PIPages
Labs

Nikolaos Kidonakis

Kennesaw State University, GA·Physics

When protons smash together at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's highest-energy particle collider, they produce heavy particles such as the top quark and the Higgs boson. The top quark is the heaviest known elementary particle.

Fields

Physics

Topics

theoretical particle physics

high energy physics

quantum chromodynamics

Grants
1 known grant, through Jul 2027

What they work on

  1. Calculate soft-gluon corrections, from low-energy gluon radiation, to top-antitop pair, single-top, and top-pair-plus-Z or Higgs production at NNLO and N3LO, including differential distributions for LHC and future colliders.
  2. Compute the massive cusp anomalous dimension, which governs the low-energy (infrared) behavior of QCD scattering amplitudes, at four loops.
  3. Extend the CTEQ global analysis of parton distribution functions, which describe how quarks and gluons share the proton's momentum, to NNLO using new LHC Run 2 and Run 3 measurements and an improved treatment of theoretical uncertainties.
  4. Study partial N3LO contributions to DGLAP evolution of PDFs and extend the CTEQ heavy-flavor scheme for deep inelastic scattering (DIS) to N3LO.

More about the research

The Higgs boson is involved in how particles get their mass. Testing our theory of these particles, and searching for new physics beyond it, requires predictions of how often each particle is produced that are precise enough to compare with measurements. Those predictions also depend on knowing how the quarks and gluons inside the proton share its energy.

Why it matters

Precise predictions for top-quark, Higgs-boson and W and Z boson production let physicists compare LHC data with theory sharply enough to measure particle properties and spot hints of new physics. Better maps of the proton's internal structure improve the interpretation of essentially every proton-collision measurement at the LHC and at future colliders. This is basic science aimed at understanding elementary particles and their interactions.

Known grants

From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.

Theoretical Calculations for Particle Physics at Hadron Colliders

NSF · Aug 2024 – Jul 2027

Closest labs

Ayres Freitas

University of Pittsburgh, PA·Physics

Develop calculational techniques for higher-order electroweak corrections, the quantum refinements needed to interpret precision measurements at the Large Hadron Collider and at planned electron-positron colliders.

Huey-Wen Lin

Michigan State University, MI·Physics

Compute parton distribution functions of nucleons and mesons with lattice QCD at high precision, varying lattice spacing and volume and working at the physical pion mass to control errors from the simulation.

Jennifer Klay

California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo, CA·Physics

Install and commission the ALICE Fast Interaction Trigger (FIT) detector at the CERN LHC for Run 3 with undergraduate researchers.

The school

Kennesaw State University: 6 labs on PI Pages, $52M a year on research, 82 research doctorates a year.

More about Kennesaw State University

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