Internship

at the University of Gttingen

in the field of

particle physics of the top quark

Contact information
Philipp Stolte
II. Physikalisches Institut
Georg-August-Universitt Gttingen
Friedrich-Hund-Platz 1
37077 Gttingen, Germany

E-Mail: philipp.stolte@phys.uni-goettingen.de

Research questions and your tasks

We would like to offer an internship in the field of elementary particle physics, a field which addresses the question
about the elementary constituents of matter at the most fundamental level, i.e. the smallest possible scale of size.
Today's experiments in this field are based on collisions of particles obtaining their high energy from accelerators.
With a decreasing scale of the participating particles, higher and higher energies and thus larger colliders are
needed. Nowadays, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva is the most powerful particle accelerator in
the world, designed to reach beam energies of up to 7 TeV in proton-proton collisions. Recent measurements led
to the discovery of the Higgs boson after long and intensive searches, as discussed thoroughly in the international
media. In 2013, Peter Higgs and Francois Englert received the Nobel Prize in Physics for the theoretical prediction
of this boson.
Apart from the Higgs boson, many other particles are produced at the LHC in large quantities. One of these
particles is the top quark, the heaviest elementary particle of the Standard Model. Top quarks play an essential
role in the field of particle physics especially due to their remarkable properties comprising a large mass, which
is approximately comparable to the mass of a tungsten atom, and an extremely short lifetime: Examining this
quark in more detail and measuring its properties serves, for instance, to test the established Standard Model of
particle physics and the results may also hint at unknown physics beyond this model.
One of the quantities of the top quark which has not yet been measured directly at the
multipurpose detectors ATLAS and CMS at the LHC is the decay width of the top
quark. The ATLAS top quark group in Gttingen works on the realisation of this
measurement for which we use ATLAS data recorded at a centre-of-mass energy of 7
and 8 TeV in proton-proton collisions at the LHC in 2011 and 2012, respectively. The
advantage of a direct measurement is its model-independence which also includes that a
broader class of models involving physics beyond the Standard Model can be probed.
Such a direct measurement has been performed by the CDF Collaboration at the
Tevatron accelerator, but suffered from large uncertainties. The large statistics available
at the LHC will help to reduce the statistical uncertainty with respect to the CDF result,
but we also need to analyse the systematic uncertainty in detail. Next summer, we will be
in the process of finalising the work on this measurement. During your stay in Gttingen
you are able to participate in these last and important studies to finish the analysis, e.g.
last studies concerning the impact of systematic uncertainties. A further task you are
involved in would be a first examination of new ATLAS data taken at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV with
which this top decay width measurement is planned to be repeated. You will work with code using commands of
the data analysis framework ROOT, based on C++-code. With your project, you directly take part in important and
necessary studies for this new and demanding measurement.

The University of Gttingen and our institute

During your internship you will work in the Institute for Nuclear and
Particle Physics of our university placed in the north of Gttingen. Our
group is very international with researchers coming from all over the
world. The faculty building is very new and modern, providing an
excellent environment to work and study. Gttingen, located close to the
geographical centre of Germany, has around 120,000 inhabitants, almost
one fifth of them are students. This leads to a very special atmosphere of
the city hardly any other city in Germany is shaped by the university in
such a way. Many pubs and bars in the famous historic city centre allow
you to enjoy the evenings after work. Furthermore, there are a lot of sport
grounds, parks and sights for various weekend activities.