Elementary Particle Physics with the ATLAS Experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider

This project is devoted to research using ATLAS, a multi-purpose particle physics detector situated around the 27 km ring of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) located at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. The goal of the project is to explore the fundamental nature of the universe in order to understand its evolution from the hot, dense soup of energy and matter existing soon after the Big Bang to the cool, diffuse universe we see today.

The interactions and evolution of the fundamental constituents of the universe are well described by the Standard Model (SM) of Particle Physics that has been very successful in predicting the behavior of nature in the currently available energy regimes. The search for physics Beyond the SM (BSM) has been the focus of physicists since the discovery of the Higgs boson.

The work of this award will contribute to the BSM search by exploring production mechanisms of the Higgs boson. In addition, the award will help construct the ongoing upgrade to the ATLAS detector as it prepares for the High-Luminosity upgrade to the LHC accelerator itself (HL-HLC).

In this research award the California State University group will probe the SM by examining events which produce pairs of Higgs bosons. The aim is to measure the self-coupling of the Higgs boson, thought to be a sensitive probe of BSM. Technically, the CSU ATLAS group will work as members of the ATLAS Inner Tracker Upgrade (ITk) as part of the HL-LHC project.

The ITk will be a crucial component of future ATLAS discoveries in the Higgs sector when the LHC upgrade is complete around 2026. This award will continue the CalState program of building the future workforce by providing training to the diverse students of the system, with hands-on work on the cutting-edge high energy physics program of ATLAS.

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.