I am a high energy particle physics experimentalist at Fermilab. I am interested in understanding the basic building blocks of the universe using particle accelerators to smash particles together and study these collisions in the laboratory. I am a member of the CMS experiment at the CERN LHC and was extremely fortunate to be a part of the Higgs discovery. My most recent activities involve study of the Higgs boson, searches for phenomena beyond the Standard Model of particle physics, and understanding nature of dark matter.
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Nhan Tran
Selected Research Interests
Search for light (MeV-GeV scale) dark matter at the LDMX experiment; development of hadronic veto system
Search for exotic hidden hadronic and diboson resonances at CMS
Study of the Higgs boson properties via spin correlations and at very high momentum at CMS
Development of fast electronics algorithms and hardware for LHC Phase-2 trigger applications
Development of jet substructure and pileup mitigation reconstruction techniques at the LHC
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Education
PhD., Physics, 2011
PhD., Physics, 2011
PhD., Physics, 2011
Johns Hopkins University
[Dissertation] Angles and Daemons: Spin Correlations at the LHC
B.S., Physics, 2005
Princeton University
Professional Experience
Professional Experience
Wilson Fellow
Wilson Fellow, 2017
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Postdoctoral Researcher, 2011
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Graduate Research Assistant, 2006
Johns Hopkins University
Selected Talks
Selected Talks
Boosting hidden light new physics at the LHC and Beyond
Fermilab Users Meeting, 2017
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A dijet renaissance and the light dark matter connection
Texas A&M, University of Maryland, Rutgers University, 2017
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Searches for diboson resonances at CMS
Brookhaven Forum, 2015
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Experimental Summary
Boost Conference, 2014
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The Evolution of Jets at the LHC: jets, subjets, particles
Fermilab Wine And Cheese Seminar, 2014
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Pileup per particle identification
Mitigation Pileup Workshop, CERN, 2014
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Jet Structure at Hadron Colliders
Lepton Photon Conference, 2013
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Spin determination of single-produced resonances at the LHC
ICHEP conference, 2010
Selected Publications
CMS Collaboration, ”Inclusive search for the standard model Higgs boson produced in pp colli- sions at sqrt(s) = 13 TeV using H → bb
decays”, CMS HIG-17-010 (2017).
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CMS Collaboration, ”Search for light vector resonances decaying to a quark pair produced in association with a jet in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 13 TeV”, CMS EXO-17-001 (2017).
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CMS Collaboration, ”Search for low mass vector resonances decaying to quark-antiquark pairs in proton-proton collisions at sqrt(s) = 13 TeV”, submitted to PRL (2016), [arXiv:1705.10532 [hep-ph]].
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Timothy Cohen, Matthew J. Dolan, Sonia El Hedri, James Hirschauer, Nhan Tran, Andrew Whit- beck. ”Dissecting Jets and Missing Energy Searches Using n-body Extended Simplified Models”, JHEP 08 (2016) 038 [arXiv:1602.04305 [hep-ph]].
James Dolen, Philip Harris, Simone Marzani, Salvatore Rappoccio, Nhan Tran. ”Thinking outside the ROCs: Designing Decorrelated Taggers (DDT) for jet substructure”. JHEP 05 (2016) 156 [arXiv:1504.00679 [hep-ph]].
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T. Liu, G. Deptuch, J. Hoff, S. Jindariani, S. Joshi, J. Olsen, N. Tran and M. Trimpl, ”Design and testing of the first 2D Prototype Vertically Integrated Pattern Recognition Associative Memory,” JINST 10, 02, C02029 (2015).
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CMS Collaboration, ”Search for a Higgs Boson in the Mass Range from 145 to 1000 GeV Decaying to a Pair of W or Z Bosons”, JHEP 10 (2015) 144 [arXiv:1504.00936 [hep-ex]].
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CMS Collaboration, “Identification techniques for highly boosted W bosons that decay into hadrons”, JHEP 12 (2014) 017 [arXiv:1410.4227 [hep-ex]].
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D. Bertolini, M. Low, P. Harris, N. Tran, ”Pileup Per Particle Identification”, JHEP 10 (2014) 059 [arXiv:1407.6013 [hep-ph]].
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S. Bolognesi et al., ”On the spin and parity of a single-produced resonance at the LHC,” Phys. Rev. D86, 095031 (2012) [arXiv:1208.4018 [hep-ph]].
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CMS Collaboration, ”Study of the mass and spin-parity of the Higgs boson candidate via its decays to Z boson pairs,” Phys. Rev. Lett. 110 (2013) 081803 [arXiv:1212.6639 [hep-ex]].
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CMS Collaboration, ”Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment
at the LHC”, Phys. Lett. B 716 (2012) 30 [arXiv:1207.7235 [hep-ex]].
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Y. Gao et al., ”Spin determination of single-produced resonances at hadron colliders”, Phys. Rev. D. 81, 075022 (2010) [arXiv:1001.3396 [hep-ph]].
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CMS Collaboration, ”Measurement of the weak mixing angle with the Drell-Yan process in proton- proton collisions at the LHC”, Phys. Rev. D 84, 112002 (2011) [arXiv:1110.2682 [hep-ex]].
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Awards and Grants
Universities Research Association Tollestrup Award, 2017
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Fermilab Reward & Recognition Award, 2015
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LHC Physics Center (LPC) Distinguished Researcher, 2014
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Universities Research Association Visiting Scholar, 2009
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National Science Foundation (NSF) USLHC Graduate Student Support Award, 2009
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