Research – Anyes Taffard Home Page

Taffard’s research interests lie in the understanding of the fundamentals building blocks of matter and their interactions. High Energy Physics (HEP) offers some of the most exciting experimental opportunities to expand our understanding and discover new physics. This is an exciting time for HEP. In 2009, CERN Large Hadron Collider started operating at a center-of-mass energy seven times higher than the previous largest accelerator, the Tevatron at Fermilab. Since 2015, the LHC collides proton-proton at a center-of-mass energy of 13-13.6 TeV. The increase in center-of-mass energy opens up the reach for exciting new discoveries. This is once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, especially for undergraduate and graduate students, to take part in this intriguing exploration at the energy frontier.

bul-pho-2009-064 — The Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland. Also shown are the locations of the ATLAS and CMS experiments which are located 100m underground. Their pictures have been magnified.

Taffard is particularly interested in the search for new physics phenomena that could shed light on the origin of the particle masses, the discrepancy between the amount of matter and antimatter in the universe, and the unification of the four forces (gravity, strong, weak, electromagnetic) into a Grand Unified Theory. Since the turn-on of the CERN LHC in 2010, Taffard’s research efforts is focuses on the ATLAS experiment. Previously, she performs her research on CDF, at the Tevatron and DELPHI at LEP.

The construction of the ATLAS detector was completed in summer 2008. The first data taking (Run-I) occurred between 2010 and 2012, and was marked by the discovery of the Higgs boson.

The LHC schedule plans for a series of upgrades to the accelerator and the experiment to increase the capability of the facility. In 2013-2014, the LHC was repaired to bring the center of mass to 13-13.6 TeV. The LHC undergo a major shutdown from 2019-2022 which permitted the ATLAS experiment to perform the first major upgrade of its detector. One of these upgrade is the installation of the New Small Wheel (NSW), which replaces the existing Small Wheel of the muon system. Data taking resumed in 2022. The ATLAS experiment is now recording the Run-III dataset.

The next major shutdown will be from mid 2026 until 2030, and a large fraction of the ATLAS detector will be again upgraded to be able to sustain the very high luminosity regime of the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), where ~85% of the integrated luminosity will be delivered.

Here are some really cool facts about the ATLAS detector. The Department of Energy has a web site about the science at the LHC and US contributions to the LHC. Here you may found a introduction to the LHC project for non-scientists and also a very serious report from the Daily News.

The UCI ATLAS group was involved in the construction and maintenance and operation of the Cathode Strip Chamber (CSC), which are parts of the ATLAS muon Small Wheel. The group has a long standing involvement in the ATLAS TDAQ (Trigger and Data Acquisition System) and Data Quality monitoring, which ensures that ATLAS is recording quality data for analyses. Taffard was Data Quality Convener in 2015-2016.

DAQ system for the NSW. Here we are using a mini micro-mega chamber with the front-end readout chips.

Taffard’s group was involved in the New Small Wheel upgrade project, in particular the trigger simulation, calibration and DAQ of the Front-End electronics. They were responsible for the infrastructure at CERN where the installation and surface commissioning the readout and trigger electronics chain of the NSW Micromegas wedges was performed. One of the UCI project scientist was Muon run coordinator, focusing on the work related to install the NSW in that ATLAS experiment and operate this new detector. He is now Deputy Muon project leader, overseeing the maintenance and operation of the whole ATLAS Muon systems.

Taffard’s group in also involved in two trigger projects for the HL-LHC. They are working on the design and construction of a new muon trigger system (L0MDT) which will use the information from MDT chambers to reduce the muon trigger’s rates and improve their purity. They are also working on the event filter track trigger (EFTracking), which will allow for fast track reconstruction in the inner tracker at the trigger level. For both project, they work on developing algorithms, implement them on firmware that is run on FPGAs, and test on hardware platforms. As part of the EFTracking project, they are also involve make use of heterogenous computer farm hosting GPUs, FPGAs.

Taffard’s group is currently involved in many analyses, focusing on searches for new physics such as: diHiggs, Vector Boson Scattering in the Higgs sector, Heavy Neutral lepton and Long Lived Particle (LLP) searches. Previous analyses covered Supersymmerty (SUSY) search, Lepton Flavor violation, search for Heavy Majorana Neutrinos. See Publications page for a list of selected publications. In both trigger upgrade projects and analyses, we use machine learning to improve analysis sensitivity or trigger performances.

It’s a very exciting time !!!
Check the Opportunities webpage if you are interested in getting involved in research.