This position is filled

Open Position Scholarships for Chinese Students at the Institute for High Energy Physics (IFAE) in Barcelona

Opening Date:
Closing Date:

Applications are invited for China Scholarships Council / Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) Joint Scholarships for the academic year 2017-2018. The scholarships will be awarded to citizens and permanent residents of the People’s Republic of China at the time of application who are accepted for admission on a full-time basis for a postgraduate PhD degree program at UAB.

The Institute for High Energy Physics (IFAE), located in the UAB campus, is one of the top research centers in Spain conducting experimental and theoretical research at the frontier of fundamental physics, as well as developing cutting-edge detector technology. In 2012 IFAE was awarded the distiction of “Severo Ochoa” Centre of Excellence by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.

The PhD positions are offered in the following research areas: experimental particle physics (ATLAS), and instrumentation development (ATLAS upgrades).

The successful PhD candidate will join the IFAE-ATLAS group and will participate in first-class research with the ATLAS detector at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). A description of the proposed research projects can be found below. This position involves extended stays at CERN.

Interested candidates with an excellent CV, a demonstrable English level, a pro-active attitude and good communications skills, are encouraged apply.

For more information on the proposed research projects, eligibility criteria, and the overall application process, please contact Prof. Aurelio Juste ( juste@ifae.es ) and Prof. Sebastian Grinstein ( grinstein@ifae.es ) before January 31, 2017.

For more information on the proposed research projects, eligibility criteria, and the overall application process, please contact Prof. Aurelio Juste ( juste@ifae.es ) and Prof. Sebastian Grinstein ( grinstein@ifae.es ) before January 15, 2019.

General information about IFAE is available at http://www.ifae.es .

Research Proposals:

1. “Probing the Higgs sector with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider”

Contact: Aurelio Juste (ICREA Research Professor), juste@ifae.es

Summary: On July 2012 the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) announced the discovery of the long-sought Higgs boson, a particle responsible for the breaking of the electroweak symmetry and the generation of the mass of other known elementary particles. It is of critical importance to continue our exploration of the newly-discovered Higgs sector through precise measurements of the Higgs boson properties, particularly its couplings to the top and bottom quarks, as well as searching for additional Higgs bosons, as predicted by many extensions of the Standard Model such as Supersymmetry. These are among the highest priorities in particle physics research for the next decade, and in particular of the LHC during its second run, which started in June 2015 at an increased center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, significantly enhancing its discovery reach. Undertaking a PhD in particle physics offers the chance to explore fundamental questions in nature and to use some of the world’s most technologically advanced experimental and computing facilities. The successful candidate will join a competitive research group at the Institut de Física d’Altes Energies (IFAE) and will carry out a PhD thesis within the ATLAS collaboration in one of the above high-profile physics topics. The IFAE group is a member of the ATLAS collaboration since 1992, where it has major responsibilities on the operation of several components of the detector (pixel detector, hadronic calorimeter and trigger system), as well as their upgrade for future LHC runs. The IFAE group is carrying out a broad and competitive physics program with multiple research lines, including the one above, where it is playing a leading role within the ATLAS collaboration. The successful candidate will also have the opportunity to work in a highly international environment at CERN (Switzerland) in collaboration with scientists from the best universities and research centers around the world.

2. “Searches for Supersymmetry with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider”

Contact: Aurelio Juste (ICREA Research Professor), juste@ifae.es

Summary: Supersymmetry represents one of the most promising extensions of the Standard Model (SM), naturally explaining the stability of the electroweak scale, predicting the unification of gauge couplings at high energy and providing a dark matter candidate. Supersymmetric models postulate the existence of a supersymmetric partner for each SM particle, which can be searched directly at colliders. Particularly well motivated are searches for the stop, sbottom and gluino, the supersymmetric partners of the top quark, the bottom quark and the gluon, respectively, which are predicted to be relatively light. As a result, the search for supersymmetric particles is among the highest priorities in particle physics research for the next decade, and in particular of the LHC during its second run, which started in June 2015 at an increased center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, significantly enhancing its discovery reach. Undertaking a PhD in particle physics offers the chance to explore fundamental questions in nature and to use some of the world’s most technologically advanced experimental and computing facilities. The successful candidate will join a competitive research group at the Institut de Física d’Altes Energies (IFAE) and will carry out a PhD thesis within the ATLAS collaboration in one of the above high-profile physics topics. The IFAE group is a member of the ATLAS collaboration since 1992, where it has major responsibilities on the operation of several components of the detector (pixel detector, hadronic calorimeter and trigger system), as well as their upgrade for future LHC runs. The IFAE group is carrying out a broad and competitive physics program with multiple research lines, including the one above, where it is playing a leading role within the ATLAS collaboration. The successful candidate will also have the opportunity to work in a highly international environment at CERN (Switzerland) in collaboration with scientists from the best universities and research centers around the world.

