Experimental Particle Physics at the University of Edinburgh
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Edinburgh
Department Name: Sch of Physics and Astronomy
Abstract
The Edinburgh Experimental Particle Physics group is currently working in three different running experiments and we are also working on several future projects.
The ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC): ATLAS is one of two detectors able to study a wide variety of particles created from the collision of protons at the highest energies ever created, and it addresses fundamental questions. The most well known is that of the origin of mass. The beautiful symmetry which underlies our understanding of particle interactions inherently demands that all particles are massless. This cannot be the case, and the elegant solution put forward is now known as the Higgs mechanism. The discovery of the Higgs boson has verified this, and now we must measure its properties in great detail. Another area addressed by ATLAS is the search for new heavy particles such as new heavy Higgs like particles or supersymmetric particles, which are predicted in models trying to address shortcomings of the Standard Model (SM), such as why there is dark matter.
The LHCb experiment at the LHC. Prior to the 1960s, it had been thought that matter and anti-matter would behave in the same way. However, it was discovered that this symmetry was violated, and that matter does not behave in an identical way to anti-matter. This is embodied in the phenomenon of CP violation and is essential to the understanding of the early universe. Shortly after the big bang there were equal amounts of matter and anti-matter. During expansion and cooling, matter and anti-matter would have annihilated into photons to leave a universe full of radiation, but no stars and galaxies. It was shown in 1967 by Sakarov that if three conditions, including CP violation, were met, then it would be possible for a small imbalance of matter over anti-matter to accrue, which would be sufficient to explain the existence of the universe. LHCb measures differences (CP violation) in behaviour of particles and antiparticle with at least one b or anti-b quark and searches for very rare decays of these particles, which could be affected by heavy unobserved particles.
The LUX-ZEPLIN experiment, which is the world's most sensitive apparatus searching for dark matter. It is well known that some 27% of the Universe is comprised of Dark Matter - that is matter of some form which does not interact in a way that produces radiation, or other easy to observe signatures. There are many theoretical candidates and resolution of this mystery must include the direct detection of our own galactic dark matter. We lead the collaboration's efforts to detect particularly well-motivated possibilities including axions and dark phonons.
We have grown our neutrino physics activities in the recent years. One of the most interesting facts of nature is that there are only three species of neutrinos, which until recently were thought to be massless. It is important to measure precisely the "mixing" between the species and to search for CP violation in neutrinos. We have also joined the MicroBooNE and SBND experiments, which will search for new, sterile, neutrinos which interact only via gravity but not with any of the fundamental interactions of the SM.
The ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC): ATLAS is one of two detectors able to study a wide variety of particles created from the collision of protons at the highest energies ever created, and it addresses fundamental questions. The most well known is that of the origin of mass. The beautiful symmetry which underlies our understanding of particle interactions inherently demands that all particles are massless. This cannot be the case, and the elegant solution put forward is now known as the Higgs mechanism. The discovery of the Higgs boson has verified this, and now we must measure its properties in great detail. Another area addressed by ATLAS is the search for new heavy particles such as new heavy Higgs like particles or supersymmetric particles, which are predicted in models trying to address shortcomings of the Standard Model (SM), such as why there is dark matter.
The LHCb experiment at the LHC. Prior to the 1960s, it had been thought that matter and anti-matter would behave in the same way. However, it was discovered that this symmetry was violated, and that matter does not behave in an identical way to anti-matter. This is embodied in the phenomenon of CP violation and is essential to the understanding of the early universe. Shortly after the big bang there were equal amounts of matter and anti-matter. During expansion and cooling, matter and anti-matter would have annihilated into photons to leave a universe full of radiation, but no stars and galaxies. It was shown in 1967 by Sakarov that if three conditions, including CP violation, were met, then it would be possible for a small imbalance of matter over anti-matter to accrue, which would be sufficient to explain the existence of the universe. LHCb measures differences (CP violation) in behaviour of particles and antiparticle with at least one b or anti-b quark and searches for very rare decays of these particles, which could be affected by heavy unobserved particles.
