CAREER: Exploring the Higgs Portal with Exotic Decays and New Strategies for Muon Triggering and Readout in ATLAS

在瑞士日内瓦的欧洲核子研究中心的大型强子对撞机（LHC）上发现希格斯玻色子之后，高能物理学家的主要科学目标一直是表征这种新粒子的性质。希格斯玻色子本身是一个潜在的新物理学门户，提供了粒子物理学标准模型和新现象之间的联系，例如可能的新自然力的签名或暗物质的证据。通过这个职业奖，Martinez Outschoorn和她的UIUC研究团队将在ATLAS实验中从分析和技术上解决这些问题。 UIUC小组正在开发和实施新的分析工具，以寻找希格斯玻色子衰变为假设的新自旋零粒子对，随后衰变为可以在ATLAS探测器中直接观察到的已知粒子，如b夸克，电子和μ子。 这在战术上是具有挑战性的，因为尽管希格斯质量很大，但所寻找的自旋为零的粒子的质量很低，所观察到的粒子的能量也同样很低。此外，这些事件预计是非常罕见的，要找到它们需要在LHC上进行几年的高强度碰撞束。 为了提高ATLAS探测器观察这些粒子的技术能力，UIUC小组正在与ATLAS同事合作开发新的电子升级实验，以有效触发和记录这些粒子。 Martinez Outschoorn带来了推广和教育的重要经验，她的同伴计划称为“粒子冒险”，这将连接小学和中学的学生在等级4-8，包括来自代表性不足和高危群体的儿童，物理学的兴奋与本科生和研究生志愿者的帮助下从UIUC物理系。 这个创造性的项目以互动的方式将粒子物理学的概念带入学校课堂，并为年轻学生提供与当地和CERN工作的物理学家互动的机会。

Following the discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, a primary scientific goal of high energy physicists has been to characterize the properties of this new particle. The Higgs itself is a potential portal to new physics, providing connections between the Standard Model of particle physics and new phenomena, such as signatures of possible new forces of nature or evidence of dark matter. Through this CAREER Award, Martinez Outschoorn and her UIUC research team will address such issues both analytically and technically in the ATLAS Experiment. The UIUC group is developing and implementing new analytical tools to search for Higgs bosons decaying into pairs of hypothetical new spin-zero particles, which subsequently decay into known particles such as b-quarks, electrons and muons that can be observed directly in the ATLAS detector. This is tactically challenging, because although the Higgs Mass is large, the masses of the sought for spin-zero particles are low and the energies of the observed particles are similarly low. Additionally, these events are expected to be very rare, and to find them requires high intensity colliding beams at the LHC over several years. To enhance the technical capabilities of the ATLAS detector to observe these particles, the UIUC group is collaborating with ATLAS colleagues in the development of new electronics upgrades to the experiment, to allow for the effective triggering and recording of these particles. Martinez Outschoorn brings significant experience in outreach and education to her companion program called the "Particle Adventure", which will connect elementary and middle school students in grades 4-8, including children from underrepresented and at-risk groups, to the excitement of physics with the aid of undergraduate and graduate student volunteers from the UIUC Physics Department. This creative project brings concepts of particle physics into school classrooms in an interactive way and provides opportunities for young students to interact with physicists at work both locally and at CERN.