About the US/LHC Project

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland is opening new vistas on the deepest secrets of the universe, stretching the imagination with newly discovered forms of matter, forces of nature, and dimensions of space. This site provides general information about the Large Hadron Collider and detailed information about American participation in the LHC accelerator and experiments. U.S. LHC participation is supported by the US Department of Energy's Office of Science and the National Science Foundation.

A proton-proton collision event in the CMS experiment producing two high-energy photons (red towers). This is what we would expect to see from the decay of a Higgs boson but it is also consistent with background Standard Model physics processes. (Courtesy: CERN)

Home > The US and the LHC > Collaborating Institutions > Indiana University

Indiana University

Four physicists with large complicated structure in background

H. Ogren, S. Subramania, K. Egorov, P. Gagnon in front of the inner detector before installation. Image courtesy of Indiana University

The High Energy Physics group within the Physics Department has been participating in the ATLAS experiment since 1998. The group was responsible for the management of construction for the Transition Radiation Tracker Barrel and for testing of completed Barrel components at CERN. About half of the components for the Barrel were assembled in our cleanroom facilities in Bloomington, Indiana. The tracking aspects of the TRT barrel involve drift tubes. Our group has a long history of constructing and using this type of tracking chamber at a number of experiments in the United States, prior to the LHC, so our involvement in this part of the ATLAS inner detector was quite natural. During the construction phase in 2002- 2006 we had more than 20 engineers, technicians, students, and physicists working on the project. The challenge of constructing a detector that will survive the high radiation environment and accurately measure the positions of hundreds of tracks in each event is exciting and continues to be a hardware focus of our group.

Man kneeling in cylindrical metal structure

Kirill Egorov with completed TRT Barrel. Image courtesy of Indiana University

At present we have three teaching faculty, three research faculty, two postdoctoral physicists, three students, and an engineer working on the project. We expect that our commitment will grow in the coming years, as more students and postdoctoral physicists join the group.

In addition to the commitment to maintain and monitor the performance of the tracking detector, we are working on a number of analysis projects. These include searching for an invisible decay mode of the Higgs and searching for indications of extra dimensions. We anticipate that we will add analysis areas in the next year as we begin data taking and new, exciting avenues of research are discovered.