DeCAF Seminar Series:

Abstract: Photons provide a powerful probe of the Standard Model (SM), enabling precision tests of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and electroweak interactions, as well as detailed studies of the Higgs boson. This seminar will present selected ATLAS measurements of inclusive photon, diphoton and three-photon production, exploring the experimental and theoretical challenges involved and their impact on our understanding of perturbative QCD, proton structure and possible new physics. The diphoton final state was also instrumental in the discovery of the Higgs boson. Today, it allows for a complete characterisation of the Higgs boson accross the different production modes, through differential cross sections, Simplified Template Cross Sections and effective field theory interpretations, enabling searches for possible deviations from the Standard Model.

Speaker Bio: Ana Rosario Cueto Gómez is a Ramón y Cajal researcher at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. She obtained her PhD in theoretical physics from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid with a thesis on isolated-photon production with the ATLAS detector. She subsequently worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Laboratoire d’Annecy de Physique des Particules in France. Before starting her current position, she was a Senior Research Fellow at CERN. Her research focuses on physics processes with photons in the final state at the LHC: from precision measurements of photon production that test perturbative quantum chromodynamics, to measurements of the properties of the Higgs boson in the H→γγ channel, and the interpretation of these measurements within the Standard Model Effective Field Theory. She also worked on the Monte Carlo modelling of Standard Model processes and on the characterisation of silicon sensors for the ATLAS Inner Tracker upgrade. She is a member of the ATLAS Collaboration, where she has led the Physics Modelling group and the Higgs-to-diphoton subgroup.