CAREER: Probing the High Energy Frontier With the CMS Experiment

University Of Kansas Center For Research Inc, Lawrence KS

Investigators

Abstract

A complete understanding of the physics describing interactions at the smallest, subatomic lengths is elusive. Through the high-energy proton-proton collisions of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), we can momentarily open a window to the highest energies known and simultaneously probe these tiny sizes, providing the opportunity to directly study fundamental physics in an otherwise inaccessible regime. This work includes a program of research at the University of Kansas (KU) which confronts open questions at these high-energy scales using existing and future data from the CMS experiment at the LHC. Rogan’s KU group are members of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the LHC, with most of the activities included in this project related to this effort. The project has two primary components: the analysis and interpretation of data collected by CMS, and the CMS detector itself. In both cases, there are elements that focus on already collected data and the operation of the experiment, with others looking forward to new approaches to analyzing data and future upgrades to the detector. A significant portion of this work is for a new comprehensive search for physics beyond the Standard Model related to new symmetries and Dark Matter, which includes development of a novel analysis paradigm that incorporates elements of unsupervised machine learning into searches for new physics, with proof-of-concept demonstrations planned with the existing CMS dataset. The group is also developing new, precision timing detectors for CMS, which will introduce an additional dimension to event reconstruction, facilitating searches for new physics involving long-lived particles. The group is also studying the timing reconstruction performance of the existing CMS electromagnetic calorimeter, with the goal of mitigating degradations in resolution through an improved reconstruction algorithm. The KU group is also focused on two initiatives targeting the public and the KU academic community. With KU undergraduates, the group is developing the "Fantasy Physics" outreach project, where students can compete with teams comprised of selected particle physics experiments in an online fantasy-sports-inspired format. The group also developed an inter-departmental "Learning Machine Learning" forum, which includes lectures, tutorials, and seminars serving members of the KU academic community who are interested in incorporating contemporary machine learning in their research. The group is also active in disseminating its research through public talks and outreach events. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.