Particle Physics with the ATLAS Experiment

After our discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012 at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, physicists now have a more complete understanding of the universe than ever before. But what comes next? Andeen's group at the University of Texas at Austin looks beyond the current theory of the building blocks that make up our universe by searching for exotic new particles. Discovering these minuscule motes of matter could have a tremendous impact on our understanding of the universe as a whole: unraveling the secrets of dark matter, dark energy, even the origin of the universe and the nature of gravity. These searches are complemented by precisely measuring the properties of particles we know today. None of this would be possible without the particle detectors that make up the ATLAS experiment. The group helps operate and build the enormous experiments that observe the ephemeral particles of our universe.

• Search for pair- and single-production of vector-like quarks in final states with at least one Z boson decaying into a pair of electrons or muons in pp collision data collected with the ATLAS detector at √s = 13 TeV, arxiv:1806.10555.
• Combination of the searches for pair-produced vector-like partners of the third-generation quarks at √s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector, arxiv:1808.02343.
• Technical Design Report for the Phase-II Upgrade of the ATLAS LAr Calorimeter , CERN-LHCC-2017-018.