The LUX-ZEPLIN experiment, which is the world's most sensitive apparatus searching for dark matter. It is well known that some 27% of the Universe is comprised of Dark Matter - that is matter of some form which does not interact in a way that produces radiation, or other easy to observe signatures. There are many theoretical candidates and resolution of this mystery must include the direct detection of our own galactic dark matter. We lead the collaboration's efforts to detect particularly well-motivated possibilities including axions and dark phonons.
We have grown our neutrino physics activities in the recent years. One of the most interesting facts of nature is that there are only three species of neutrinos, which until recently were thought to be massless. It is important to measure precisely the "mixing" between the species and to search for CP violation in neutrinos. We have also joined the MicroBooNE and SBND experiments, which will search for new, sterile, neutrinos which interact only via gravity but not with any of the fundamental interactions of the SM.
Organisations
Publications
Aaij R
(2023)
$${ {J}/\psi }$$ and $${ {D}} ^0$$ production in $$\sqrt{s_{\scriptscriptstyle \text {NN}}} =68.5\,\text {GeV} $$ PbNe collisions
in The European Physical Journal C
Aaij R
(2023)
A study of $$C\!P$$ violation in the decays $${ {B} ^\pm } \rightarrow [{ {K} ^+} { {K} ^-} { {\uppi } ^+} { {\uppi } ^-} ]_{D} h^{\pm }$$ ($$h = K, \pi $$) and $${ {B} ^\pm } \rightarrow [{ {\uppi } ^+} { {\uppi } ^-} { {\uppi } ^+} { {\uppi } ^-} ]_{D} h^{\pm }$$
in The European Physical Journal C
Aad G
(2024)
Accuracy versus precision in boosted top tagging with the ATLAS detector
in Journal of Instrumentation
Aaij R
(2023)
Amplitude analysis of B 0 ? D ¯ 0 D s + p - and B + ? D - D s + p + decays
in Physical Review D
Aaij R
(2023)
Amplitude analysis of the ? c + ? p K - p + decay and ? c + baryon polarization measurement in semileptonic beauty hadron decays
in Physical Review D
Aad G
(2023)
ATLAS flavour-tagging algorithms for the LHC Run 2 pp collision dataset
in The European Physical Journal C
Aad G
(2024)
Azimuthal Angle Correlations of Muons Produced via Heavy-Flavor Decays in 5.02 TeV Pb+Pb and pp Collisions with the ATLAS Detector.
in Physical review letters
Aad G
(2024)
Beam-induced backgrounds measured in the ATLAS detector during local gas injection into the LHC beam vacuum
in Journal of Instrumentation
Aad G
(2024)
Calibration of a soft secondary vertex tagger using proton-proton collisions at s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector
in Physical Review D
Aaij R
(2023)
Charmonium production in pNe collisions at $$\sqrt{s_{\scriptscriptstyle \text {NN}}} =68.5$$ GeV
in The European Physical Journal C
ATLAS Collaboration
(2024)
Combination and summary of ATLAS dark matter searches interpreted in a 2HDM with a pseudo-scalar mediator using 139 fb-1 of s=13 TeV pp collision data.
in Science bulletin
Hayrapetyan A
(2024)
Combination of Measurements of the Top Quark Mass from Data Collected by the ATLAS and CMS Experiments at sqrt[s]=7 and 8 TeV.
in Physical review letters
Aad G
(2024)
Combination of Searches for Higgs Boson Pair Production in p p Collisions at s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS Detector
in Physical Review Letters
Aad G
(2024)
Combination of searches for pair-produced leptoquarks at s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector
in Physics Letters B
Aad G
(2024)
Combination of Searches for Resonant Higgs Boson Pair Production Using pp Collisions at sqrt[s]=13 TeV with the ATLAS Detector.
