Dark Sectors and More with the ATLAS Experiment

该奖项支持欧洲核子研究中心(CERN)大型强子对撞机(LHC)的ATLAS实验工作，该实验室是瑞士日内瓦的一个粒子物理实验室。大型强子对撞机和大型粒子探测器ATLAS是利用美国国家科学基金会和世界各地其他机构的资金作为基础科学工具建造的。大型强子对撞机建造时的主要目标之一是找到希格斯玻色子--历史上成功的“标准模型”(SM)中的最后一个粒子，它解释了形成宇宙中可见物质的已知粒子的存在和相互间的作用力。对希格斯玻色子的搜索是成功的，所以发现位于SM之外的粒子物理学领域的粒子是现在的目标。这个奖项是为了表彰可能通过过滤掉其中含有两个希格斯玻色子的事件而导致这样的发现的工作。这可能会导致直接探测到暗物质。该奖项将加强对增加物理学专业中代表性不足群体的学生数量的承诺。该奖项将允许加州州立大学的贫困学生在暑假期间进行辅导计划。这些学生将在现代高能物理实验中获得硬件和软件的实践经验。这一奖项将使斯坦福大学的实验高能物理小组进一步开发几种软件算法，这些算法将利用ATLAS触发系统，即全局特征提取器，增强ATLAS实验探测丢失能量的能力，暗物质的一个关键特征。最近对暗物质的搜索主要集中在弱相互作用的大质量粒子(WIMP)上，并没有取得进展。该奖项将允许在ATLAS探测器中搜索集中在碰撞事件中丢失的横向能量的暗物质的新签名。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award supports work on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, a particle physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. The LHC machine and ATLAS, a large particle detector facility, were built as basic science tools using funds from NSF and other agencies around the world. One of the primary objectives of the LHC at the time of construction was to find the Higgs Boson - the last particle in the historically successful "Standard Model" (SM) that accounts for so much of the existence of and forces between known particles forming the visible matter in the universe. The search for the Higgs Boson was successful, so the discovery of the particles that lie within the realm of particle physics beyond the SM is now the goal. This award is for work that could lead to such a discovery by filtering out events with two Higgs Bosons in them. This could potentially lead to direct detection of dark matter. The award will enhance the commitment to increasing the number of students from under-represented groups in physics. This award will allow the mentoring program of under-privileged students from Cal State institutions during summer break. These students will obtain hands-on experience with both hardware and software in a modern high-energy physics experiment.This award will enable the experimental high energy physics group at Stanford University to further develop several software algorithms that will exploit the ATLAS trigger system, the global feature extractor, enhancing the ability of the ATLAS experiment to detect missing energy, a key signature of dark matter. Recent searches for dark matter have concentrated on Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) and have come up short. This award will allow searches for new signatures of dark matter concentrating on missing transverse energy in collision events in the ATLAS detector.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.