PhD Defenses

PHYSICS PHD DISSERTATION DEFENSE: James Black

Date
Thu February 8th 2018, 10:00am
Location
Madrone conference room at SLAC (Bldg 48, Room 224)

Ph.D. Candidate:  James Black
Research Advisor:  Su Dong
 
Date: Thursday, February 8, 2018
Time: 10:00 AM - 12:30 PM
Location: Madrone conference room at SLAC (Bldg 48, Room 224)
 
Title: Search for Quirks with the ATLAS Detector at the LHC
 
Abstract:
 
"Quirks" are hypothetical stable massive particles which are bound by a QCD-like confining force. If the mass of the particles is much larger than the confinement scale of the force, the string fragmentation that occurs in QCD will be suppressed. If the quirks also couple to Standard Model gauge fields, they can be pair produced at the LHC, and if they are electrically charged (or combine with quarks forming a charged hadron), they can deposit energy in detectors. Instead of taking the usual helical paths through the detector, a pair of quirks would oscillate about their center of mass, forming a pair of zig-zag paths which, in large parts of the parameter space, will not be reconstructed well by standard tracking algorithms. A specialized search for these exotic tracks can improve our discovery reach for such particles. I will present a search for quirks using data collected at the LHC's ATLAS detector.