Skip to main content Skip to main navigation Skip to footer content

Department of Physics

High Energy Physics (HEP) :

The High Energy Physics (HEP) group at Fresno State studies the properties of the most fundamental constituents of matter at accelerator based experiments. We are members of the ATLAS ( http://atlas.ch) experiment of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) (http://public.web.cern.ch/public/) in Geneva, Switzerland and the D0 ( http://www-d0.fnal.gov/) experiment of the Tevatron collider at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (http://www.fnal.gov/) in Batavia, Illinois. Tevatron, which collides proton and antiprotons at 2 TeV, has been the energy frontier in the world for many years. LHC, which will start in 2008 and collide proton and proton at 14 TeV, will be the world's new energy frontier until at least 2020. With its unprecedented colliding energy and luminosity, the goal of LHC is to search for new physics beyond the current known physics frame work. Scientist's expectations for discoveries at the LHC include the Higgs particle (nicknamed the ``God particle" by Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Lederman) which is responsible for the origin of mass, supersymmetry (SUSY), dark matter, extra dimensions, and many other new physics scenarios. The ATLAS (A Toroidal LHC Apparatus) experiment of the LHC is designed to search for such possible new physics. The Fresno State ATLAS group has been working on new analysis method to search for new physics at LHC, ATLAS performance studies, and preparation to search for new physics with first incoming ATLAS data. More details can be found in the web pages of Professor Yongsheng Gao and Professor Ray Hall.

ATLAS Research Work by Faculty & Staff:

Develop new jet substructure and superstructure variables, including color-connection variables for new physic searches (2010 to present by Dr. Lowe and Prof. Gao): Talks at the ATLAS Standard Model, Higgs and Exotics Working Groups since 2011.

New physics searches with dijets in final state from ATLAS data (2010 to present by Dr. Bawa): Talks at the ATLAS Jet and Exotics Working Groups since 2010. Published at New J. Physics 13 053044 (2011)

Support ATLAS Event Data Model (EDM) in the trigger (2011 to present by Dr. Lowe): Talks at the ATLAS Trigger Core Software working group meetings since 2011.

Liaison for JetEtMiss and Physics Analysis Tools (PAT) working groups (2010 to present by Dr. Bawa): Talks at the ATLAS Jet/Etmiss working group meetings since 2011.

Build up the first cloud-based Tier 3 computing cluster for US ATLAS (2011 to present by Prof. Lin with CS faculty and Ph.D students from Chinese research universities)

W/Z and egamma work (2009 to 2010 by Dr. Bawa, Prof. Gao and graduate student Brent Wilson): Talks at North America e/gamma working group meetings.

ATLAS performance studies, Particle identification (PID) fake rates using reflections of known physics processes from incoming real ATLAS data and their impacts on ATLAS physics (2006 to 2008 by Prof. Gao): Talks at the ATLAS Standard Model, Higgs, Exotics, Electron/Photon, Jet/EtMiss, and Tau Working Groups from 2006 to 2008.

Significance calculation and a new analysis method in searching for new physics at the LHC (2005 to 2006 by Prof. Gao): Talks at the ATLAS Higgs Working Group in 2005 and 2007. Published in European Physical Journal C45, 659 (2006).

Electron/Pion Separation with LAr Barrel Module P15 using 2002 Testbeam Data (2002 to 2003 by Prof. Gao): ATLAS Note: ATL-LARG-2003-013, published in Nucl. Instrum. Meth. A550, 96 (2005)

Recent News and Stories about Fresno State's ATLAS Program:

Story on Sep. 22, 2008 at The Collegian

Channel 30 News interview on Sep. 10, 2008

Fresno Bee article on Aug. 5, 2008

Stories on FresnoStateNews.com:

Fresno State participates in historic particle collider research

Fresno State joins exploration of new frontiers in physics

ATLAS Research Projects by CSU Students