Experimental Studies of the Standard Model and Beyond at High Energy Colliders

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Overview: A goal of experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (the LHC) at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland is to understand the nature of the Higgs Boson, recently discovered there in 2012, and to discover new physics beyond the Standard Model of Elementary Particle Physics. These goals are relevant to the understanding of the Universe at its most fundamental level in the fleeting fraction of a second just after the Big Bang, and to why we see the Universe as we do now. To meet the challenges of this quest, new theories are advanced, new detectors and accelerators are developed and built, and new computing and analytical methodologies are created, all of which have significant broader impact for the training of young scientists in the near term and the advancement of technological benefits to society over the longer term. The next three years represent a transition of the LHC physics program from a collision energy of 8 TeV data-taking and operation, to extended operations and data taking at nearly double the energy, 13-14 TeV. Over a thousand scientists from the United States are involved with this scientific program on several major experiments.Intellectual Merit: The research to be conducted under this award to the Particle Physics group at the State University of New York at Stonybrook is aimed to address deep questions about the nature of the Universe from data collected with the ATLAS experiment, one of the major multipurpose detectors at the LHC. Scientific questions addressed include: Is the newly discovered Higgs particle the one predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics or is it a part of a larger theoretical picture that includes new particles that could be discovered at the new higher collision energy? Why is the observed mass of the Higgs boson so low, found to be 126 billion electron volts, or roughly 135 times the mass of the proton? In fact this low mass value is one of the most profound conundrums in all of science and is currently driving much of the scientific discourse in the field of particle physics. What are the detailed properties of the force carriers of the electroweak interaction, the W and Z bosons, at high energy? These questions are critical to our understanding of the full context of the Standard Model of particle physics and to new physics that lies beyond the Standard Model. Technically, the group will provide instrumentation and software calibration tools for the ATLAS calorimeters that will enable the group to commission and calibrate these important components of the experiment. The group is also a key leader in the Phase I Upgrade of the ATLAS detector. It is called the Phase I upgrade, because it represents the first major improvement in instrumentation for the experiment. This is essential for the effective operation of the experiment as the number of beam interactions (the luminosity) is increased by factor of ten over current levels, and will improve the potential for new scientific discoveries through the end of this decade.Broader Impact: The leadership role of the Stonybrook group in managing the ATLAS Phase I Upgrade serves to broaden the participation and contributions of a number of university groups in the US, through support of technical personnel and education and training of young scientific researchers in the development and deployment of new, state-of-the-art instrumentation for high energy, high luminosity experimentation.