Victoria Martin Inaugural Lecture: The Higgs Era - a decade of the Higgs boson

Abstract

It's 11 years since the announcement of the discovery of the Higgs boson; once you have a Higgs boson it decays in 10-25 seconds. So why is the Higgs boson still so interesting to physicists? In this lecture, I will introduce the fundamentals our current understanding of the building blocks of our Universe, how these are studied at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, and explain how Higgs bosons are created in the LHC. I will share some of the discoveries we have made about the Higgs boson - and explain why we still have much to understand about this celebrated particle, even if it doesn't hang around for too long.

Biography

Victoria Martin studied at the University of Edinburgh obtaining a BSc in Mathematical Physics (1996 - where she had lectures from Professor Peter Higgs), followed by PhD in experimental particle physics (2000). For her PhD, she collaborated on the NA48 experiment at CERN, measuring the difference between matter and anti-matter.  After a postdoc at Northwestern University working on the CDF experiment at the TeVatron collider at Fermilab, Victoria returned to Edinburgh in 2005 to be a SUPA lecturer, then Reader and now Professor of Collider Physics.  Victoria's research focuses on the Higgs boson at the ATLAS experiment at the LHC.  Victoria now co-leads the Edinburgh Particle Physics Experiment research group of over 50 physicists and tries to make the School of Physics & Astronomy a more inclusive and diverse place for everyone to engage with the physics that describes our Universe.

Refreshments

The lecture will be followed by a wine and canapés reception outside the Yew Lecture Theatre, Nucleus Building.

Event resources