Bridging grant application for ATLAS-Canada: Measurements of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider

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I was recently hired as an ATLAS-Canada faculty member at Carleton University, starting January 2016. This is an application for a bridging grant intended to support my research program for two years until the renewal of the ATLAS-Canada Project grant in April 2018, which I will take part in. My proposed research program will enhance Canada's role in one of the world's most highly regarded scientific endeavours. With the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) we study the fundamental nature of our world, including both the elementary building blocks of matter and the forces of the Universe. The LHC produces the highest energy collisions of any facility in the world, and can reproduce particle collisions which mimic the conditions of the Universe a fraction of a second after the Big Bang. ATLAS is one of the detectors constructed at the LHC and records the resulting collisions. By studying these collisions, we learn about the origin and evolution of the Universe, and the laws of Nature. The primary objective of my research program is to perform precise studies of the recently discovered Higgs boson: the elementary particle that play a key role in how other particles obtain mass. During the past five years, I have been heavily involved at the forefront of this effort and I will continue these efforts as a professor at Carleton University. During the term of the proposed research, the LHC will deliver a very large dataset that makes it possible to significantly extend our knowledge about the Higgs boson. I plan to measure the overall production rate as well as kinematic, production and decay properties of the Higgs boson, and to interpret these results to look for evidence of physics Beyond the Standard Model. A second topic of my research program is to join the ATLAS-Canada effort with the design, production and characterization of the ATLAS inner tracker (ITk) detector upgrade that will be installed in 2024 prior to the start of the "High Luminosity LHC" (HL-LHC). This detector needs to be highly performant in the very harsh environment of the HL-LHC and I will contribute with my expertise in simulations to evaluate the gain from different design scenarios (2016) and contribute to the testing of the first ITk silicon modules from the pre-production in 2017. I request funding to form a small research team consisting of one research associate and two graduate students for the period April 2016 to April 2018. The funding is intended to cover salaries, field work at CERN, conference attendance and personal computers. A very important aspect of the research project is training of the personnel. Important skills to be developed include advanced data analysis techniques, effective international collaboration, and experience with and understanding of cutting-edge technology. These skills are applicable not only to physics research, but also to many other fields such as medical physics, finance and predictive analysis (“big data”).