Prof. Kotwal to Serve on ATLAS Upgrade Physics Committee

Prof. Kotwal to Serve on ATLAS Upgrade Physics Committee

Following the discovery of the Higgs-like Boson at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), discussions have begun to plan a major upgrade of the accelerator and the LHC experiments to increase the collision rate by a factor of ten. Prof. Ashutosh Kotwal has been asked to join the Upgrade Physics Committee of the ATLAS experiment to study the physics potential of this high-luminosity scenario and develop the physics justification. The increased production rate of the new boson would allow more precise measurements of its key properties that are predicted by the Standard Model. The ATLAS plan calls for rebuilding major parts of the detector in order to operate in the new regime of extreme radiation and particle flux. This second phase of ATLAS would start in 2022 and run till 2030. Prof. Kotwal and his student Chris Pollard have been studying the increase in sensitivity to various beyond-Standard Model scenarios and these studies will be discussed at the European Strategy Forum in Cracow this September.