Physics analysis and operations of the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment

Exploiting the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, where CMS with ALTAS discovered the Higgs Boson in 2012, will bring greatly enhanced understanding of the "Standard Model" of particle physics, particularly in the area of top-quark physics, searching for as yet undiscovered gauge bosons and supersymmetric particles, and ultimately shedding further light on the "Higgs" boson which is connected with the origins of mass.

In particular, we will use the huge datasets produced by CMS to study the production and properties of the top quark, a standard model particle with unique properties. We will not only make precise tests of the standard model by studying processes such as single top quark production in association with a Z boson but we can use the increasingly large data sets to begin to search for unexpected enhancements in highly suppressed channels involving Flavour Changing Neutral Currents (FCNC); seeing these would be exciting evidence of the breakdown of the standard model.

Meet the Principal Investigator(s) for the project

Professor Akram Khan - Professor Akram Khan is a academic & researcher in the areas of fundamental and applied science. He has published extensively in a wide range of key academic journals. He has worked at most of the leading national laboratories in the world: DESY in Germany, CERN in Switzerland and SLAC in the USA. He read Mathematics and Theoretical Physics for his Bachelors’ degree at St Andrews University, taking his PhD in Experimental Particle Physics at University College London. Akram was a European Research Fellow at CIEMAT in Spain and at CERN in Switzerland, then a Senior Fellow at Edinburgh and Manchester Universities, going on to a faculty position at Stanford University, before joining Brunel University London in 2003. His recent research has been addressing the fundamental questions:'What is the difference between matter and anti-matter?' and 'What new exotic physics processes might help us to address the existing inadequacies of the Standard Model?' As part of his work in the field of applied science he is currently working on developing a novel particle cancer therapy machine in the UK, and on the next generation of internet technologies.'

Related Research Group(s)

Sensors and Instrumentation - Research in detectors, instrumentation, and data analysis methods applied in high energy particle physics, space science, medical imaging, and remote instrumentation and control.

Project last modified 22/07/2020