Accepting PhD Students

PhD projects

Below are some examples of possible PhD projects.

Title: Searching for new physics in electroweak penguin decays

Data analysis has in recent years shown up a number of surprising measurements in the decays of b-hadrons with leptons in the final state. The so-called electroweak penguin decays are very sensitive to as-yet undiscovered new heavy particles and the measurements might be the sign of the next break-through in particle physics. In JHEP09(2024)026, we implemented a new method that better takes into account theoretical uncertainties. In the project we will apply this method to the very large datasets that will be obtained from run 3 of the Large Hadron Collider.

In the project, you will analyse data from the LHCb experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. Advanced computational techniques involving multi-threading, machine learning and multi-dimensional optimisation will be tools that you will become familiar with a develop. Travel to CERN in Geneva will also be a part of the PhD.

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Title: Precision timing of Cherenkov light for optimising detectors and accelerators

The advancement of Silicon Photon Diodes have made it possible to detect Cherenkov light cheaply and with excellent resolution in the arrival time of the photons. Cherenkov light is emitted when charged particles pass through material above the local speed of light. The effect can be used for a time of flight detector at the upgrade of the LHCb experiment and can also be used to characterise beams in accelerators and thus improve performance.

In the project we will look at developing this method better through a collaboration with the ANSTO that runs the Australian Synchrotron. You will hus get the possibility to develop instrumentation both here in Australia as well as at CERN in Geneva where the Large Hadron Collider is located.
Travel to CERN in Geneva will be a part of the PhD.

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Title: Development of jet flavour tagging at a electron-positron collider

The next large collider to be built in the world will most likely be an electron-positron collider that will function as a Higgs and Z0 boson factory. One of the most exciting data analyses to carry out there will be to measure the couplings of the Higgs bosons to quarks from the first and second generation. However, this is super challenging as the Higgs boson coupling in the Standard Model is proportional to mass (and the first and second generation quarks are very light).

In the project we will look at how algorithms can be developed and detectors designed to optimise the measurement of the Higgs couplings. One of the particular aspects to look at is how those algorithms can be calibrated. This might have direct impact on the design of the detectors. Travel to CERN in Geneva and/or Beijing will be part of the PhD.

1998 …2024

Research activity per year

Personal profile

Research interests

  • Experimental High Energy Physics
  • Search for phenomena not described by the Standard Model of particle physics
  • Application of artificial intelligence in real-time processing and data selection
  • Flavour tagging at a electron-positron collider
  • Phenomenology of electroweak penguin decays
  • Detector developments for upgrades of the LHCb detector
  • Applications of Cherenkov light detection at acellerators.

Supervision interests

  • Particle physics analysis using machine learning on data from the LHCb experiment
  • Detector upgrades for the future of particle physics
  • Development of jet flavour tagging for an electron-positron collider
  • Use of Cherenkov light for optimising accelerator performance.

Biography

My full publication list can be found in Inspire. My h-index as taken from there is 155. My most important publications are given below

  1. LHCb collaboration, Determination of the quark coupling strength |V ub | using baryonic decays, Nature Phys. 11 (2015) 743, arXiv:1504.01568. 97 citations. This paper arose from discussions with theorists in 2012. By developing new techniques for reconstruction of semileptonic decays and working in close collaboration with the leader of the associated Lattice QCD calculation a world leading measurement of |Vub| was made with completely different systematic effects compared to the existing ones.
  2. U. Egede, T. Hurth, J. Matias, M. Ramon, and W. Reece, On the new physics reach of the decay mode B0 → K∗0μ+μ- , JHEP 11 (2008) 032, arXiv:0807.2589 220 citations. In collaboration with theorists from CERN and Barcelona, I led an effort on new methods for extracting Wilson Coefficients in the B0 → K∗0μ+μ- decay. The paper was important to this area as it for the first time made a systematic evaluation of how to combine theoretical and experimental information in the most optimal way to further the understanding of how contributions to physics beyond the Standard Model might affect the decay.
  3. T. Blake, U. Egede, P. Owen, K. Petridis, G. Pomery. An empirical model to determine the hadronic resonance contributions to B0 → K∗0μ+μ- transitions, EPJC 78 (2018) 6, 453, arXiv:1709.03921. In this paper we developed an experimental method for determining the non-factorisable effects that has limited the ability of using Penguin decays in the search for New Physics.
  4. LHCb collaboration. Comprehensive analysis of local and nonlocal amplitudes in the B0→ K*0μ+μ decay. JHEP 09 (2024) 026, arXiv:2405.17347. Here we implemented the model that was developed in 3. using LHCb data from 2011 to 2018. This is arguably one of the most complex analyses ever carried out in flavour physics. The conclusion is that while non-factorisable effects can explain some of the difference between Standard Model expectations and the experiments, it can't explain everything. There is thus still hope for that New Physics will be revealed in thse type of decays and the methdology is now developed to clarify it.

Education/Academic qualification

Experimental High Energy Physics, PhD, The search for a Standard Model Higgs at the LHC and electron identification using transition radiation in the ATLAS tracker, Lunds Universitet (Lund University)

Award Date: 19 Jan 1998

Research area keywords

  • Particle Physics
  • Machine Learning
  • Cherenkov light

Collaborations and top research areas from the last five years

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