The ATLAS Experiment
Our group joined ATLAS in 2003. The ATLAS detector is one of two next-generation detectors (along with CMS) which are logical follow-ons to CDF and D0 at FermiLab. As with CDF, ATLAS is a general purpose, cylindrical geometry device used to study collisions of protons on protons at a center-of-mass energy of 14 TeV (compared to 2 TeV at our CDF experiment at FNAL). It is located at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.
One of the strengths of the ATLAS detector is that it is a general-purpose device, allowing a broad range of physics to be studied. The LHC will be the highest energy accelerator in the world, making it the premier facility to search for new physics at the energy frontier. The LHC will open the opportunity before the end of this decade to begin to directly probe the 1 TeV energy regime where we hope and expect to discover the origin of electroweak symmetry breakdown. Whether the discovery comes in the form of a single Higgs boson, the observation of supersymmetric partners of standard model particles, manifestations of large extra dimensions, or the mysterious absence of any new phenomena at the predicted energy scale, the excitement in the field will be largely generated by the experimental program at this facility.
