The Search for New Physics

Despite the tremendous success for the Standard Model of particle physics, we have no answer to some our deepest questions of the universe. Observations from astrophysics and cosmology have demonstrated that roughly 20% of the energy budget of our universe is composed of dark matter, of which the Standard Model has no viable explanation for. In addition, our universe is dominated by matter over anti-matter. While the Standard Model does have a mechanism to produce matter over anti-matter, it is not sufficient to explain our matter-dominated universe. 

Questions like these motivate us to search beyond the Standard Model in order to seek answers. With the high energies and luminosities of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), we can potentially produce new particles and study them in great depth. 

What we are working on

Search for dijet resonances at trigger-level

Searching for resonances in the dijet mass spectrum proves challenging as QCD dijet events are the most abundant process at the LHC. The ATLAS trigger-level analysis studies these events with reduced detector readout.

 

Detector-corrected search for dark matter

A powerful signature for DM production at the large hadron collider is large missing transverse energy (MET) from the dark mattter particles in association with one or more energetic jets. To simplify later comparisons of the measurement with models for physics beyond the SM, detector effects are removed from the data using an iterative unfolding procedure.

 

Previous Analyses

Search for microscopic black holes

In order to identify microscopic black holes in the detector, one must define criteria to decide which signature is observed in every given event. Particularly, one must be able to distinguish between the microscopic black hole decay and known processes of the Standard Model (SM).


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