Anders Kvellestad

Academic Interests

I study extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics, focusing on supersymmetry and theories with additional Higgs bosons. I'm particularly interested in how such theories can be tested experimentally at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, and the interplay between LHC results and theoretical requirements for explaining dark matter and the dominance of matter over antimatter in the universe.

Related topics that interest me are how different statistical methods — both Bayesian and frequentist — can be used to squeeze the maximum amount of information from the results of the wide range of particle and astroparticle physics experiments, and how machine learning techniques can be utilized in particle physics, in particular for fast simulations and data analysis.

The project I spend most of my time on is GAMBIT (the Global And Modular Beyond-the-Standard-Model Inference Tool), which I currently lead. We are a large community of particle and astroparticle theorists and experimentalists, as well as experts on statistics and scientific computing, from all around the globe. Together we have developed a highly modular and efficient software package for performing large-scale statistical analyses ("global fits") of new particle physics theories. The GAMBIT code is of course fully open source, available from both our webpage and GitHub. In addition to developing GAMBIT and making it available to the community, we are using GAMBIT ourselves for our own physics studies. A list of GAMBIT publications can be found here — and more results are in the pipeline.

Even though GAMBIT is developed mainly by particle physicists, we have structured the code such that it can just as well be used for computationally heavy statistical analyses (parameter estimation and model comparison) in other fields of science. If you think GAMBIT might be useful for your research don't hesitate to send me an email! GAMBIT provides a collection of parallelized optimization algorithms (differential evolution, nested sampling, MCMC, ...) and a framework for connecting these algorithms to model-specific tools implemented in C, C++, Pyhton, Fortran or Mathematica. It is also possible to use an additional layer of parallelization to speed up the model-specific computations.

Another software project I am part of is xsec, which is a nifty little machine learning-based tool for fast evaluation of LHC cross-sections.

Publications

An up-to-date overview of my scientific publications can be found on inspirehep.net.

Recent scientific talks

Below are links to some recent scientific talks:

• Rev. Bayes to the rescue: fast BSM predictions from Gaussian process regression, N-PACT workshop 2020, 05.08.20.
• Uncovered signatures with GAMBIT, ATLAS workshop on uncovered collider signatures, 13.06.20.
• Looking for patterns in the LHC data: large-scale collider fits, N-PACT workshop 2019, 05.08.19.
• Exploring light SUSY with GAMBIT, Moriond 2019, 26.03.19.
• Light SUSY at the LHC? Combined collider constraints on neutralinos and charginos with GAMBIT, 3-PAC seminar, Imperial College London, 12.10.18.
• MSSM global fits with GAMBIT, ICHEP 2018, Seoul, 06.07.18.
• GAMBIT: What is it and where is it going?, Nordic Conference on Particle Physics, Skeikampen, 04.01.18.
• An introduction to GAMBIT, Dartmouth-TRIUMF-University of Washington HEP/Cosmo Tools Bootcamp, 26.10.17.
• First SUSY results with GAMBIT, DESY Theory Workshop, Hamburg, 27.09.17.
• A short and sweet GAMBIT tutorial, TOOLS 2017, Corfu, 13.09.17.
• First SUSY results with GAMBIT, EPS-HEP 2017, Venice, 07.07.17.
• Disfavouring EWBG and a hidden Higgs in a THDM, Norwegian Theory Meeting, Stavanger, 19.06.17.
• An update on GAMBIT, LHC recast workshop, CERN, 13.12.16.

Outreach

I try to engage in outreach activities as often as time allows. Below is a collection of links to some of my past outreach activities. (Mostly in Norwegian.)

Videos

• Emmy and the symmetries (Norwegian). A talk about Emmy Noether and the role of Noether's theorem in physics. Date: 06.11.18.
• Waiter, there's a particle in my quantum field! (Norwegian). A talk about quantum field theory. (The video is unfortunately missing a couple of minutes due to a technical problem.) Date: 28.02.17.
• The dark matter mystery. I co-wrote the script for this short animated movie about dark matter. Date: 07.12.15.
• Chasing the invisible (Norwegian). A short talk on dark matter, presented on board "the Thinking Train" going from Oslo to Trondheim. Date: 24.09.15.
• Superb symmetries and dark mysteries (Norwegian). A talk about the role of symmetry in physics and how this relates to the hunt for dark matter. Date: 18.03.15.

Texts, radio appearances and other activities

• I often discuss physics and science on Twitter, mostly in Norwegian. (But be warned, there is also quite a bit of politics, music and random nonsense.) Date: too often.
• I sometimes participate in the science panel of the Norwegian radio/TV show "Abel's Tower" on NRK, most recently on 31.08.18 and 11.05.18.
• I occasionally write for the "Question of the week" column in Morgenbladet.
• I gave a pub lecture for physics students in Bergen about the interpretation of quantum mechanics (Norwegian). The slides are here. Date: 27.11.20
• An interview with Khrono about the about the status and future of collider experiments in particle physics. Date: 26.10.19.
• I gave a popular science introduction to dark matter at the Norwegian Physical Society meeting 2019 (slides). Date: 07.08.19
• Contributed to an article about quantum fields and particles (Norwegian). Date: 06.03.19
• An interview on open access publishing and the use of preprints (Norwegian). Date: 27.10.17
• Tumbling down a quantum rabbit hole. An essay on a very strange but deeply fascinating interpretation of quantum mechanics. Date: 29.09.17.
• An interview on the "750 GeV bump" that looked so intriguing back in late 2015 (Norwegian). Date: 16.12.15

Other stuff

I'm a member of The Norwegian Particle, Astroparticle and Cosmology Theory Network and The Young Academy of Norway.

Education and employment history

• 2019 - current: Postdoc, University of Oslo
• 2018 - 2019: Research Associate, Imperial College London
• 2017 - 2018: Researcher, University of Oslo
• 2015 - 2017: Fellow, Nordic Institute for Theoretical Physics (Nordita), Stockholm
• 2011 - 2015: Ph.D., University of Oslo
• 2009 - 2011: M.Sc., University of Bergen
• 2006 - 2009: B.Sc., University of Bergen and University of Copenhagen

Publications

An up-to-date overview of my scientific publications can be found on inspirehep.net.