Experimental Particle Physics

ATLAS Detector at LHC 

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) began colliding significant numbers of protons in 2010. ATLAS is one of the two general purpose detectors being built in the LHC ring. The Royal Holloway Physics department is one of the founding members of the ATLAS collaboration. Our major contributions are in the design of the high-level trigger and data acquisition systems, as well as in exploiting the physics opportunities ATLAS will provide. 

The Royal Holloway group works in the following areas of ATLAS:

• Physics studies: we are preparing for potential discoveries of Higgs, SUSY and Exotic signals, as well as measurements of the top quark properties.
• Data acquisition: we specialise in design and programming of electronics such as readout buffers.
• Trigger: we develop software to perform fast online reconstruction and event selection, and offline analysis tools.

For further information about ATLAS 

• For the general public
• ATLAS cavern web cams

Dark Matter Searches

Dark Matter refers to matter in the universe which we can't see but can infer from its gravitational influence on nearby objects. Dark matter is thought to constitute 25 per cent of the universe's energy density.

• More information on the Royal Holloway Dark Matter Searches group