Detecting Experimental Elementary Particle Physics Group at the University of Arizona + Searching for Quark Compositeness at the LHC Particles Michael Shupe Department of Physics M. Shupe - ATLAS Collaboration 1
The Experimental Elementary Particle Group at the University of Arizona Faculty Research Associates & Staff Students M. Shupe - ATLAS Collaboration 2
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), near Geneva, Switzerland, is the Hubble Telescope for High Energy Physics,, and Arizona is there! (Proton-Proton Collisions at 14 TeV) The high energy group at The University of Arizona joined the ATLAS experiment in 1994, and had major impact from the start on the design of the experiment! M. Shupe - ATLAS Collaboration 3
Magnets in the LHC Tunnel M. Shupe - ATLAS Collaboration 4
ATLAS, In Its Underground Cavern M. Shupe - ATLAS Collaboration 5
ATLAS Detector: ~$1.5B World s s Largest Experiment Muon: Air Core Toroids Tracking Calorimeters Forward Muon System Integrated Forward Calorimeters ($16M) Arizona was the only U.S. group to make a major change in the ATLAS design. We conceived the integrated FCal M. Shupe and shield - ATLAS design, Collaboration adopted by ATLAS in June,1994. 6
ATLAS - 2005 M. Shupe - ATLAS Collaboration 7
ATLAS - 2007 M. Shupe - ATLAS Collaboration 8
Constructing the ATLAS Integrated Forward Calorimeter in a clean room in the basement of the PAS building. Arizona conceived, engineered and supervised this $16M project for ATLAS. M. Shupe - ATLAS Collaboration 9
Some of our research group, at CERN, during the installation of the ATLAS Integrated Forward Calorimeter M. Shupe - ATLAS Collaboration 10
Quarks are the building blocks of protons, neutrons, and hundreds of other similar (shortlived) particles. Are quarks themselves made of even smaller building blocks? M. Shupe - ATLAS Collaboration 11
From Why we call Atoms, quarks and to leptons Nucleons, the building blocks to Quarks of nature. Helium The only quarks needed to build up protons and neutrons are u and d. u has charge 2e/3, and d has charge minus e/3. What quarks do neutrons contain? Who ordered this one? The only particles needed to build the periodic table of the elements are protons, neutrons, and electrons! (Plus photons and gluons!) What else can we make from the six quarks? Thousands of other not-so-stable particles! M. Shupe - ATLAS Collaboration 12
Particle multiplets : periodic tables of the strongly interacting particles. Neutron Proton Spin1/2 Spin 3/2 M. Shupe - ATLAS Collaboration 13
The known quarks and leptons also look like a periodic table! Are they made of smaller particles? Electromagnetic Force Strong (Nuclear) Force Weak Force (Changes particle types) Gravity (Gravitons?) M. Shupe - ATLAS Collaboration 14
The zoo of quarks, leptons, and force carrying particles A composite model may explain parameters such as particle mass, electric charge, and color charge - which the Standard Model of particle physics does not. 3/31/2011 M. Shupe - ATLAS Collaboration 15
Direct route to shortest distance scales? It s s all in the momentum! The de Broglie equation: λ = h/p M. Shupe - ATLAS Collaboration 16
Ideal for compositeness search: 7 TeV Quark Collider Quark Detector q 1 Quark Beam 1 3.5 TeV q 1 g BRbar θ Quark Beam 2 3.5 TeV q 2 q 2 Quark Detector The momentum of the force carrying particle (here a gluon) determines its wavelength, and the distance scale that can be probed. M. Shupe - ATLAS Collaboration 17
Reality: the LHC 7 TeV Proton-Proton Collider Each proton is a chaotic mix of 3 valence quarks + other quarks + gluons. The two that collide typically carry a small fraction of the proton momentum: parton distribution functions (PDF( PDF s). Outgoing quarks, or gluons, barely escape the protons before they y cascade in to more quarks and gluons (a parton shower). And this is just the start! M. Shupe - ATLAS Collaboration 18
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Dijets seen in the detector: without pile-up with design luminosity pile-up M. Shupe - ATLAS Collaboration 20
Search With Angular Distributions Angular distributions are sensitive to s-channel s vs. t-channel t (QCD) production of dijets The variable χ is convenient it s s flat for Rutherford scattering, and almost flat for QCD s-channel exchange peaks at low χ. We require (depending on mass bin) p T (j 1 ) > 80-150 GeV (trigger) p T (j 2 ) > 30 GeV (reconstruction) y 1 + y 2 < 1.5 y 1 y 2 < 4.9 No significant deviation from QCD is observed Expressed as our benchmark, a contact interaction Λ,, this works out to Λ > 3.4 TeV (at 95%), with an expected sensitivity of 3.5 TeV Previous best limit is from D0, Λ > 2.8 TeV Λ qqqq > 3.4 TeV ATLAS Preliminary ATLAS Preliminary M. Shupe - ATLAS Collaboration 21
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Conclusion The LHC is rapidly pushing to shorter distance scales. The full dataset from 2010 is ~10 times larger than the data shown here. Within a few weeks we will publish a result which greatly increases the excluded energy range and reduces the distance scale further. If you are interested in this research, this is the perfect time to join. The 2011 data sample will be another huge increase over the existing data, and many Ph.D. theses will be based on studies of these highest- energy collisions! M. Shupe - ATLAS Collaboration 23