The next phase of the High Energy Physics Program in Qatar: The High Luminosity LHC

Project: Basic Research

Project Details

Abstract

The primary scientific goal of this proposal is the advancement of fundamental science at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the current world energy frontier in particle physics. Over the past ten years, the LPI behind this proposal and his team of researchers, with the funding support of the Qatar National Research Fund, have established a new program in experimental High Energy Physics (HEP) in Qatar. These efforts have allowed the Qatari team to gain the status of a cooperating institution at the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, one of the two large experiments at the LHC that has co-discovered the Higgs boson in 2012. The LHC is hosted at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). This proposal aims to build on those successes, strengthen and enhance Qatari group’s role and scientific contributions to this world-wide scientific endeavor and build the stage for the next big step in the reach of the LHC experiments associated with the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) upgrade. In the new regime, the LHC is expected to generate ten times more data that could shed light on the origin of mass, nature of the dark matter, and unification of fundamental interactions. The team has focused on specific synergistic areas where it made clear and identifiable contributions in the past ten years at the international scene: in the data analysis realm, it focused on the searches for the evidence of dark matter in some well-motivated theoretical frameworks that led to several publications. In the area of instrumentation and technology, the focus has been on maintaining and improving capabilities of the CMS experiment in muon detection, which has critical importance for the data analyses pursued by the team in the long term. The team’s contributions have been particularly aimed at the development of a novel Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) muon detector systems to enhance capabilities of the muon system in the HL-LHC regime. The team has been among the early proponents of this new technology for CMS, which now has transformed into a plan to install three GEM-based detector systems, GE1/1 whose installation was completed in Fall 2020, followed by GE2/1 and ME0 systems to be installed in 2025-2026. The LPI and his team became leaders in some of those efforts and carry key coordination responsibilities in the project. We intend to maintain the emphasis on building a program that would combine the data analysis thrust with a strong expertise in particle detection, instrumentation R&D, technologies and computing. Thus, this proposal builds on top of the work done by the local team and aims to continue and expand these efforts. One specific new goal is to build the fundamentals to prepare for the significant increase in sensitivity and potentially new discoveries with the development of the High Luminosity LHC (LH-LHC) project. Both the European Strategy Group and the US Particle Physics Prioritization Panel have identified the HL-LHC as the highest priority. We will also continue our efforts in instrumentation area in particular detector R&D. A very much intended biproduct of the HEP program is building the national capacity of Qatar by providing unique educational and training opportunities for the local students who will become the future scientific, intellectual, technology and economy leaders of the country. In the past years, over 25 students from Qatar have been involved in our research activities ranging from analysis of test beam data to large scale simulation and physics analyses. Between 2015 and 2018, eight of these students have participated and successfully completed the CERN summer internship programs. While trained as engineering students, five of these students have chosen physics as their career goals and are now pursuing Ph.D. in physics at Stanford University, University College London, Imperial College and Texas A&M. By pursuing our efforts of involving students and young local researchers in our team, we will continue our contribution to produce generations of exceptionally educated and skilled individuals who will become the new generation leaders in science, technology, industry, business and government. The technology thrust of the program extends beyond just particle detectors and includes synergistic activities in computing, simulations, machine learning and medical physics. A recent example of the newly developed relations, the LPI and a collaborator from Sidra Medical Research Center at Qatar have filed a patent for a potential device in nuclear medicine, entirely designed and conceived using powerful HEP simulation software resources. We have every intent to continue and expand these efforts to help position the Qatar group as an emerging leader in the international HEP community and the more advanced country in this field in the east side of the Gulf. With the signing of an International Cooperative Agreement between CERN and Qatar brokered by our team, the CERN-Qatar relationship has opened new opportunities in the areas of technology transfer, including important medical applications. The group has initiated the High Energy Physics and Medical Physics consortium composed of two local universities (Qatar University and Texas A&M University at Qatar) to engage in research, education, capacity building and technology transfer in collaboration with CERN and other international partners. In this proposal the team has expanded to include an expert PI from a third local university: Hamad Bin Khalifa University.

Submitting Institute Name

Texas A&M University at Qatar
Sponsor's Award NumberNPRP-BSRA01-0422-210050
Proposal IDEX-QNRF-BSRA-1
StatusActive
Effective start/end date1/01/231/01/26

Collaborative partners

Primary Theme

  • None

Primary Subtheme

  • None

Secondary Theme

  • None

Secondary Subtheme

  • None

Keywords

  • Detector R&D, Higgs Boson
  • Dark Matter, Machine Learning
  • Large hadron collider cern

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