Probing Fundamental Interactions with the CMS Experiment

The properties of the fundamental building blocks of nature will be studied using data collected from proton-proton collisions at the highest achievable energies at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. The data will be used to study the properties of the Higgs Boson and search for signs of new physics using artificial intelligence techniques to extract the most information from the data. The Large Hadron Collider will be upgraded to produce more intense proton-proton collisions and the detectors at the Large Hadron Collider will be upgraded to handle the higher data rates. The Experimental Particle Physics group at Cornell is leading the detector construction for these upgrades. These projects involve both graduate and undergraduate students, training them in advanced techniques for data analysis and detector development. The data collected by the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment will be analyzed to study the properties of the Higgs Boson. In particular studies of the H->Zgamma decay and di-Higgs production in the bbgg channel and searches for physics beyond the SM with long lived particles with displaced vertices are pursued. The Cornell group is leading the NSF upgrades of the CMS detector. Specifically, the group is involved with the forward pixel detector and the track trigger. The forward pixel detector will extend the tracking coverage in the forward region and the track trigger will provide tracking information from all proton-proton collisions at a rate of 40 MHz. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.