The Jožef Stefan Institute has recently become a full member of the LHCb collaboration at CERN. LHCb is a specialised spectrometer for studying hadrons containing heavy quarks (b and c), enabling precise measurements of CP violation, rare decays, and searches for deviations from the Standard Model. A new analysis group is being established at IJS to join the LHCb physics programme and take responsibility for analysing data collected at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Exciting times lie ahead for data analysis, as the Run 3 data-taking period is now concluding, during which the LHCb experiment recorded more than twice as much data as in its entire previous operational period.
The candidate will join the LHCb group for QCD, electroweak, and exotic physics, and will use advanced statistical methods, machine learning, Monte Carlo simulations, and event reconstruction techniques to search for signs of new physics – either directly by comparing measured data with theoretical models beyond the Standard Model, or through extremely precise measurements of known quantities within the Standard Model.
In addition to data analysis, the candidate will assist in maintaining and developing a broad range of software. There are significant opportunities for improvement in artificial intelligence that the candidate can use to accelerate simulations, detect anomalies in the data, or improve the separation of signal from background in the analysis. For this work, the candidate will have access to top-tier infrastructure at IJS, including powerful CPU and GPU clusters, as well as direct access to leading experts in particle physics, computer science, and artificial intelligence within CERN, the LHCb collaboration, and the institute.
The candidate will have the opportunity to attend and present results at international conferences and workshops. In addition, they may participate in detector testing and upgrades and, upon the restart of LHC operations, monitor LHCb detector performance in real time from the control room.
The aim of the programme is to train a researcher for independent scientific work in experimental high-energy physics and for an active role in large international collaborations.