TU-P7-3 16:30

BRIGITTE VACHON, McGill University

A Walk On The Wild Side: Physics At The Energy Frontier With The ATLAS Experiment *

The ATLAS experiment is a complex detector designed to study the remnants from the highest energy particle collisions in the world. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) under construction at CERN will produce proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 14 TeV thereby recreating extreme conditions thought to have existed a mere fraction of a second after the Big Bang. The data collected by the ATLAS detector will allow physicists to study the fundamental constituents of Nature at an unprecedented distance scale where new physics phenomena are expected to appear. In preparation for exploiting the full physics potential of the ATLAS experiment much work remains. The current status of the ATLAS experiment as well as Canadian contributions to the commissioning of the detector will be summarized. A sample of physics topics to be studied during the initial data taking period will be discussed.

* This work is being supported by NSERC

* This work is being supported by NSERC