in Physical review letters
Aad G
(2025)
Combination of searches for singly produced vectorlike top quarks in p p collisions at s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector
in Physical Review D
Aad G
(2023)
Comparison of inclusive and photon-tagged jet suppression in 5.02 TeV Pb+Pb collisions with ATLAS
in Physics Letters B
Aad G
(2023)
Constraints on spin-0 dark matter mediators and invisible Higgs decays using ATLAS 13 TeV pp collision data with two top quarks and missing transverse momentum in the final state
in The European Physical Journal C
Aad G
(2024)
Determination of the Relative Sign of the Higgs Boson Couplings to W and Z Bosons Using WH Production via Vector-Boson Fusion with the ATLAS Detector.
in Physical review letters
Aaij R
(2023)
Direct C P violation in charmless three-body decays of B ± mesons
in Physical Review D
Aad G
(2024)
Disentangling Sources of Momentum Fluctuations in Xe + Xe and Pb + Pb Collisions with the ATLAS Detector
in Physical Review Letters
Aad G
(2024)
Electron and photon energy calibration with the ATLAS detector using LHC Run 2 data
in Journal of Instrumentation
Aad G
(2024)
Evidence for the Higgs Boson Decay to a Z Boson and a Photon at the LHC.
in Physical review letters
Aaij R
(2023)
Evidence of a J/?K_{S}^{0} Structure in B^{0}?J/??K_{S}^{0} Decays.
in Physical review letters
Aad G
(2023)
Evidence of off-shell Higgs boson production from ZZ leptonic decay channels and constraints on its total width with the ATLAS detector
in Physics Letters B
Aad G
(2023)
Fast b-tagging at the high-level trigger of the ATLAS experiment in LHC Run 3
in Journal of Instrumentation
Aaij R
(2023)
First observation of the B + ? D s + D s - K + decay
in Physical Review D
Aad G
(2023)
Luminosity determination in pp collisions at $$\sqrt{s}=13$$ TeV using the ATLAS detector at the LHC
in The European Physical Journal C
Aaij R
(2023)
Measurement of $$\tau _\text {L}$$ using the $${B} _s^0 \rightarrow J/\psi \eta $$ decay mode
in The European Physical Journal C
Aad G
(2023)
Measurement of $$Z\gamma \gamma $$ production in pp collisions at $$\sqrt{s}= 13$$ TeV with the ATLAS detector
in The European Physical Journal C
Aaij R
(2023)
Measurement of antiproton production from antihyperon decays in $${p} \textrm{He}$$ collisions at $$\sqrt{s_{\scriptscriptstyle \mathrm NN}} =110$$ $$\,\text {Ge\hspace{-1.00006pt}V}$$
in The European Physical Journal C
Aaij R
(2024)
Measurement of CP Violation in B^{0}??(?l^{+}l^{-})K_{S}^{0}(?p^{+}p^{-}) Decays.
in Physical review letters
Aad G
(2023)
Measurement of exclusive pion pair production in proton-proton collisions at $$\sqrt{s}={7}\,\text {TeV}$$ with the ATLAS detector
in The European Physical Journal C
Aad G
(2024)
Measurement of jet substructure in boosted t t ¯ events with the ATLAS detector using 140 fb - 1 of 13 TeV p p collisions
in Physical Review D
Aaij R
(2023)
Measurement of lepton universality parameters in B + ? K + l + l - and B 0 ? K * 0 l + l - decays
in Physical Review D
Aad G
(2024)
Measurement of single top-quark production in association with a W boson in p p collisions at s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector
in Physical Review D
Aad G
(2023)
Measurement of substructure-dependent jet suppression in Pb + Pb collisions at 5.02 TeV with the ATLAS detector
in Physical Review C
Aad G
(2023)
Measurement of Suppression of Large-Radius Jets and Its Dependence on Substructure in Pb+Pb Collisions at sqrt[s_{NN}]=5.02 TeV with the ATLAS Detector.
in Physical review letters
Aad G
(2024)
Measurement of t-channel single-top-quark production in pp collisions at s = 5.02 TeV with the ATLAS detector
in Physics Letters B
Aaij R
(2023)
Measurement of the ?_{b}^{0}??(1520)µ^{+}µ^{-} Differential Branching Fraction.
in Physical review letters