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School of Physical and Chemical Sciences

Measurement of the Drell-Yan cross section

Research Group: Particle Physics Research Centre
Number of Students: 1
Length of Study in Years: 3-4
Full-time Project: no

Funding

Discuss with supervisor and/or admissions tutor

Project Description

The Drell-Yan process is an important tool in understanding the dynamics of quarks and gluons in the proton. The process is q + qbar --> Z --> e+e- or mu+mu- , and there is the W+ and W- mediated charged current process too with the W decaying to a charged lepton and neutrino. Both of these processes help to disentangle the quark flavour content of the proton and is essential input for all predctions of other processes at the LHC. At large invariant mass of the leptons a new kinematic regime is available where theoretical uncertainties are large and these measurements will help to constrain the theory. In addition this highly off-shell region is sensitive to new physics through propagator modifications in effective field theories. Therefore a precision measurement of the Drell-Yan cross section slope with invariant mass provides a new search for phyiscs beyond the Standard Model.

 

Requirements

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