Research Group: Particle Physics Research Centre Number of Students: 1 Length of Study in Years: 3-4 Full-time Project: no
The differential cross section of the Drell-Yan (q+qbar--> Z/gamma --> mu+mu-) process in the di-muon mass allows a precise test of the perturbative QCD to me made. At low invariant mass of the muons the cross section is sensitive to a novel region of kinematic phase space, namely low momentum fractions (x) of the incoming quark with respect to the proton's momentum. A value of x below 10^-4 is attainable and in this region we may expect new QCD effects to appear which could be related to the onset of QCD confinement - an unsolved problem in particle physics. The measurement suffers from a very large background arising from muons from b and c quark meson decays. A detailed understanding and suppression of this background is essential.
Publications from my previous work in this area: 10.1007/JHEP06(2014)112
PhD Theses from my previous students:
Student expected to travel frequently to Geneva, and possibly spent 1 year at CERN depending on funding. Excellent programming skills in C++, python, linux/unix
SPCS Academics: Eram Rizvi