The US ATLAS Collaboration held its annual workshop at the University of Michigan on August 13-15, 2012. This meeting is used to review the status of current measurements at the Large Hadron Collider being made using data collected by the ATLAS detector. Several Duke students presented results of ATLAS research topics they have been working on during the summer of 2012: Will DiClemente, Josh Loyal, Chris Pollard and Meg Shea. The photo at right shows the students with their faculty advisors Profs. Al Goshaw and Ashutosh Kotwal. Results were presented on Duke research on new electroweak SM tests (quartic couplings), Higgs boson searches (H -> Zg), searches for top quark resonances and other measurements that test Standard Model theory using 7 and 8 TeV proton-proton collisions. Research projects were presented by students and post docs in a poster session, and reviewed by a panel of senior physicists who judged the research content and an oral presentation of the research project. We were very pleased that one of undergraduate students, Will DiClemente, received the Outstanding Poster Award for his measurements of the production of a W boson with two high energy photons, and an analysis that searches for the quartic WWgg coupling predicted by the Standard Model. See the attached photo of Will with his winning poster. Will started this project in the summer of 2012 and will continue research this fall working with Prof. Al Goshaw and graduate student Mia Liu. This research will use 8 TeV proton-proton data collected by the ATLAS detector. The goal is a first measurement of an electroweak quartic coupling that is predicted by the Standard Model. This measurement will be used by Will for his senior thesis.
Department of Physics
