Research in Experimental High Energy Physics at the University of Illinois

Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois 
1901 S. First Street, Suite A, Champaign, IL 61820-7406 

M. Neubauer, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Principal Investigator)
B. Hooberman, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Co-Investigator)

ABSTRACT

This award by the Office of High Energy Physics in the U.S. Department of Energy supports basic scientific research at the University of Illinois with the aim of understanding our universe at its most fundamental level. The aim of this research is to study physics at both the small scale of elementary particles and the large-scale structure of the universe. The Illinois experimental high energy physics group collaborates with scientists and engineers to develop new tools and techniques to advance our research toward this goal and provide training of students and postdocs for their career advancement. 

The 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson at the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) explained the origin of mass and completed the standard model of particle physics. After discovery of the Higgs boson, the primary goal of the LHC is the discovery of new physics through exploration and constraints on theories of beyond-the-standard model (BSM) physics.

Experimental high-energy particle physics research at the University of Illinois will be led by PIs Hooberman and Neubauer. The thrust of their research is the search for new physics on the ATLAS experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and upgrades to the ATLAS detector to improve the sensitivity for new physics.

The PIs will undertake searches for BSM physics using data from the ATLAS Collaboration at the LHC to understand the basic building blocks of matter and the fundamental forces that mediate their interactions. Specifically, Hooberman's group will search for long-lived particles that travel large distances before decaying to leptons and Neubauer's group will search for new phenomena in multi-boson production, including events with one or more Higgs bosons. These efforts will be bolstered by novel techniques including artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms, which will enhance the discovery reach beyond conventional methods. Hooberman and Neubauer also plan to collaborate by leading key aspects of upgrades of the ATLAS trigger system that will enable this program to run throughout the High-Luminosity LHC era, which will begin at the end of this decade. A discovery in this research program would revolutionize our understanding of the building blocks of matter and the fundamental forces. Realizing the full scientific potential of the LHC and its high-luminosity upgrade is a top priority in U.S. particle physics, as recommended by the U.S. Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel.