Abstract

I evaluated the performance of a small particle-tracking detector designed to help identify extremely rare, elusive particles that current physics cannot yet explain. Despite decades of success, our best theory of particle physics, the Standard Model, cannot explain why the universe contains far more matter than antimatter, why neutrinos (nearly massless particles) have any mass at all, or what dark matter, which makes up most of the universe's matter, is actually made of. A new experiment under development at CERN, called SHiP, aims to search for a new class of extremely rare, weakly-interacting particles that could help answer these open questions. Because such particles are so rare, the experiment must be able to reliably filter out background noise: stray particles that could otherwise be mistaken for a genuine discovery.

During a dedicated test run at CERN, I helped test one of the detectors designed to filter out this background noise, exposing it to beams of well-understood particles to measure how reliably it detected each one. The detector performed reliably overall, though I identified a couple of specific causes behind a small fraction of missed detections, including reduced reliability under denser particle conditions closer to the experiment's real operating environment. These findings will directly inform the ongoing design of the SHiP experiment, as the collaboration finalises its technical blueprint ahead of construction.