ATLAS
ATLAS is a general-purpose particle physics experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. ATLAS is designed to exploit the full discovery potential of the LHC, pushing the frontiers of scientific knowledge. ATLAS' exploration uses precision measurement to push the frontiers of knowledge by seeking answers to fundamental questions such as: What are the basic building blocks of matter? What are the fundamental forces of nature? What is dark matter made of?
The ATLAS Edinburgh group worked on the Higgs boson announced in July 2012. The Higgs boson particle is named afterPeter Higgs, Emeritus Professor at the University of Edinburgh. Peter Higgs and François Englert were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics on 8th October 2013, “for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles”. Ten years after the discovery of the Higgs boson in July 2022, we celebrated with a public event at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
We continue to work on Higgs physics, making precision measurements of Higgs boson properties, as well as searching for new phenomena, including long-lived particles, heavy neutral leptons and dark photons.
A simulated proton-proton collision within ATLAS
The ATLAS Edinburgh group is led by Prof. Phil Clark, Prof. Sinead Farrington, Dr. Yanyan Gao and Prof. Christos Leonidopoulos, and Prof. Victoria Martin.
Research interests
Our group consists of around 25 researchers, contributes to the following areas:
- Higgs boson analyses - measuring the properties of the recently-discovered Higgs boson
- Exotic particle searches- searching for new particles not predicted by the Standard Model
- Forward pixel detector- developing and building an upgrade for the charged particle tracking detector
- Detector simulation - improving the tools used to simulate the performance of the ATLAS detector
- High-Level Trigger - improving the performance of the ATLAS trigger software
External Links
PhD project opportunities in ATLAS
People in ATLAS
Telephone numbers in the list below are shown as UK numbers. Callers from outside the UK should remove the leading zero and use the UK country code (+44).
| Name | Position | Contact details | Location | Photo |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Academic staff | ||||
| Philip Clark | Professor | P.Clark [at] ed.ac.uk | JCMB 3421 |  |
| Sinead Farrington | Professor | sinead.farrington [at] ed.ac.uk | JCMB 3418 |  |
| Yanyan Gao | Reader | yanyan.gao [at] ed.ac.uk | JCMB 3407 |  |
| Christos Leonidopoulos | Personal Chair of Experimental Particle Physics | Christos.Leonidopoulos [at] ed.ac.uk | JCMB 3408 |  |
| Victoria Martin | Professor | victoria.martin [at] ed.ac.uk | JCMB 3416 |  |
| Research staff | ||||
| Sara Alderweireldt | Postdoctoral Research Associate | sara.alderweireldt [at] ed.ac.uk | JCMB 3404 | |
| Julia Cardoso Silva | ATLAS PDRA | julia.manuela.silva [at] ed.ac.uk | JCMB 3418 | |
| Dominik Duda | Postdoctoral Research Fellow | dduda [at] ed.ac.uk | JCMB 4325a | |
| Karl Ehatäht | ATLAS Postdoctoral Research Associate | karl.ehataht [at] ed.ac.uk | JCMB 4325a | |
| Stephan Eisenhardt | Senior Research Fellow | s.eisenhardt [at] ed.ac.uk | JCMB 3412 |  |
| Liza Mijovic | Senior Research Associate | liza.mijovic [at] ed.ac.uk | JCMB 3417 |  |
| Santiago Paredes Saenz | Postdoctoral Research Associate - ATLAS | santiago.paredes.saenz [at] ed.ac.uk | JCMB 3418 | |
| Tong Qiu | Postdoctoral Research Associate | Tong.Qiu [at] ed.ac.uk | JCMB 4325a | |
| Alex Sopio | ATLAS Postdoctoral Research Associate | asopio [at] ed.ac.uk | JCMB 4325a | |
| Harriet Watson | ATLAS Postdoctoral Research Associate | Harriet.Watson [at] ed.ac.uk | JCMB 4235A | |
| Benjamin Wynne | Lecturer in Experimental Particle Physics | b.m.wynne [at] ed.ac.uk | JCMB 3414 |  |
| Zhongyukun Xu | Postdoctoral Research Associate | Zhongyukun.Xu [at] ed.ac.uk | JCMB 3416 | |
| Other staff | ||||
| Bojan Masic | Senior Electronics Research Technician | Bojan.Masic [at] ed.ac.uk | JCMB 3412 | |
| Jon Webster | Senior Research Group Technician | j.webster [at] ed.ac.uk | JCMB 3404 |  |
| Research postgraduates | ||||
| Julia Allen | Postgraduate Student | Julia.Allen [at] ed.ac.uk | JCMB | |
| Jennifer Curran | Postgraduate Student | Jennifer.Curran [at] ed.ac.uk | JCMB | |
| Richards González | Postgraduate Student | r.y.gonzalez [at] sms.ed.ac.uk | JCMB 3305 | |
| Cheng Jiang | Postgraduate Student | C.Jiang-19 [at] sms.ed.ac.uk | JCMB 3305 | |
| Muhammad Firdaus Mohd Soberi | Postgraduate Student | firdaus.soberi [at] ed.ac.uk | JCMB 4325A | |
| Fuat Ustuner | Postgraduate Student | f.ustuner [at] sms.ed.ac.uk | JCMB 3305 |  |
| Elena Villhauer | Postgraduate Student | E.M.Villhauer [at] sms.ed.ac.uk | JCMB 5301 | |