Lucian Harland-Lang

I am a particle physics phenomenologist. My research concerns the theory of particles and their interactions with specific focus on what can be measured in collider experiments such as the LHC.

I received an MSci in Physics from Durham University in 2008 and my PhD, under the supervision of James Stirling at the University of Cambridge, in 2012. I have subsequently held postdoctoral positions at Durham University and University College London, before arriving at the University of Oxford as a STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellow in 2018. I am now back at UCL as a research associate.

My CV can be found here, and my publications on iNSPIRE.

While our current best understanding of particles and their interactions – the Standard Model (SM) – has been remarkably successful, it is known to be incomplete, and there is much about it that we still do not understand. By colliding particles at high energy, we can push the SM and our understanding of it into new regimes, and even discover new physics that lies beyond it. As a particle phenomenologist, my research is essential to this endeavour: continuous theoretical work directed at what can be seen in the collider is vital in fully exploiting its physics potential.

The LHC has the potential to test the limits of the SM at an unprecedented level, but for this to be fully realised two goals must be achieved: these are at the heart of my research. First, we must use the LHC as a precision physics machine, testing for small deviations, at the percent level or lower, in LHC observations from the expectations of the SM. Second, we must explore new physics searches beyond the conventional ones in order to maximise the potential of the LHC.

To test for percent level deviations from the SM, we must first understand it with matching precision. My project concerns a crucial element of this: the structure of the proton. I am a leading member of the MSHT collaboration, and my research centres on the extraction of parton distribution functions (PDFs), which describe this structure. The LHC is a proton colliding machine, and hence my work on both a precise and accurate determination of PDFs is essential to the LHC precision physics programme.

The second area concerns a special class of collision event, known as ‘central exclusive production’ (CEP). Generally, the high-energy nature of hadron collisions at the LHC leads them to break up into a spray of additional particles that fill the detector. However, it is possible for the hadrons to produce new particles, but to remain intact afterwards. As this is so distinct from the standard LHC collision process, it can provide new insight into the nature of particles and their interactions. A key focus of my research is on the CEP of new particles due to the annihilation of photons. By using the LHC as a photon collider, we can bypass the uncertainty from the complications of proton structure, and deal instead with a well-understood testing ground in which to search for new phenomena.

While at Oxford I lectured the Advanced Quantum Field Theory course as part of the MMathyPhys Master's degree. The notes I wrote for this can be found here. Comments and typos spotted welcome! A description of my other teaching activities can be found in my CV.

A video of a talk I gave to the Oxford University Physics Society on "Quantum Field Theory, the Standard Model and the LHC" can be found here.

A video of a talk I gave to the Oxford University Saturday morning of theoretical physics on proton structure can be found here.