Experimental Studies of the Higgs Mechanism in the Standard Model and Beyond

粒子物理学研究范围广泛的科学问题，从亚原子到宇宙尺度。该奖项支持的纽约州立大学石溪分校通过在瑞士日内瓦欧洲核子研究中心的大型强子对撞机（LHC）上进行最高可用碰撞能量的实验来研究这些问题。这些研究与理解宇宙大爆炸后那转瞬即逝的一瞬间的最基本的宇宙有关，也与我们为什么看到现在的宇宙有关。大型强子对撞机目前正在以人造加速器所能达到的最高碰撞能量运行，13万亿电子伏特（13 TeV），实验项目的目标是了解2012年在那里发现的希格斯玻色子的性质，并寻找超越基本粒子物理标准模型的新物理。石溪小组的研究旨在通过ATLAS实验收集的数据来解决这些科学目标，ATLAS是大型强子对撞机的主要多用途探测器之一。他们寻求这样一些问题的答案：新发现的希格斯粒子是粒子物理学标准模型所预测的那个粒子，还是它是包含新粒子的更大理论图景的一部分？为什么观测到的希格斯玻色子的质量如此之低，只有1260亿电子伏特，大约是质子质量的135倍？电弱相互作用的力载体W和Z玻色子在高能量下的详细性质是什么？这些问题对于我们理解粒子物理学标准模型的完整背景以及超越标准模型的新物理学至关重要。重要的是，石溪小组正在为ATLAS探测器的当前升级提供管理领导，该探测器将在本十年末准备就绪。这些升级将允许ATLAS以更高的光束碰撞率运行，从而显著提高实验项目的物理发现能力。通过支持技术人员、教育和培训年轻的科学研究人员开发和部署新的、最先进的仪器，这项工作为美国许多大学团体的参与和贡献提供了条件。

Particle physics considers a vast range of scientific questions, from subatomic to cosmic scales. The State University of New York at Stony Brook Group supported through this award investigates such questions through experimentation at the highest available collision energies at the Large Hadron Collider (the LHC) at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland. These studies 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. The LHC is now operating at the highest collision energy ever achieved with man-made accelerators, 13 trillion electron volts or 13 TeV, and goals of the experimental program are to understand the nature of the Higgs Boson, discovered there in 2012, and to search for new physics beyond the Standard Model of Elementary Particle Physics. The research of the Stony Brook group is aimed to address these scientific goals from data collected with the ATLAS experiment, one of the major multipurpose detectors at the LHC. They seek answers to such questions as: 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? 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? 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.  Importantly, the Stony Brook group is providing managerial leadership for current upgrades of the ATLAS detector, to be ready by the end of the decade. These upgrades will allow the operation of ATLAS at ever higher beam collision rates to significantly increase the physics discovery capabilities of the experimental program. This effort provides for the participation and contribution of many 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.