Studying Higgs Bosons and Forward Particles at the ATLAS Experiment

The ATLAS Experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN studies a variety of processes through measuring the particles created by high energy proton collisions.

Measuring the creation of Higgs boson pairs probes the shape of the Higgs potential. I am searching for Higgs boson pairs in the decay channel where the Higgs bosons decay to b-quarks. I am developing the background modeling strategy and machine-learning based event classifier for the boosted topology, where the Higgs bosons are energetic enough that the resulting jets (collimated particle sprays resulting from quarks) are Lorentz boosted enough that they overlap in the detector. I am also studying a set of special data in which the high voltage across regions of the ATLAS Forward Calorimeter was reduced to mimic the effects of charged particle buildup in the detector. This work is illuminating challenges from the large particle flux anticipated at the future High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC). Understanding these effects is critical to measuring the energy of forward particles in the HL-LHC, including those from forward jets – a signature of certain Higgs boson and Higgs boson pair production modes.