Othmane at Drexel

Othmane Rifki

Ph.D. Candidate

The University of Oklahoma

The ATLAS Experiment at the LHC


The closer you look the more there is to see.
     F. Jegerlehner

    

Welcome


Welcome to my website!
I am a Ph.D. student at the University of Oklahoma studying experimental elementary particle physics with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). I am currently a graduate fellow in the high energy physics division at Argonne National Laboratory.

The following video links give an accessible overview for non-physicists interested in learning more about particle physics and the LHC :
The Standard Model of Particle Physics
The LHC
The Higgs Boson Explained
CBS 60 Minutes: The Collider
BBC: Guide to the LHC

The documentary Particle Fever catches the real life experience of physicists in action.


Background and Motivation


My interest is in high energy physics. In my undergraduate education at Drexel University, I took a course in quantum field theory which I found fascinating. During that same period I participated in building and testing Photomultiplier Tubes (PMTs: light detectors) for the neutrino experiment: Double Chooz. Later, I worked with the University of Pennsylvania’s instrumentation group in developing analysis tools to test the prototype electronics that will read the 3.2 gigapixel CCD camera of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). I had an appreciation for the scientific goals of the project and I took a special interest in the way they were being materialized by developing the needed technology. I have wrote my undergraduate thesis on the work I have done on the LSST camera with the link to my paper and presentation:

Precision Characterization of Prototype Electronics for Readout of the 3.2 Gigapixels Camera for LSST
Research Paper
Presentation

I realized that I wanted to pursue a career in the field of experimental high energy physics where researchers continuously push the frontier of today's technology to conduct experiments that aim to establish the fundamental constituents of the universe we live in and describe the interactions of these constituents with each other. I joined the University of Oklahoma’s (OU) particle physics group in the fall of 2012 to work on the ATLAS experiment. The start of my graduate program was timed with the Higgs discovery. This finding created an overall excitement within the particle physics community which was well felt by the students. A year later, the 2013 Nobel Prize was shared by François Englert and Peter Higgs for their theoretical prediction of the Higgs mechanism and the existence of a scalar boson, the Higgs, which was made about 50 years prior to its discovery by ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN. In my turn, I became eager to take part of the quest for unrevealing the fundamental constituents of the universe using the world’s most powerful accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), and one of the most complex detectors, ATLAS.


As part of OU's qualification examination (specialist) for the PhD program, in April 2014 I wrote and presented a review about the high precision measurement of the muon anomalous magnetic moment (g-2), the 3-sigma discrepancy between experiment and theory based on BNL E821 results, the planned FNAL E989 experiment, and the new physics implications:

The Muon Anomalous Magnetic Moment: A Probe for the Standard Model and Beyond
Review Paper
Presentation

ATLAS Links

Internal OU ATLAS (Indico)

ATLAS Collaboration Web Site

Papers

CERN Web Site

Additional Links

Particle Data Group

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