Research

OVERVIEW - Highlights

 As co-manager of the CMS Luminosity effort, V. Halyo lead her group to provide the sole online luminosity system in CMS based on the Hadronic Forward Calorimeter. The system not only delivers LHC with the bunch-by-bunch luminosity but also provide the absolute luminosity measurement via the Van der Meer calibration. Few photos while in the midst of testing the system,

 Played crucial role in the measurement of the inclusive W/Z boson production cross section at CMS, and the theoretical evaluation of their systematic uncertainties.  First use at LHC of the inclusive Z boson production yield as a "Standard Candle" for measuring the absolute delivered luminosity. Results documented in Jeremy Werner Ph.D thesis.

 What started as Data/MC disagreement in a one analysis ended up as First observation of prompt double jpsi in 2010 in CMS together with S. Gleyzer, V. Hagopian

Led the effort during 2011 to search for new topological signatures such as displaced vertices that originated from heavy resonances decaying to long lived particles which consequently decay to leptons. 

In an effort to look for look for low mass Higgs-like particle that evaded detection at LHC while decaying to long lived particles and as part of her pursuit to understand the feasibility of looking for final state topologies that are smoking gun to physics beyond the Standard Model at LHC.  I led the effort to study new topological signature of a Higgs decay to long lived particles which consequently decay to b-mesons.

Work in Progress

Following  her studies to understand the feasibility to look for  new topologies that are clearly signature of physics beyond the standard model   V. Halyo concludes that massively parallel computing at the LHC could be the next leap necessary to reach an era of new discoveries at the LHC after the Higgs discovery. Scientific computing is a critical component of the LHC experiment, including operation, trigger, LHC computing GRID, simulation, and analysis. One way to improve the physics reach of the LHC is to take advantage of the flexibility of the trigger system by integrating Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) or Many Integrated Core (MIC) processors into its server farm. This cutting edge technology provides not only the means to accelerate existing algorithms, but also the opportunity to develop new algorithms that select events that could have previously evaded detection.