading the development of the Fast Track Trigger (the FTK) and upgrades of the hadron Calorimetry (the TileCAL), to allow ATLAS to operate effectively at the very high beam collision rates that are necessary to advance the scientific goals of the experiment. The group's analytical contributions are focused in several important areas, including studies of final states containing top quarks, b quarks and light quarks, which will be greatly facilitated by the FTK, the TileCAL, and jet substructure tools developed by the group. These will provide access to Higgs physics, with emphasis on Higgs decays to b bar final states and searches for exotic physics processes such as dark matter and new states of matter in high mass di-jet final states.