ZPATH

The Z-path first started as educational material  for high school students to work with data collected by the ATLAS detector at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The Z-path and some of the accompanying tools have been developed at the University of Oslo.

Since May 2017 ZPATH receives funding from the Olav Thon Foundation as a "Student active research project". 

Background

The Z-path allows high school students to analyse real collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. Starting from event displays students identify di-lepton, 4-lepton or di-photon final states. They look for known (J/Psi, Upsilon, Z, Higgs) and unknown (Z', Graviton) particles using the invariant mass of the objects they identify.

Right after the official announcement of the Higgs discovery, Higgs boson candidates were added to the Z-path program. In 2016 the Graviton - the hypothetical mediator of the gravitational force - was included in the form of a Graviton excitation, as a follow up to the infamous 750 GeV di-photon excess observed by ATLAS and CMS in late 2015. Now it is Dark Matter's turn, with or without Supersymmetry. Next? We will follow the "heart beats" of the LHC and bring to you any upcoming discoveries.

Objectives & Outcomes

The aim is to always follow the "heart beats" of the LHC and bring the most recent discoveries to the students.

  • Develop research projects adapted to students as a support to current courses

  • Develop new courses based on measurements and discoveries at the LHC and other research infrastructures

  • Convey advanced physics concepts and phenomena and introduce new ideas beyond today’s theoretical framework describing the content of the Universe and its evolution

Financing

Olav Thon Foundation

Cooperation

International Master Classes (IMC)

International Particle Physics Outreach Group (IPPOG)

Extreme Energy Events - Science inside Schools  (EEE)

Tools

Tags: New physics concepts & phenomena, discoveries, particle physics, research-based education
Published Nov. 6, 2020 3:52 PM - Last modified Oct. 25, 2021 3:41 PM

Participants

Detailed list of participants