The ATLAS Research Program: Empowering U.S. Universities

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The ATLAS detector is currently under construction for operation at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland. Extensive studies show that the LHC should be able to elucidate the mechanism of electroweak (EW) symmetry breaking and to study a variety of other topics related to physics at the TeV scale. In particular, a Higgs boson with couplings given by the Standard Model will be observable in several channels over the full range of allowed masses. If supersymmetry is relevant to EW interactions, it will be discovered and the properties of many supersymmetric particles elucidated.This proposal requests support for the research of approximately 250 physicists and engineers from 33 U.S. institutions that comprise the U.S. ATLAS Collaboration. The U.S. ATLAS groups are making major contributions to the construction of the ATLAS detector and have continuing responsibilities for the components they have built as the detector is installed in the experimental cavern and during the commissioning and installation phases. The U.S. ATLAS groups are planning to establish Tier 2 regional computing centers as part of an overall hierarchical grid of ATLAS computing centers spread around the world. The Tier 2 centers, a key component of this proposal, will play a powerful role in allowing U.S. universities to fully exploit the potential of the LHC, and will set an important precedent for future collaboration on large-scale, international projects.The groups continue to expand their education/outreach programs, with a particular focus on high school teachers and students (closely coordinated with QuarkNet) and on outreach to traditionally under-represented populations.