Research

 

We are investigating fundamental properties of matter particles and their interactions at the highest energies. With the CMS experiment at CERN in Geneva we are working at the highest laboratory center-of-mass energies, and with the Pierre-Auger Observatory in Malargüe/Argentina we exploit the highest energy particles of the universe.

We are actively contributing to the Digital Transformation in the exploration of Universe and Matter with the ErUM-Data-Hub and the DIG-UM community organization.

 

CMS

With the CMS Experiment at CERN our primary research topic is searches for new physics phenomena in association with Higgs bosons . The Higgs has been observed by the CMS and ATLAS experiments in 2012.

We have published with CMS the observation of the top-higgs coupling and cross section measurements of electroweak top quark production, as well as searches for new heavy resonances decaying to top quark pairs. We have also published searches for contact interactions using di-jet final states.

We contribute to the measurement and publication of the fundamental coupling of the Higgs boson to heavy particles and we are working on on the Higgs self-coupling. We apply Deep-Learning methods to achieve high sensitivity in our data analyses.

 

Pierre Auger Observatorium

With the Pierre-Auger-Observatory in Argentina our research topic is the physics of ultra-high energy cosmic rays.

Currently we are working with deep learning methods on reconstructing cosmic ray induced air showers. We published a new network architecture providing good precision in reconstructing the arrival direction of cosmic rays, their energy as well as the height of the shower maximum.

We develop new technology for detecting air showers initiated by ultra-high energy cosmic rays from their radio emission using broadband MHz antennas. We deployed 150 antenna stations in Argentina covering a surface of 17 square kilometers. We have published with the Pierre-Auger experiment thorough comparisons of different antenna types and calibrations of antenna characteristics. We have published cosmic ray energy measurements in comparison to other methods used at the Pierre Auger observatory. Currently we are working on cosmic ray energy measurements using the radio techniques exclusively which are most competitive in precision.

Within the project CRPropa 3 we developed a program to propagate millions of cosmic rays from their sources to observation. We conclude on the origin, composition, and propagation of the cosmic rays by comparisons of the simulation results with data measurements. We have published the simulation program, and new methods for concluding on cosmic magnetic fields the cosmic rays traverse. We are currently working on the identification of sources with innovative methods that correct the deflections of cosmic rays in magnetic fields.

 

VISPA

In our third research area we provide the development environment VISPA (Visual Physics Analysis) for physics analyses through the web browser. With the VISPA internet platform we support physicists in the analysis development cycle including the analysis design, execution, and verification of the results.

Recently, we added capabilities to use Deep-Learning methods for physics research on the VISPA internet platform. VISPA is used both in science and education. In the past decade, the continuously advancing project lead to many conference contributions.

We also contribute to the GRID computing technology of the CMS experiment.