LHC Higgs Group Leadership Role for LIV.DAT Supervisor

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Combined-image showing Higgs candidates from ATLAS (left) and CMS (right)
Image: CERN (http://cds.cern.ch/record/2682792)

Congratulations to LIV.DAT supervisor Dr Nikolaos Rompotis for his new appointment as Coordinator of the Extended Higgs sector subgroup of the LHC Higgs Group. Within LIV.DAT, Dr Nikolaos Rompotis supervises PhD students Adam Ruby and Sean Hughes. Sean’s project focusses on the Mu3e experiment, in which Nikolaos also participates, and this work involves development of the Mu3e simulation software, and also analysis of Mu3e first data. Adam analyses data detected by the ATLAS detector to search for rare Higgs decays involving a dark matter candidate known as Axion. Here, machine learning and big data methods are explored on how they can improve the sensitivity for discovering new particle decays from data collected in data collection period known as Run-II.

The LHC Higgs Group is an effort to bridge theory and experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiments at CERN. The LHC experiments produce a huge amount of data, which needs inputs from the theory community in order to be interpreted, but also to make sure that there isn’t anything worth looking in these data that nobody searched for. The LHC Higgs Group has produced theoretical predictions for the Standard Model Higgs boson that were used in the Higgs boson discovery at the LHC in 2012, as well as theory predictions for more exotic Higgs boson possibilities. The group has issued a series of 4 reports with theoretical predictions that have received several thousands of citations in total and have served as theory resource in most LHC Higgs boson related publications.

Nikolaos’ new leadership role is a two years mandate and deals with recommendations for models in which the Standard Model Higgs sector is extended with more Higgs bosons, such as the “two-Higgs-Doublet model”.