Diana Pyatiizbyantseva, PhD at Nikhef will defend her thesis Tuesday 23 September 2025 at 10.30 at the Radboud Universiteit.
“The Hunt for Elusive Partners in Crime: Secrets Beyond the Standard Model”
The Standard Model (SM) of particle physics has been remarkably successful in describing elementary particles and their interactions. However, it leaves key questions unanswered, such as the nature of dark matter, the origin of neutrino masses, and the unification of forces. Precision measurements at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) offer a powerful tool to explore these open issues and to search for phenomena beyond the SM. This thesis contributes to this exploration through studies conducted with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. A central focus is the analysis of events involving a Z boson and a high-energy photon, particularly in final states with invisible neutrino decays. These processes are studied in both inclusive and electroweak production channels, providing the most precise limits to date on possible deviations from the SM via anomalous triple and quartic gauge couplings using effective field theory and vertex function approaches. Additionally, a dedicated part of the thesis presents research focused on improving the performance of the Transition Radiation Tracker (TRT), a key subdetector of the ATLAS Inner Detector. Drift-circle error recalibration performed for high-luminosity conditions significantly enhanced tracking resolution and accuracy, and was integrated into the ATLAS software framework.
The PhD defense will take place at the Aula of the Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen, Comeniuslaan 2, Nijmegen.
More information and a link to the livestream (click Aula) on the website of the Radboud Universiteit.
Supervisor: prof. dr. N. de Groot
Co-supervisor: dr. P. Calfayan (Carleton University, VS)
Contact: Diana Pyatiizbyantseva
