For all its successes, there are still some great mysteries to the Standard Model of particle physics. Why are there three generations of particles with such different masses? Why do precision electroweak measurements prefer a Higgs mass in the region excluded by direct searches? There are several promising avenues, including neutrino and flavor physics, that can shed light on these questions, but one of the most exciting prospects today is at the energy frontier, where Prof. Lannon’s focuses his research. At the CDF experiment, Prof. Lannon uses proton-antiproton collisions produced by the Tevatron collider, located at Fermilab in Batavia, IL, to study the most massive particle in the Standard Model, the top quark, and to search for the elusive Higgs boson. He is also preparing for the start of the data taking at the CMS experiment. Located at the CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, the CMS experiment will record the worlds highest energy proton-proton collisions in the hopes of answering many of the unresolved questions connected to the Standard Model and giving us our first glimpse of what lies beyond.
