Prof Oleg Brandt

Biography

Oleg studied at the Universities of Bonn and Amsterdam (2006) and received his PhD from University of Oxford (2009) for his work on prototyping searches for supersymmetry at the LHC and alignment and commissioning of the ATLAS tracker. Oleg then studied the properties of the top quark, resulting in the world’s most precise top quark mass measurement at that time, as a Fermi International Fellow at Fermilab and as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Goettingen. From 2013, Oleg led a team of researchers at Heidelberg University funded through the federal Excellence Initiative, with the main focus on searches for Dark Matter at the LHC and new unexplored experimental signatures. In 2019, Oleg was appointed at the University of Cambridge, where he extended the scope of his research to include long-lived particle signatures, a vibrant and dynamically developing field due to unprecedented opportunities in LHC Run 3 and its high-luminosity upgrade. This line of Oleg’s research is generously funded through the UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship.

Beyond physics

Since 2020, Oleg chairs the IT Strategy Committee that oversees the delivery of IT services to the Department of Physics and the migration of IT services to the Ray Dolby Centre from an academic perspective. Until recently, Oleg represented HEP in the Strategy Working Group that is concerned with devising a coherent research vision for the Department.

Beyond academia

Oleg’s other passions include open water swimming, free diving, hiking, as well as science communication and education.

Research

Research mission 

Fundamental laws of nature and fundamental particles broadly define the active research area of our team. Our overall research mission is the search for Dark Matter that comprises 85% of the matter in our universe. We are particularly interested in potential anomalies associated with the most recently discovered fundamental particle – the Higgs boson.

Research focus

The main research focus of our team is on potential Dark Sector particles with long lifetimes above 100 ps. For this, we use the ATLAS detector to analyse proton-proton collision data at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) of CERN. The ATLAS detector has a very good sensitivity to such particles with lifetimes below about 10 ns. To probe lifetimes above 10 ns, we have recently proposed the ANUBIS detector that will complement the ATLAS detector. The Cambridge HEP group is leading the active exploration of the ANUBIS detector concept through detailed simulations and by measuring particle fluxes in-situ inside the ATLAS cavern starting 2022, i.e., in LHC Run 3.

In addition, our team is active in the area of searches for Dark Matter particles, where we are exploring exotic signatures that could not be covered efficiently previously. We are also active in R&D of particle detectors (and their operation), the key to study fundamental particles and their interactions, and to push the borders of the unknown at future colliders.

Research funding

The high impact of our research on long-lived particles is acknowledged by generous funding support by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) agency through the Future Fellow Fellowship, the matching funding by Cambridge University, and the support of the Isaac Newton Trust.

My research interests

• Searches for New Physics: Dark Matter and Dark Sectors, long-lived Dark Sector particles, anomalous Higgs boson couplings, flavour universality violation, supersymmetry.
• Precision measurements: fundamental parameters and symmetries in the Standard Model, e.g.: top quark mass, Higgs boson properties.
• Detectors: development, commissioning and operation of detectors and chiefly the ANUBIS detector; reconstruction algorithms (jets, jet substructure, track-assisted jets, muons, tracks).

Coordination

Currently, I represent ANUBIS in the Physics Beyond Colliders effort and ATLAS in the LHC Dark Matter Working Group. In 2018-20, I co-lead the Common Dark Matter group, which coordinates Dark Matter searches within the ATLAS Collaboration. Previously, I lead the top quark mass group at the ATLAS Collaboration and the muon identification and track reconstruction group at the DØ Collaboration. In the context of the ATLAS and DØ Collaborations, I co-lead several analysis teams, and reviewed a two-digit number of scientific results, as an Editorial Board member or as a spokesperson sign-off delegate.