Abstract
In recent years the International Masterclasses (IMC) featured the use of real experimental data as produced by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and collected by the detectors. We present ATLAS-based educational material using these data allowing high-school students to learn about properties of known particles and search for new phenomena. The ambition to bring to the “classrooms” important LHC discoveries is realised using the recent discovery of the Higgs boson. Approximately 10% of the ATLAS discovery data are made available for students to search for the Higgs boson: 2 fb−1 at 8 TeV for the Z path, and 1 fb−1 at 7 TeV for the W path, in the 2014 version of IMC. The Higgs study samples constitute one third of the total sample including Z, W and other low mass resonances. The educational material is tuned and expanded to follow LHC “heartbeats”.
Highlights
The International Masterclasses (IMC) [1, 2, 3] is a particle physics outreach program run by the International Particle Physics Outreach Group (IPPOG) [4]
The students upload this file to the online plotting tool online Plotting Tool (OPloT) [12], where they can look at the invariant mass distributions they have obtained
The interpretation of the Z path results in terms of short lived particles has been reviewed, and while evidence of the Higgs boson could not be observed in the students’ distributions, the two photon and four lepton invariant mass distributions were both discussed in terms of the Higgs search at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)
Summary
The International Masterclasses (IMC) [1, 2, 3] is a particle physics outreach program run by the International Particle Physics Outreach Group (IPPOG) [4]. When a heavy gauge boson Z with mass 1 TeV is mixed with the real data, the simulated signal shows up in the di-lepton mass distribution, to the surprise of students, who realize that they have mastered a discovery tool. They go on and apply the same technique to di-photons and pairs of di-leptons to search for the Higgs boson. To help the build-up and display of the invariant mass distributions, we developed OPloT, a scalable, php-based web plotting tool for submission and automatic combination of all measurements performed This allows for prompt access of results for further discussion within institutes and during videoconferences. The W path deals with the structure of the proton by comparing the numbers of W+ and W−, and the search for the Higgs into a pair of W bosons by measuring the angle between the leptons stemming from the W bosons
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