Prof. Dr. Stan Lai
Research Interests
My research interests involve a deeper understanding of electroweak symmetry breaking and the Higgs boson (discovered at the LHC in 2012). I'm a member of the ATLAS experiment at the LHC based at CERN (in Geneva, Switzerland), where proton-proton collisions at energies of 13/14 TeV are investigated. These collision energies, the highest ever achieved at a collider, allow us to produce heavy fundamental particles such as the Higgs boson, and study phenomena at extremely high energy scales where electroweak symmetry breaking plays an important role.I am focused on understanding the properties of the Higgs boson, such as its quantum numbers, its couplings to other particles, and its behaviour in more detail through precision measurements with the ATLAS detector. This will enable a better understanding of the physics of electroweak symmetry breaking. I am also interested in searches for new phenomena beyond the Standard Model of particle physics that could appear at TeV energy scales.
Research Group
Post-docs and AcademicsDr. Kira Abeling
Ph.D. Students
Andrés Melo
Julian Utehs
Hans Joos (Gentner Program at CERN)
André Wilhahn
Anne Gaa
Philipp Rincke (Co-tutelle with Uppsala University)
Athul Sudhakar Ponnu
Master Students
Lina Buschmann
Lena Schulz
Zobeyer Ghafoor
Bachelor Students
Directory of Group Members
Selected Talks
"The Precision Higgs Era and Beyond", Colloquium Talk, Technical University of Dresden, Jul 2019"Latest Results from the ATLAS Experiment", Bormio Meeting on Nuclear Physics, Jan 2019, ATL-PHYS-SLIDE-2019-060.
"Higgs Boson Decays to Fermions with the ATLAS Detector", Rencontres du Vietnam (Windows on the Universe), Aug 2018, ATL-PHYS-SLIDE-2018-797.
Selected Publications
The ATLAS Collaboration, "Search for resonant and non-resonant Higgs boson pair production in the bbτ+τ- decay channel using 13 TeV pp collision data from the ATLAS detector", JHEP 07 (2023) 040.The ATLAS Collaboration, "Measurements of Higgs boson production cross-sections in the H → τ+τ− decay channel in pp collisions at √s=13 TeV with the ATLAS detector", JHEP 08 (2022) 175.
The ATLAS Collaboration, "Search for Heavy Higgs Bosons Decaying into Two Tau Leptons with the ATLAS Detector Using pp Collisions at √s=13 TeV", Phys. Rev. Lett. 125, 051801 (2020).
The ATLAS Collaboration, "Test of CP invariance in vector-boson fusion production of the Higgs boson in the H → ττ channel in proton–proton collisions at √s=13 TeV with the ATLAS detector", Phys. Lett. B 805, 135426 (2020).
The ATLAS Collaboration, "Search for Higgs boson pair production in the WW*WW* decay channel using ATLAS data recorded at √s=13 TeV", JHEP 05 (2019) 124.
The ATLAS Collaboration, "Identification and energy calibration of hadronically decaying tau leptons with the ATLAS experiment in pp collisions at √s=8 TeV", EPJC (2015) 75:303.
The ATLAS Collaboration, "Evidence for the Higgs-boson Yukawa coupling to tau leptons with the ATLAS detector", JHEP 04 (2015) 117.
Work History and Education
Akademischer Rat, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, (2011-2015)Postdoctoral Research Associate, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, (2006-2011)
Ph.D. in Physics, University of Toronto, (March 2007)
M.Sc. in Physics, University of Toronto, (November 2001)
B.A.Sc. in Engineering Science, University of Toronto, (June 1999)