High Energy Experimental Research

Particle physics investigates the structure of matter and the forms of its interactions. In the search for the basic constituents at the smallest possible scale, one has to reach with the highest available energies.

Experimental particle physics is usually the realm of international efforts in large collaborations of physicists around complex detectors at particle colliders. The McGill experimental high energy groups are actively involved in some of those leading edge ventures.

To reach the McGill Experimental High Energy Physics pages, click on the icon:

ATLAS at CERN

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is located at the CERN laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. It collides protons at a centre-of-mass energy of up to 14 TeV, the highest collision energy ever achieved in laboratory. The LHC offers a broad range of physics opportunities and enormous potential, such as the Higgs boson discovery in 2012. The ATLAS experiment studies and challenges the Standard Model of particle physics and e.g. its Quantum Chromodynamics component in excruciating details. Searches for new phenomena such as dark matter, large extra dimensions, supersymmetric particles, etc. are also being carried out.

Faculty group members: François Corriveau Brigitte Vachon, Steven Robertson and Andreas Warburton

Belle II at KEK

The KEK laboratory in Japan is host to the Belle II detector. Thanks to the copious production of B-mesons, Belle II is testing the Standard Model description of CP violation as one of the origins for the observed dominance of matter over anti-matter in our present universe. It will also provide a unique probe of New Physics.

Faculty group members: Steven Robertson and Andreas Warburton

Linear Collider Projects

The next generation of accelerators will be electron-positron machines. In the linear acceleration mode, bremsstrahlung of the accelerated particles is avoided and extremely high particle-on-particle energies are reached. The foreseen International Linear Collider (ILC) would become a Higgs factory. The detectors are being designed around Particle Flow Algorithm concepts. Novel high granularity calorimeters are being developed by the CALICE collaboration to satisfy the extreme requirements.

Faculty group member: François Corriveau

Interdisciplinary Research

Experimental Gamma Ray Astrophysics

A McGill groups applies experimental high energy physics methods to gamma-ray astrophysics. Very high energy gamma rays are of great interest since they are generated in non-thermal processes and give insight into violent astrophysical processes. Sources can be for example supernova remnants, pulsar wind nebulae, X-ray binary systems in our own galaxy or cosmologically distant, such as active galactic nuclei. The VERITAS detector, in southern Arizona, consists of four 12-m diameter telescopes which collect and measure the Cherenkov light radiated by the relativistic particles in air-showers caused when very-high-energy (~ 100 GeV - 10 TeV) gamma rays interact in the upper atmosphere.

Faculty group members: David Hanna and Ken Ragan

Neutrino physics

Recent observations of neutrino oscillations proved that neutrinos have mass. The mechanism by which neutrinos acquire their tiny masses remains a mystery, but they could arise from new physics beyond the Standard Model. The EXO-200 experiment is currently searching for the existence of 0νββ decays in ~175 kg liquid Xe and is operated at the WIPP underground facility in New Mexico, USA. Development of the next generation of this low background experiment, nEXO, has started. nEXO is being designed as a multi-ton scale time-projection chamber to continue the search.

Faculty group member: Thomas Brunner

Particle Physics Applications

Techniques and methods of particle physics are growing in scope and are making considerable impact in other fields, like medicine, astrophysics and cosmology. Particle physics has always pushed and stimulated developments of high technology, electronics and computing. Their effects are best seen in e.g. the establishment of the World Wide Web at CERN, open source methods of programming or innovative uses of special materials in detectors.

To reach the McGill Experimental High Energy Physics pages, click on the icon: