The SLAC ATLAS group
The ATLAS group at SLAC is large, and rapidly grown as we anticipate the start of LHC physics. ATLAS is supported as a top priority of SLAC, taking over from BaBar as the main high-energy physics activity. We have two professors (Su Dong, Ariel Schwartzman), several senior researchers (Tim Barklow, Rainer Bartoldus, Norman Graf, Richard Mount, Tim Nelson, Charlie Young), a Panofsky Fellow (Andy Haas), 7 postdocs, and 7 students. In addition, there is also a strong team of staff scientists and engineers with computing and detector expertise for our experimental involvement.
Physics
Our physics activities focus on searches for new physics. Searches are underway for gluinos which have come to rest in the calorimeter and decay during empty bunch crossings, excess like-sign leptons, a 4th generation quark, R-Parity violating Supersymmetry, light pseudoscalar Higgs in the NMSSM, long-lived particles in Hidden Valley models, "lepton-jets" and "quirks". Our SUSY search efforts are concentrating on the b+MET+jets final-state, which also involves the study of top quark pair production as validation for the b+MET reconstruction and estimation of a major background to SUSY searches. Another key physics venue is the reconstruction of heavily boosted objects through jet substructure which is a distinctive new high energy playground at the LHC. Many tools are developed for use in these analyses, and for use by the collaboration as a whole, such as an algorithm which matches clusters of tracks with jets in the calorimeter, studies of jet calibration, b-tagging, b-jet triggering, and b/c-jet separation. SLAC is a Tier2 computing facility, and provides strong support for data analysis and simulation efforts.
Detector
The group plays a major role in the operation of the Pixel detector, building on SLAC's long experience in silicon detector technology. We are also very involved in the triggers and data-acquisition (TDAQ) system, working on the TDAQ software and infrastructure, as well as high-level triggers and online beam spot. SLAC is also a leading force in the muon Cathode Strip Chamber readout effort. We contribute strongly to the simulation software, with expertise in GEANT4 modeling. SLAC is also proposing major roles in several projects that will address the planned ATLAS upgrades, including the pixel Insertable B-Layer upgrade, future tracking upgrade and TDAQ upgrades based on cutting-edge serial I/O + FPGA technology.
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