Oklahoma State High Energy Physics

OSU HEP Home page

Welcome to the website of the High Energy Physics Group at Oklahoma State University!

The aim of our research is to explain and explore Nature at her most basic level. Our current knowledge of elementary particles and their interactions (excluding gravity) is the Standard Model of particle physics. Originally developed in the 1970s, the Standard Model is one of the most extensively tested theories in physics. However, despite its success, the Standard Model cannot be the complete theory of the Universe. It does not include gravity, has no explanation for dark matter content of the Universe, and has no mechanism to generate neutrino masses. In addition, it fails to provide insight into questions like why there are three generations of fermions, why the neutrinos are so light, why the top quark is so heavy, etc. Our goal is to address these shortcomings by developing and testing well motivated extensions to the Standard Model.

Our theoretical research is focused on testing the Standard Model of particle physics, as well as suggesting and probing theories that go beyond the Standard Model. Our work spans a broad range of topics including Higgs physics, Neutrino physics, Unification of Forces, Dark Matter, and QCD. The group focuses on phenomenological explorations at the Energy Frontier, especially with the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and at the Intensity Frontier, especially with the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE).

Our experimental program is involved in both measurements of known particles, like the top-quark, and searches for new particles, like charged Higgs bosons, additional quarks, or leptoquarks. Our research is carried out using the ATLAS detector at CERN (and previously the DO̸ (DZero) experiment at Fermilab). Our group has been involved in the construction of the optical readout of the IBL upgraded to the ATLAS Pixel system and the upgrade to the online monitoring software for the ATLAS Pixel system. We are also involved in the development and calibration of the b-tagging algorithms and studies of jet substructure on ATLAS.
ATLAS Public Webpage
ATLAS Collaboration Webpage

For anyone who's a bit rusty in particle physics, we encourage you to take The Particle Adventure, an award-winning interactive tour of the sub-atomic world.