Discipline: Physics
Subcategory: Physics (not Nanoscience)
Abasi Brown - North Carolina Central University
The ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider is searching for evidence of the production of particles not predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. If such a particle were to be discovered, collision data would be used to determine its intrinsic properties, such as its rest mass, charge, and spin. This project investigates hypothetical particles produced in hardon collisions that decay to a Z boson and a photon, where the Z boson decays to a quark-antiquark pair, using simulated proton-proton collisions at center-of-mass energy 13 TeV. By studying the decay angles of the quarks in the rest frame of the Z bosons, what can we learn about the spin of the parent particle? Would assumptions regarding its spin affect our ability to discover it?
Funder Acknowledgement(s): TUNL REU Program Dr. Ayana Arce- Duke University Physics Dept. / HEP (advisor) Dr. Diane Markoff- TUNL / NCCU Physics Dept. (advisor, financial support) Dr. Caesar Jackson - NCCU Dream STEM Project (financial support, room and board) Dr. Mohammed Ahmed - NCCU DOE Grant (financial support)
Faculty Advisor: Diane Markoff, dmarkoff@nccu.edu
Role: I wrote a macro that was a able to identify the hardonization jets that resulted from the production of the quark pairs prodeuce by the Z-boson.