About ATLAS
ATLAS is one of four detectors at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, Geneva. It is the largest detector ever built to measure collisions from a particle accelerator. It is 46 meters long and 25 meters high and is located 100 meters underground at CERN on the border between Switzerland and France. ATLAS is also one of the world's largest scientific collaborative projects with nearly 6000 physicists, engineers, technicians, students, and administrative staff from more than 180 institutions in over 40 countries worldwide.
The ATLAS group at the Department of Physics at the University of Oslo has been members of the ATLAS experiment since 1992. Today, there are about 30 people affiliated with ATLAS at UiO, divided into professors, researchers, engineers, PhD and MSc students. The group is part of the High Energy Physics Group (HEP) which, in addition to ATLAS, also works with accelerator technology, medical applications of nuclear and particle physics and theoretical and experimental high-energy nuclear physics (e.g. in the ALICE experiment at the LHC).
The ATLAS group at UiO is heavily involved in several aspects of the ATLAS experiment: Analysis of collision data from the Large Hadron Collider, development of systems for data processing and software for processing data, in the work on the planned upgrade of the innermost part of the ATLAS detector, and to make parts of the ATLAS data, together with analysis software and tools, accessible for the wide community for use in education and outreach activities, for instance through arranging international masterclasses in particle physics at UiO every spring.
The upgraded ATLAS detector will be ready when the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) is scheduled to start in 2030. The HL-LHC will deliver several times as many particle collisions as the LHC has done so far. This places strict demands on the speed and radiation tolerance of the innermost part of the detector. The ATLAS group in Oslo, in collaboration with a similar environment in Bergen, has therefore worked for the past ten years on testing and developing completely new silicon-based sensors. Work is now underway to complete the sensors that will eventually be installed and used in the upgraded ATLAS detector at the HL-LHC.
The HL-LHC not only presents challenges with the detector itself but also places strict demands on how quickly we are able to register, reconstruct, read out and store the data from the experiment. The Oslo Group is an important contributor in the development of new software for data storage, data processing, and new ways of distributing and accessing data through The World LHC Computing Grid (WLCG). Recently, the Oslo group has also been involved in testing and developing new ways to reconstruct and simulate particle collisions using machine learning and artificial intelligence.
The Oslo group is also involved in analyzing collision data from the ATLAS experiment in search of new particles and phenomena that can shed light on some of the big questions in physics: What is dark matter? What exactly are the properties of the Higgs particle, and can it be a door opener to dark matter? Why is the gravitational force so weak compared to the other forces of nature? Are there new symmetries in nature? As well as a number of more questions. Since the beginning of the LHC in 2009, we have collected trillions of collisions that physicists around the world analyze with the hope of finding evidence for the existence of a new particle or making more precise measurements of the properties of known processes and particles. With the enormous amounts of data that are now available, the Oslo Group has recently also been involved in developing, testing, and using advanced analysis techniques based on machine learning and artificial intelligence in the searches for the unknown.
Master's projects with ATLAS
Are you interested in studying a topic related to ATLAS for a Master’s degree? We undertake a wide range of research activities which are suitable for a Master’s. A given topic can go in many directions, including data analysis and the use of advanced statistical techniques and artificial intelligence, development and construction of detector hardware, and simulation of new physics processes. ATLAS master’s students can collaborate with researchers from beyond UiO and Norway.
Students from the Centre for Computing in Science Education (CCSE) can also work on purely computational topics related to ATLAS, for example artificial intelligence and software development.
Topics and contacts
- Di-higgs boson production: Prof. Alex Read
- Searches for Dark Matter candidates: Prof. Heidi Sandaker
- Searches for Dark Matter, Supersymmetry, and other exotic phenomena (new forces, extra space dimensions, heavy neutrinos): Prof. Farid Ould-Saada
- Hardware and quantum detection technologies: Prof. Heidi Sandaker
- Computational topics (CCSE students and others): Prof. Farid Ould-Saada
- Physics at the future accelerators (FCC, ESSnuSB): Prof. Farid Ould-Saada
- Boosting Fundamental Physics and Technology Through Hands-On Learning and Immersive Experience: Prof. Farid Ould-Saada
For a list of currently defined topics please see this list and search for the names of the contact supervisors above.
You can read previous master's theses at the CERN repository (this also includes Ph.D. theses).
Courses
Each of the projects need a slightly different set of courses so please refer to specific projects in the list above. The following are common to all projects:
Bachelor level
- FYS3110 – Quantum Mechanics
- FYS3150 – Computational Physics
- FYS3500 – Introduction to Nuclear and Particle Physics
- FYS-STK3155 – Applied Data Analysis and Machine Learning
Master level
- FYS5429 – Advanced machine learning and data analysis for the physical sciences
- FYS4555 – Particle Physics
- FYS5555 – Research-based Particle Physics