Professor Kostas Nikolopoulos

Dr Kostas Nikolopoulos

School of Physics and Astronomy
Professor of Physics

Contact details

Address
Physics and Astronomy
University of Birmingham
Edgbaston
Birmingham
B15 2TT
UK

Kostas Nikolopoulos is interested in the experimental study of the electroweak symmetry breaking and the Higgs sector. He is a member of the ATLAS collaboration at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, where he led the ATLAS H→ZZ group (Oct. 2010 - Sep. 2012) in the discovery of a Standard Model-like Higgs boson. Currently, his research is focusing on measurements of the properties and potentially anomalous decays of the newly observed particle, and on searches for additional Higgs bosons.

Since early 2017, he is involved in the NEWS-G collaboration searching for light Dark Matter with a Spherical Proportional Counter. The experiment is currently running the detector SEDINE at the Laboratoire Souterraine de Modane in France, and the full scale detector will be installed in SNOLab, Canada in 2019

He is involved in teaching at undergraduate and graduate levels in physics and is active in enhancing public engagement, interest, understanding and awareness of physics through outreach.

Qualifications

 

  • PhD in Particle Physics, University of Athens, 2010
  • MSc (2 year course) in Particle and Nuclear Physics, University of Athens, 2007
  • Ptychion (4 year course) in Physics, University of Athens, 2004

Biography

Kostas Nikolopoulos obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Athens (Greece) in 2010. His thesis was awarded the Marc Virchaux prize. Subsequently, he joined the Brookhaven National Laboratory (USA) as a post-doctoral research associate, and since 2012 he is a Lecturer and Birmingham Fellow at University of Birmingham.

He was heavily involved in the H→ZZ*→4l analysis already before the LHC start-up, developing the tools and strategies that were used in the actual data analysis. In October 2010 he was appointed convener of the ATLAS H → ZZ group, consisting of more than 100 physicists. His term of office was exceptionally extended for a second year and he led the group to the discovery of Higgs boson-like particle in July 2012. He then focused on the study of the properties of the Higgs boson with emphasis on the mass, production rates, and couplings. This culminated in several publications establishing the Standard Model-like character of the observed Higgs boson. Furthermore, he is interested in searches for physics beyond the Standard Model in the Higgs sector; both through the search for additional Higgs boson and through anomalous decays of the observed Higgs boson. In October 2014, he was elected ATLAS UK Physics coordinator.

Kostas is co-investigator on the Birmingham Particle Physics grant from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). In recent years he has also received funding in support of his work from the Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions (FP7 and H2020), the Royal Society, and the Durham Institute of Particle Physics Phenomenology.

Teaching

Undergraduate Teaching:

  • Y4 Lecture course: “Experimental Particle Physics Techniques” (2015 -)
  • Y4 Particle Physics Project supervisor:

    - Using photodiodes to measure beam fluence for ATLAS irradiations (2015 - 2018)

    - Search for New Physics in the Higgs sector (2016 -)

    - Search for light Dark Matter with a Spherical Proportional Counter (2017 -)

    - Evaluation of the ATLAS irradiation facility hardness factor (2018 - )

  • Y3 Laboratory: "Nuclear Physics Laboratory” (2014 -)

Postgraduate Teaching:

  • MPAGS Course: "Higgs Boson Physics” (2013 -)
  • MPAGS Course: "Particle Physics Methods” (2014 -)

Postgraduate supervision

Currently working with PhD students on the ATLAS experiment at CERN and the NEWS-G experiment at SNOLab.

Research

Research themes

  • Study of the properties of the observed Higgs boson
  • Searches for rare/anomalous decays of the observed Higgs boson
  • Searches for additional Higgs bosons
  • Instrumentation for particle physics and medical applications
  • Direct search for Dark Matter

Research Activity

  • ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider
  • Physics and detectors for the High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider
  • Physics and detectors for the Future Circular Collider
  • NEWS-G experiment at SNOLab

Other activities

Public Engagement activities, including the "Higgs boson and beyond" exhibit at the Royal Society Science Exhibition in 2014 and the university’s Arts and Science Festival (2012, 2013, 2014). He is also co-Investigator in the EU-funded “CREATIONS - Developing an Engaging Science Classroom” project.

Publications

Selected Publications

  • ATLAS Collaboration (2016), Measurements of the Higgs boson production and decay rates and coupling strengths using pp collision data at √s=7 and 8 TeV in the ATLAS experiment, Eur. Phys. J C76 (2016) 6.
  • ATLAS Collaboration (2015), Constraints on new phenomena via Higgs boson couplings and invisible decays with the ATLAS detector, Journal of HEP 11 (2015) 206.
  • ATLAS Collaboration (2015), Searches for Higgs boson pair production in the hh→bbττ,γγWW*, γγbb, bbbb channels with the ATLAS detector, Phys. Rev. D 92 (2015) 092004.
  • ATLAS Collaboration (2015), Search for Higgs and Z Boson Decays to J/ψγ and Y(nS)γ with the ATLAS Detector, Phys. Rev. Lett. 114 121801.
  • ATLAS Collaboration (2015), Measurements of Higgs boson production and couplings in the four-lepton channel in pp collisions at center-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector, Phys. Rev. D91 012006.
  • ATLAS Collaboration (2014), Fiducial and differential cross sections of Higgs boson production measured in the four-lepton decay channel in pp collisions at √s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector, Phys. Lett. B738 (2014) 234-253
  • ATLAS Collaboration (2014), Measurement of the Higgs boson mass from the H→γγ and H→ZZ*→4l channels with the ATLAS detector at the LHC, Phys. Rev. D90 052004.
  • ATLAS Collaboration (2013), Measurements of Higgs production and couplings using diboson final states with the ATLAS detector at the LHC, Phys. Lett. B 726 88-119.
  • ATLAS Collaboration (2013), Evidence for the spin-0 nature of the Higgs boson using ATLAS data, Phys. Lett. B 726 120-144.
  • ATLAS Collaboration (2012), Observation of a new particle in the search for the Standard Model Higgs boson with the ATLAS detector at the LHC, Phys. Lett. B716 1-29.
  • ATLAS Collaboration (2012), Combined search for the Standard Model Higgs boson using up to 4.9 fb^{-1} of pp collision data at √s = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the LHC, Phys. Lett. B710 49-66.
  • ATLAS Collaboration (2012), Search for the Standard Model Higgs boson in the decay channel H→ ZZ* → 4l with 4.8 fb−1 of pp collisions at √s = 7 TeV with ATLAS, Phys. Lett. B710 383-402.
  • ATLAS Collaboration (2012), Search for a heavy Standard Model Higgs boson in the channel H→ ZZ → llqq using the ATLAS detector, Phys. Lett. B707 27-45.
  • ATLAS Collaboration (2011), Search for the Standard Model Higgs boson in the decay channel H → ZZ*  → 4l with the ATLAS detector, Phys. Lett. B705 435-451.
  • ATLAS Collaboration (2011), Search for a Standard Model Higgs boson in the mass range 200-600 GeV in the H → ZZ → llνν decay channel with the ATLAS Detector, Phys. Rev. Lett. 107 221802.
  • ATLAS Collaboration (2011), Limits on the production of the Standard Model Higgs Boson in pp collisions at √s = 7 TeV with the ATLAS detector, Eur. Phys. J. C 71, 1728.

View all publications in research portal

Expertise

Particle physics experiments; CERN; LHC; Higgs physics.

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