Mehul Depala

My background in Physics begins with a BSc in Theoretical Physics at Queen Mary; completing a Bachelor’s thesis on Kaluza-Klein

theory, an early attempt at unifying gravity and electromagnetism through the use of small extra dimensions. I proceeded to study at Imperial College London pursuing the MSc in the Quantum Fields and Fundament Forces; the Master’s dissertation project studied various novel models of dark matter whose abundance is locked in during a period of inflation in the early universe. This project involved calculating density perturbations from the dark matter and comparing to experimental data from CMB.

I am now a PhD student in the ATLAS group at Liverpool and part of the 2023 LIV.INNO cohort. As part of the authorship qualifying project at ATLAS, I have been working on Tau identification algorithms, focusing particularly on validating and improving the performance of Graph Neural Network (GNN)–based approaches. These algorithms are being developed to enhance the efficiency and accuracy of identifying hadronically decaying tau leptons.

In parallel, my main thesis involves a search for Leptoquarks (LQs) — hypothetical Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) particles motivated by the desire to explain underlying symmetries in the Standard Model (SM). There are several experimental motivations for such searches, including flavour physics anomalies observed by LHCb, BaBar, and Belle, as well as potential explanations for the muon g−2 anomaly and neutrino mass generation. The analysis aims to exploit the larger Run III dataset, the higher centre-of-mass energy (CoM), and the improved flavour and tau tagging algorithms, along with a dedicated phase-space search strategy, to enhance the sensitivity and extend the current exclusion limits.

I am currently based at CERN as part of my Long-Term Attachment (LTA), where I am actively engaged in both research and outreach activities. I contribute by guiding tours of the CERN facilities and participating in high-school summer schools, helping to communicate particle physics to a broader audience. Additionally, I am directly involved in ATLAS Run III data-taking, performing shifts at the Run Control and Muon desks. These responsibilities are essential to ensuring the high efficiency and data quality required for optimal operation of the ATLAS detector.