Research

Search for new physics with the ATLAS detector

Despite of its great success in describing the world of elementary particles, the Standard Model (SM) does not explain all known phenomena. Gravity is perhaps the most familiar example; other ones are the dark-matter puzzle, neutrino masses, unification of forces, the "naturalness" problem related to the large energy gap between electroweak symmetry breaking and the Plank scale, baryon asymmetry, the flavor puzzle, etc. These indicate that the SM is not a complete theory of nature - suggesting at the necessity of its extension. Using the data that are being collected by the ATLAS experiment, we are looking for evidence for physics beyond the SM.

Novel radiation detectors for physics and civil applications

Progress in particle, nuclear and astroparticle physics relies very much on progress in radiation detector physics. Our focus is on the research and development of cost-effective new gaseous detector concepts suitable for large area applications. Such detectors are attractive solutions also for various civil applications in the medical and homeland security fields.

Upgrade of the ATLAS muon spectrometer

The foreseen upgrade of the LHC accelerator aims at improving its collision rate (aka luminosity). The increase in luminosity is unavoidably accompanied by elevated background rates. The ATLAS muon system upgrade program requires detectors that can operate under high background radiation and measure the position of a muon within 25 ns. This will provide ATLAS with an excellent ‘Level-1 trigger’ (real time, hardware-based, selection of ‘interesting’ events).
We are building a new generation of Thin Gap Chambers (TGC) for this purpose.