Physics

Higgs boson / Dark sectors / Hadronic jets / New physics searches / Precision Standard Model tests


The UChicago ATLAS group pursues exciting physics using groundbreaking techniques. Our graduate students and postdoctoral researchers earn international recognition for leading these high-impact analyses.

Our diverse physics efforts capitalize on our unique strengths in ATLAS instrumentation, Monte Carlo simulation, and software. We play active roles understanding the recorded data, triggers, and physics objects used in analysis. This includes jets, missing transverse momentum, flavor tagging, and tracking.

Landmark measurements

We perform uncharted measurements of the Standard Model and foundational properties of the Higgs boson. Measuring the Higgs self-coupling is central for elucidating electroweak symmetry breaking.

We have led precise measurements of vector bosons with jets, dijet cross-sections, unique W production emitted from a high momentum quark, and W+/W- charge asymmetry as tests of parton distributions.

Pioneering searches

Using the Higgs boson and hadronic jets to probe new physics is a focal point of our searches for exotic resonances, dark matter, dark photons, and dynamics that could modify the Higgs self-coupling. We develop novel techniques for tracking inside jets, tagging boosted objects such as top quarks, gauge and Higgs bosons to enable these efforts.

We have also pioneered several efforts to search for unconventional signatures of new physics, including long-lived particles, motivated by Supersymmetric and dark sector scenarios. We push the boundaries of our detector's capabilities, and often reimagine how the detector can be used, to search for these hard to find signatures.


Hbb

Strong force and jets

The strong force is ubiquitous at the LHC but remains an enigmatic phenomenon

Why is it the only known force that confines? How does the non-perturbative evolve into perturbative regimes at the highest energies? What measurements can improve precision modeling for new physics searches?


Zbb

Electroweak physics

The LHC heralds a golden age of exploring electroweak symmetry breaking

How do boosted jets modify electroweak gauge boson dynamics? What happens when photons collide at LHC energies? How can precise Standard Model tests be sensitive to new physics?


H->zz event display

Higgs boson

The Higgs boson was a momentous discovery but many open questions remain

Does the Higgs interact with itself? What is the shape of the Higgs potential? How often does it decay invisibly to neutrinos or dark matter? Could it open windows on the mysterious matter-antimatter asymmetry?


Dijet reasonance search

Exotics

The LHC has enormous potential to discover physics beyond the Standard Model

How can we use the Higgs boson to probe new physics? Could the LHC produce dark matter and its mediators to study in the laboratory? What signatures of unified forces or dark sectors could we reveal?


Simulated long-lived selectron

Supersymmetry

Elegant solutions to open problems in physics motivate weak scale supersymmetry

How can we discover long-lived supersymmetric states? How can we exploit hadronic signatures to open new sensitivity? What techniques could reveal challenging corners of search space beyond the lamppost?