Research Group: Particle Physics Research Centre Number of Students: 1 Length of Study in Years: 3-4 Full-time Project: yes
The Drell-Yan process is an important tool in understanding the dynamics of quarks and gluons in the proton and in searching for indirect effects of new physics. The neutral current process involves q / anti-quark annihilation to from a Z boson which then decays to lepton pairs such as mu+ and mu-, or e+/e-. There is also the W+ and W- mediated charged current process too with the W decays to a charged lepton and neutrino. Both of these processes can be measured with extremely high precision, and help to disentangle the quark flavour content of the proton and is essential input for all predictions 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. Such a measurement in the chraged current (W) channel has never been performed before. Therefore a precision measurement of the Drell-Yan cross section at large invariant mass provides a highly sensitive and model independent search for new physics beyond the Standard Model.
PhD thesis of my two previous students working in this area: http://inspirehep.net/record/1429540 and https://cds.cern.ch/record/2266564
Relevant publications:
SPCS Academics: Eram Rizvi