The Experimental High Energy Physics Program in Qatar Grant uri icon

abstract

  • In 2012, a team of researchers from the Texas A&M University at Qatar and their colleagues at the main campus in College Station has started a new research program in Qatar in the area of experimental High Energy Physics (HEP). Despite being just three years old, the new effort succeeded in making strong contributions to the international HEP research at the energy frontier carried out at the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). With the support of the QNRF 2012-2015 NPRP program, we made key contributions in two major areas, the R&D of novel particle detector technologies and the analysis of the LHC data searching for clues to the origin of the astrophysical dark matter (DM). Our R&D efforts have been focusing on the new gaseous detectors utilizing the Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) technology. Our team played a central role in the work that led to the CMS collaboration adopting this new technology for the upgrade of its forward muon system. The proposal for the new GE1/1 detector system has been approved by the LHC Council in 2015 making GE1/1 the first project of the about $300M CMS Phase-2 Upgrade Program. The installation of the first large size prototype of the system within the CMS detector is planned for 2017 followed by the full installation in 2019-2020. Our roles in this project and the funding support of QNRF have been widely recognized by the international community as key factors in the success of this work. Members of the group hold key leadership positions in the international CMS GEM project. In addition to its contributions to a broad range of physics studies carried out by the CMS experiment over the last three years, our group has taken leadership roles in two separate studies searching the LHC data for the evidence of new particles and interactions that could hold keys to understanding the nature of the DM in the Universe. The first study searched for production of new â hiddenâ light bosons in the decays of the recently discovered Higgs boson in the four muon final state. In the second one, the group conducted the search for direct production of dark matter particles using events with two leptons and two jets in the vector boson fusion (VBF) topology. Both searches are the first studies of their type providing increased sensitivity to new physics. While no statistically significant signs of either type of production has been found with current data, the results put stringent limits on the models aiming to explain the origin of the dark matter and reconcile our knowledge with the cosmological and astrophysical observations. Both analyses have just been accepted for publication, the first one in Phys. Lett. B and the second one in Journal of High Energy Physics. In the past 3 years, eight undergraduate Qatari students have participated in research activities of our group, learning new skills and gaining an invaluable research experience. Two of the students have worked at CERN on the test beam data taking and analysis, both have chosen to pursue careers in physics poised to become the future generation of HEP researchers in Qatar. We are working on establishing the Qatar HEP Consortium that will bring together experts and scientists from multiple Qatari institutions and will serve as the gateway for international collaborative activities with CERN and other international centers. This proposal aims to build on our recent successes and to further strengthen and expand our activities.........

date/time interval

  • 2016 - 2019