IIHE - Interuniversity Institute for High Energies (ULB-VUB)

The IIHE was created in 1972 at the initiative of the academic authorities of both the Université Libre de Bruxelles and Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
Its main topic of research is the physics of elementary particles.
The present research programme is based on the extensive use of the high energy particle accelerators and experimental facilities at CERN (Switzerland) and DESY (Germany) as well as on non-accelerator experiments at the South Pole.
The main goal of this experiments is the study of the strong, electromagnetic and weak interactions of the most elementary building blocks of matter. All these experiments are performed in the framework of large international collaborations and have led to important R&D activities and/or applications concerning particle detectors and computing and networking systems.
Research at the IIHE is mainly funded by Belgian national and regional agencies, in particular the Fonds National de la Recherche Scientifique (FNRS) en het Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (FWO) and by both universities through their Research Councils.
The IIHE includes 19 members of the permanent scientific staff, 20 postdocs and guests, 31 doctoral students, 8 masters students, and 15 engineering, computing and administrative professionals.

IceCube

IIHE IceCube joining in celebration 100 years of Humans on the South Pole

IIHE IceCube joining in celebration 100 years of Humans on the South Pole At the Inter-university Institute for High Energies (IIHE) in Brussels we are involved in a world wide effort to search for high-energy neutrinos originating from cosmic phenomena. For this we use the IceCube neutrino observatory at the South Pole, the world's largest neutrino telescope which is now completed and taking data. Hundred years ago, on the 14th of December 1911, the first human being arrived on the South Pole. Roald Amundsen led the original Norwegian team that arrived, so to celebrate this Norwegian triumph, the Prime Minister of Norway came to the South Pole for 4 days to engage in the festivities.

CMS

Looking in usually ignored collisions for physics beyond the Standard Model

It is commonly agreed that the standard model is not the ultimate theory and breaks down at higher energies. One of its most famous extensions is called supersymmetry or SUSY. Even though the CERN LHC data is already extensively examined for signatures predicted by this theory, no evidence has been found. However, supersymmetric models in which particles would have large lifetime (so would seem not to come from the collision point), have been mostly overlooked until now. IIHE physicists have performed a search that focuses on checking the LHC data for evidence of such a model. The picture depicts the transverse view of the CMS interaction point, showing a typical event from one of the possible signal with long life time. The definition of the leptons' impact parameter, d0, which is largely correlated with to the particle lifetime, is shown by the arrows.

IceCube

The IceCube neutrino observatory at the South Pole is the world's largest neutrino telescope, completed in 2011 and taking data since 2005!

The detector is composed of 80 strings of 60 sensors deployed in the Antarctic glacier, between 1500 and 2500 m of depth. As its name suggests, IceCube covers an instrumented volume of one cubic kilometer. The DeepCore extension of IceCube is composed of 6 additional string in the center of the IceCube array, where the puriest ice can be found. At the surface, the IceTop air shower array equiped each IceCube string with 2 pairs of sensors in an ice tank of 3 square-meter.

Phenomenology

The pheno group — A hint for supersymmetry?

Particle physics phenomenology studies the implications of a theoretical model on experiments in high-energy particle physics and the other way round. From the experimental side, the CMS Collaboration observed in a certain search region 12 events more than expected based on the Standard Model of Particle Physics. Can this be explained by theories that go beyond the Standard Model like supersymmetry? Scientists from the pheno group at the IIHE as well as from the theory group at the ULB collaborated to answer this question. The figure shows how the number of events predicted by a simple supersymmetric model depends on the parameters of the model. The two free parameters, the mass of the stau and the selectron, are shown on the x- and y-axis while the number of events is indicated by the colours. Since we are looking for 12 events coming from new physics, we see from the figure that the model with selectron mass 145 GeV and stau mass 90 GeV can account for the observation of CMS.

CMS

Pinning down the bottom, charm and top quark

The bottom quark, discovered in 1977, is special, as in LHC collisions it usually lives in unstable particles that travel a few millimeters before they transition into particles that physicists can identify with our very accurate tracking detectors. At the IIHE we are leading the effort in the CMS experiment to identify bottom (or beauty) quarks. Bottom quarks are also extremely useful to identify top quarks, the heaviest known elementary particle, and Brout-Englert-Higgs bosons. At the IIHE we are also developing the tools to distinguish collisions containing bottom quarks from those where charm quarks are produced. This will be extremely useful to study how often top quarks decay to charm quarks instead of b-quarks, a very rare process in the Standard Model that if larger than expected would be a convincing sign for new physics!

IceCube

IIHE students at the South Pole

At the Inter-university Institute for High Energies (IIHE) in Brussels we are involved in a world wide effort to search for high-energy neutrinos originating from cosmic phenomena. For this we use the IceCube neutrino observatory at the South Pole, the world's largest neutrino telescope which is now completed and taking data.Here you see a really cool phenomenon made by ice crystals that are drifting in the air at low levels and acting as prisms for the light rays passing through them. In this way, a halo around the sun is visible. In this picture, IIHE PhD Student David put his head in front of the sun and the halo becomes visible more easily.

CMS

Monojets as a possible signature for dark matter production at the Large Hadron Collider

Dark Matter is, almost a century after it was conceived, still only known to us through gravitational effects. Depending on its properties, there exists the exciting possibility of producing dark matter particles at colliders like the LHC. With the CMS detector, IIHE scientists search for direct production of dark matter particles in collisions like the one shown here: a jet (a spray of particles from a quark or gluon) recoiling against particles that escapes detection. This particular collision was the highest energy event of this type recorded by the CMS detector so far. Although it is most probably a background collision, dark matter could manifest itself in our detector exactly in such a "monojet" signature.

CMS

LHC reaches record energy - first test collisions recorded by CMS experiment

On Thursday 21 May 2015, protons collided in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the record-breaking energy of 13 TeV for the first time. These test collisions were to set up systems that protect the machine and detectors from particles that stray from the edges of the beam. This set-up will give the accelerator team the data they need to ensure that the LHC magnets and detectors are fully protected. The LHC Operations team will continue to monitor beam quality and optimisation of the set-up, while the detectors will use these 'free' testing collisions for calibration and testing. This is an important part of the process that will allow the experimental teams running the detectors ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb to switch on their experiments fully. Data taking and the start of the LHC's second run is planned for June 2015.