Physics stuff

Context

This page describes some of the experimental results and studies from my DPhil and Post-Doc, both of which I did as part of the Oxford University Particle Physics group. I migrated these pages from my Physics site.

ATLAS Higgs to tau tau result for HCP

The inexorable increase of LHC collisions in 2012 was great news for the many ATLAS physics analyses; we certainly made great gains in sensitivity to Higgs production in the tau-tau search channel, you can read all about it in the following link that describes the analysis.

Thesis

My DPhil thesis (PDF and HTML) in all its glory. The main focus of this work was Higgs phenomenology at the LHC and actually conducting Higgs searches using final states with tau leptons at the ATLAS experiment using data collected in 2010 and 2011. I also had a very active role in the Semi-Conductor Tracker (SCT) operations while based at CERN; maintaining and developing the online monitoring software used by the shifters in the ATLAS control room.

ATLAS Higgs to tau tau paper

After many conference notes we finally have a paper on my beloved Higgs to tau tau decay channel using data collected in 2011 at the ATLAS experiment. This public paper actually describes all of the final states in which we looked for evidence of Higgs production via its decay to tau leptons; including the mode for which I did much work; where one tau lepton decays leptonically and the other decays hadronically.

Higgs Phenomenology paper

The subject of this work is Higgs boson production at the LHC. There are several ways in which the SM Higgs can be produced, and due to its expected light mass it may take a large luminosity and the combined results of several analyses to see evidence of its production in the lower rate associated-production mode. In this paper, we evaulated the prevously undiscussed modes where the Higgs boson is produced in association with a weak vector boson or a t t-bar pair, and subsequently decays to a pair of tau leptons.

ATLAS tau performance note: Fake rates

In order to make physics measurements, the event reconstruction and object identification software algorithms had to be very well understood and calibrated. In this work we quantified the mis-identifcation rate of the tau identification algorithms used in ATLAS in three different channels using data collected in 2010.

Physics outreach on a phone: LHSee

The formal description of my outreach project as published in Physics Education. More.