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Despite the striking success of the Standard Model (SM),
there are many unsolved problems such as the large hierarchy in energy
scales, the presence of dark matter throughout the universe,
and the origin of the many fundamental parameters.
While in general we do not know what the relevant energy scale is
for the solution of most of the above problems,
the electroweak scale is pointing us to new phenomena at the TeV scale.
The most direct experimental path to the understanding of such issues
uses particles of the
highest achievable energies. Following this path, our Princeton High
Energy group is deeply involved
with the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the Large Hadron
Collider at CERN.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is a particle accelerator which will
probe the structure matter deeper
than ever before. Due to switch on in 2007, it will ultimately collide
beams of protons at an
energy of 14 TeV .
LHC will have the highest energy and the most intense beams in the world.
Collisions will occur at a rate of 800 million times a second
challenging the trigger system to efficiently
select the interesting events. Collisions will happen at 40Mhz so that
particles from one collision will still
be traveling through the detector when the next collision occurs.
Understanding what happens in these collisions
is the key to the LHC's success.
I am currently involved in the Princeton Project which is responsible
for the measurement and delivery of the
Luminosity to CMS. The real time LHC performance and the overall
normalization to the
physics analyses would be provided by luminosity measurements
based on the forward hadronic calorimeter (HF).
LHC will allow to explore the SM higgs in entire the SM phase space
and search for supersymmetric particles which are constituent of the most
popular extension of the SM. Other exotic models such as extra
dimensions and TeV
scale gravity/strings will also be studied.
Acknowledging the enormous discovery potential of LHC, its likely we
are at the edge of
a revolutionary time for the physics of fundamental particle we all
waited for.
For more information:
Valerie Halyo's Webpage
Valerie Halyo's webpage (OLD)
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