Flavor Physics at the LHC

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This award supports a new program of research by the MIT group of Mike Williams on the LHCb Experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, Geneva, Switzerland. The primary function of LHCb is to search for physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM) by studying rare and CP-violating decays of b and c hadrons. For at least the next five years, LHCb will be the premier flavor-physics experiment in the world. Williams has been one of the principal architects of the high-level trigger (HLT) for LHCb in the recent past. This trigger allowed LHCb to collect a nearly 100% pure b-bbar sample during experimental operations in 2011 and 2012. The PI wrote this trigger, making MIT uniquely qualified as a group to prepare the experiment to handle future running conditions, including a collision energy of 13-TeV and significantly higher luminosity. MIT has a strong record in outreach, and PI Williams will build upon this tradition with links to the LHCb program. Over the past 6 summers, undergraduate students from the NSF-supported REU program at Hampton University have participated in the MIT Summer Research Program (MSRP). These students are supervised by members of the MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Science (LNS) and interact with various LNS faculty, staff and students. This program provides a unique opportunity for minority students to experience life at a large research institute. Beginning in the summer of 2013, students from this program will be able to do flavor-physics research using LHCb data.