3. “Searches for new strong dynamics with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider”

Contact: Aurelio Juste (ICREA Research Professor), juste@ifae.es

Summary: Finding an explanation to the stability of the electroweak scale against quantum effects has driven significant theoretical research, giving rise to proposed extensions of the Standard Model (SM) such as Supersymmetry. Alternative solutions can be found in the context of models involving a new strong interaction and new heavy (vector-like) quarks, which couple preferentially to the top quark and Higgs boson. Direct searches for signatures of such new strong dynamics (such as vector-like quark production or 4-top quark production) are among the highest priorities in particle physics research for the next decade, and in particular of the LHC during its second run, which started in June 2015 at an increased center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, significantly enhancing its discovery reach. Undertaking a PhD in particle physics offers the chance to explore fundamental questions in nature and to use some of the world’s most technologically advanced experimental and computing facilities. The successful candidate will join a competitive research group at the Institut de Física d’Altes Energies (IFAE) and will carry out a PhD thesis within the ATLAS collaboration in one of the above high-profile physics topics. The IFAE group is a member of the ATLAS collaboration since 1992, where it has major responsibilities on the operation of several components of the detector (pixel detector, hadronic calorimeter and trigger system), as well as their upgrade for future LHC runs. The IFAE group is carrying out a broad and competitive physics program with multiple research lines, including the one above, where it is playing a leading role within the ATLAS collaboration. The successful candidate will also have the opportunity to work in a highly international environment at CERN (Switzerland) in collaboration with scientists from the best universities and research centers around the world.

4. “Searches for extra spatial dimensions and dark matter with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider”

Contact: Aurelio Juste (ICREA Research Professor), juste@ifae.es

Summary: Since the late 1970s, the search for new phenomena at particle colliders using monophoton or monojet events has attracted the attention of the scientific community. Such a simple final state, with one photon or one jet of hadrons and nothing else, could be instrumental in revealing physics beyond the Standard Model. In particular, this signature is characteristic of new physics models postulating the existence of large extra dimensions, involving a graviton that can travel in the higher dimensional space, or models including weakly-interacting particles, potentially making up the dark matter in the universe, that would be produced in pairs. Unraveling the structure of space-time or the nature of dark matter are among the highest priorities in particle physics research for the next decade, and in particular of the LHC during its second run, which started in June 2015 at an increased center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, significantly enhancing its discovery reach. Undertaking a PhD in particle physics offers the chance to explore fundamental questions in nature and to use some of the world’s most technologically advanced experimental and computing facilities. The successful candidate will join a competitive research group at the Institut de Física d’Altes Energies (IFAE) and will carry out a PhD thesis within the ATLAS collaboration in one of the above high-profile physics topics. The IFAE group is a member of the ATLAS collaboration since 1992, where it has major responsibilities on the operation of several components of the detector (pixel detector, hadronic calorimeter and trigger system), as well as their upgrade for future LHC runs. The IFAE group is carrying out a broad and competitive physics program with multiple research lines, including the one above, where it is playing a leading role within the ATLAS collaboration. The successful candidate will also have the opportunity to work in a highly international environment at CERN (Switzerland) in collaboration with scientists from the best universities and research centers around the world.

5. “New pixel sensor technologies for the ATLAS High Luminosity LHC upgrade”

Contact: Sebastian Grinstein (ICREA Research Professor), grinstein@ifae.es

Summary: The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) is a particle accelerator located at CERN, Geneva (Switzerland), whose goal is the study of elementary particles and their interaction through the collision of high energy protons. ATLAS is one of the experiments installed around the 27 km long LHC ring. Efficient particle identification and track reconstruction is crucial to discriminate the relevant physics events from the background produced in the proton-proton collisions. For both tasks, good spatial resolution and hit detection efficiency of the detectors are mandatory to carry out the physics program. These requirements are even more demanding for the inner detectors where the particle flux is higher due to the proximity to the interaction point. In this area, pixel detectors play a crucial role, providing a position resolution of the order of 10 μm with excellent efficiency, while being able to cope with the associated high radiation doses. In order to study further the energy frontier, the luminosity of the LHC will be increased by a factor of ten in 2023. This will lead to higher occupancy and radiation doses, and therefore, new detector solutions will be required. The 3D sensor technology, which has recently been proven to be very radiation hard, is a strong candidate for the inner pixel detector layers. Other promising technologies are CMOS active sensors and low gain avalanche detectors (LGAD). The IFAE group already played a key role in the construction of the ATLAS 3D pixel modules for the ATLAS IBL and AFP detectors, and is also involved in the CMOS and LGAD sensor R&D effort. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to work in state-of-the-art high-energy instrumentation development, in a highly international environment in collaboration with scientists from the best universities and research centers around the world.