This award funds the research activities of Professor Tim Stelzer at the University of Illinois.
After nearly 20 years of planning and construction, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is now the highest-energy particle collider in the world. Data from the LHC is likely to lead to nothing less than a new "Standard Model" for the next generation of particle physicists, describing the fundamental building blocks of matter and their interactions at an even higher energy scale. In his research, Professor Stelzer aims to develop methods to improve the efficiency by which new theories beyond the Standard Model might be tested at the LHC. This class of new theories includes those in which the symmetries of the Standard Model are augmented by a so-called "supersymmetry" relating particles of different spins to each other. Typically, once a new theory has been identified as interesting, it may take a team of researchers a year or more to complete the calculations necessary to determine how this theory could be tested at the LHC. Methods developed and implemented by this award aim to reduce that time from years to days, dramatically increasing the range of new physics that can be studied as the LHC data is collected.
This project will also have significant broader impacts. Professor Stelzer will involve graduate students and postdocs in his research, and thereby provide critical training to junior physicists beginning research in this field. He also intends to give public lectures on his research results, and develop new learning materials for undergraduate students based on results from the LHC.
