Consolidated Grant 2019

The QMUL Particle Physics Research Centre (PPRC) is working on an exciting set of particle physics experiments at the forefront of the field spanning the entire mass-scale from the lowest to the highest mass particles.
At the high-mass scale, members of the centre have played an important role in the design, construction of the ATLAS detector at the CERN LHC. The group is actively working on analyses of the vast, rich set of data produced by the detector. The group contributed to the Higgs boson discovery and is engaged in research dedicated to deepening the understanding of the Higgs and searching for discrepancies in the Standard Model through a variety of intricate tests. The group is also exploring dark matter and exotic particle searches in ATLAS.
The vast quantity of data produced by the LHC experiments required a distributed, shared computing fabric that is easily accessible to researchers worldwide. The group is heavily involved in GridPP that is targetted to meet this requirement and operates one of the largest Grid sites in the UK.
The QMUL Group is also involved in upgrades to the ATLAS detector to meet the challenges of an increase in the luminosity of the beam. The group is focussed on the complex ATLAS Tracker Upgrade and Level One Calorimeter Trigger upgrade programmes. The generic R&D coming from the tracker upgrade is part of our groundwork for our impact activities.
At the other end of the mass scale, the neutrino group is involved in ground-breaking studies of the neutrino with significant involvement in three experiments: T2K, Hyper-K, SNO+ and IceCube/IceCube-Gen2. The group played an important role in the design, construction of the T2K long baseline neutrino experiment in Japan. The group has actively contributed to the groundbreaking observations of neutrino oscillations (hinting at non-zero CP violation) and is working on the important goal of detecting an indication of CP violation in T2K. This will provide an important element in unravelling the more matter than antimatter in the Universe mystery. The group plays an important role in the upgrade of T2K: Hyper-Kamiokande which will be a precision experiment with a wide physics program from measuring CP violation to searching got proton decays. The Group plays an important role in the design, construction and operation of the SNO+ experiment that offers a rich programme of neutrino physics with the SNO+ detector located in Canada. This exciting experiment has just started to take data and the group has a key role in the analysis and imminent publication of first results. The Group also plays an important role in an experiment dedicated to studying very high energy atmospheric neutrinos with IceCube/IceCube-Gen2 located in Antarctica.
Finally, the Group is maintaining a watching brief across the future collider options sector.

The QMUL Particle Physics group focuses its research primarily on experimental particle physics aimed at understanding the fundamental constituents of the universe and the forces through which they interact. This research centres on: the ATLAS experiment and its upgrade at the CERN Large Hadron Collider - searching for new high energy phenomena and an understanding of the Higgs boson; the T2K experiment in Japan and its upgrade Hyper-Kamiokande which studies neutrino interactions with the aim of understanding the matter-antimatter imbalance in the universe and SNO+ that studies the neutrino nature. The direct outcomes of this research advance our knowledge of the nature of the universe.
We have developed a set of impact cases on which we will work on during the length of the grant. They are: organic radiation detectors, compact neutron generator, non-planar silicon detectors, PMT development, general data acquisition, proteomics, machine learning implementations.
Finally, the Group is also very much involved in outreach activities.