ATLAS

Searching for New Physics at the energy frontier

The ATLAS experiment is based at CERN, Geneva. It is one of the two major general-purpose detectors in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which collides two proton beams at the highest energy collisions ever to be created in a laboratory. The collider has opened a window on to previously inaccessible physics at very high energies and has led to the discovery of the Higgs Boson, to which the Liverpool ATLAS group contributed substantially.

Our physics programme is broad, pursuing different routes to uncover new physics: through Higgs boson studies and searches for di-Higgs production; through searches for evidence of supersymmetry, dark matter candidates, and entirely new, hidden sectors potentially leading to the production of long-lived particles; through searches for Z’, W’, leptoquarks and for charged lepton flavour violation in ultra-rare tau to 3 muon decays; and through precision W-mass and Drell-Yan measurements.  Our group is also contributing to the day-to-day operation of the experiment, as responsible of part of the silicon tracking system SCT, and to performance studies relevant for all physics studies including evaluation of the luminosity through Z-boson counting methods; identification of b- and c-jets; and identification of tau leptons decaying hadronically. Artificial intelligence and Machine Learning methods are developed and utilised for physics data analyses by group members, and collaborations have been established with computer scientists from international institutes.

The ATLAS Liverpool upgrade team plays a key, leading role in research and development for the upgrade of the ATLAS silicon tracking system (comprising of strip and pixel detectors) in the preparation for the next phase of the LHC, the High Luminosity LHC. The upgraded LHC will provide much higher luminosity and is expected to start toward the end of the decade.  

In 2022 the LHC restarted for its third run period, Run 3, with the highest centre of mass ever of 13.6 TeV. This and the associated increase of the luminosity will permit searches for new physics to be extended into yet unexplored regions and crucial measurements of the Higgs and other phenomena to be performed. The ATLAS Collaboration has grown to a size of nearly 5000 members, with 3000 scientists signing its hundreds of publications. It so perhaps is the largest physics experiment worldwide, with a current projection of operating for another 20 years. This opens huge opportunity for new physics, seminal discoveries and long term career planning for next generations to join.  The ATLAS Liverpool group currently counts 12 PhD students and offers projects for future PhD studentships on precision Standard Model measurements, Higgs studies and searches for new physics, with the possibility of contributing substantially to the detector upgrade for HL-LHC. If you are interested, you can apply by following the official procedure here.

Personnel:

Group Leader:

  • Monica D'Onofrio

Academic and Research Staff:

  • Sergey Burdin
  • Max Klein   
  • Uta Klein   
  • Jan Kretzschmar   
  • Andy Mehta
  • Paul Dervan
  • Carl Gwilliam
  • Helen Hayward (ATLAS Upgrade PI)
  • Tim Jones
  • Nikos Rompotis
  • Cristiano Sebastiani 
  • Joe Carmignani 
  • Jon Taylor
  • Sven Wonsak
  • David Vazquez Furelos

Technical and Engineering Staff:

  • Ashley Greenall
  • Tony Smith
  • Phil Timko
  • John Carroll
  • Mark Whitley
  • Liam Boynton
  • Warren Jones
  • Matt Brown
  • Paul Sinclair
  • Manex Ormazabal Arregi
  • David Sim