Physics Club: Sarah Demers, Yale University, “ATLAS at the 13 TeV LHC: 2015 Performance and Results”

Event time: 
Monday, March 7, 2016 - 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Location: 
Sloane Physics Laboratory (SPL), 57 See map
217 Prospect St.
New Haven, CT 06511
(Location is wheelchair accessible)
Event description: 

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) turned back on in 2015 with a center-of-mass-energy jump from 8 TeV to 13 TeV after almost two years of being shut-down for upgrades and repairs. The ATLAS experiment came online with several detector improvements and a slate of new challenges associated with higher energies and new operating conditions. We now have a year of data in-hand. Several dozen analyses have been released that probe the standard model of particle physics and/or directly search for physics beyond it. In this talk I will present these results, which include an enticing hint of a resonance at 750 GeV seen in di-photon events by both the ATLAS and CMS Collaborations. I’ll also discuss the 2015 detector performance with my “data quality co-convener” hat on, reporting on my eight months at CERN, and outline what we can expect over the next few years of running at the LHC.