Donald A. Glaser Collegiate Professor of Physics
About
Professor Zhou has served as the US DOE ATLAS Project P.I. since 1999 at the University of Michigan. ATLAS is a particle physics experiment at the Large Hardron Collider (LHC) at CERN focused on exploring the energy frontier and which, on July 4, 2012, co-discovered a particle consistent with the long-sought Higgs Boson. Professor Zhou has worked on this experiment since 1994 and has made significant contributions to the design, construction, and commissioning of the largest precision Muon Spectrometer and on subsequent physics analyses. The physics studies conducted by Professor Zhou at the LHC include the discovery of the Higgs Boson and the property measurements of this newly discovered particle; the electroweak diboson production cross section measurements, and the search for anomalous triple-gauge-boson couplings with diboson final states.
Physicists including graduate students from the University of Michigan have participated in the design and construction of the ATLAS experiment, particularly, the largest precision muon spectrometer. They carried out many detailed physics studies to determine the discovery sensitivities with the ATLAS detector for many new physics processes. It is proven that the large precision muon detector built at the University of Michigan is crucial for the Higgs-like new boson discovery at the LHC.
Professor Zhou has played important leading roles in Higgs search programs from the LEP experiment (L3) to the LHC experiment (ATLAS) in the past two decades. In ATLAS, she and her students have concentrated on the physics analysis of the Higgs search in the Z-boson pair decay channel where a signal was observed at a mass of 125 GeV, thereby determining one of the key parameters of the Higgs Boson. She is one of the leading physicists in ATLAS to measure the quantum numbers (spin and parity) of the newly discovered boson.
Professor Zhou and her students also worked on the DZERO experiment at Tevatron to search for supersymetry particles and to perform precision measurements of the parameters predicted by the Standard Model of particle physics. These studies have paved ways to search for new physics at the TeV energy scale at the LHC experiment.
Professor Zhou was elected as the Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2000 due to her major contributions in large precision muon detector development and research and in searching for the Higgs Boson at LEP experiment.
Selected Publications
Evidence for the Spin-0 Nature of the Higgs Boson using ATLAS Data, (ATLAS Collaboration), Phys. Lett. B 726, 120-144 (2013).
Measurements of Higgs Production and Couplings using Diboson Final States with the ATLAS Detector at the LHC, (ATLAS Collaboration), Phys. Lett. B 726, 88-119 (2013).
Measurement of WW Production in pp Collisions at Sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS Detector and Limits on Anomalous WWZ and WWgamma Couplings, (ATLAS Collaboration), Phys. Rev. D 87, 112001 (2013).
Measurement of ZZ Production in pp Collisions at Sqrt(s) = 7 TeV with the ATLAS Detector and Limits on Anomalous ZZZ and ZZgamma Couplings, (ATLAS Collaboration), JHEP03, 128 (2013).
Observation of a New Particle in the Search for the Standard Model Higgs Boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC, (ATLAS Collaboration), Phys. Lett. B 716, 1-29 (2012).
Field(s) of Study
