Dr. Gurpreet Singh Chahal
Research Associate in CMS


I am working as an experimental particle physicist in CMS with IPPP Durham University and Imperial College London. I have done Ph.D. from the University of Bari, in association with INFN Bari, Italy. I have the experience to work on the multiple aspects of the CMS experiment, i.e. software development, data analysis, generation and simulation of Monte Carlo (MC) events, scientific computing, CMS detector operations, validation/development of CMS software, Student supervision and mentorship.

Research Interests

The Experimental High Energy Physics (EHEP) is my playground, which has made a tremendous progress in the past 100 years to understand what the matter is and which type of forces are acting on it. Nevertheless, we have a number of fundamental and seemingly simple questions which are still unanswered. My present research focuses on one of those primary questions like how particles acquire their mass. The most authentic answer is the interaction of particles with the standard model Higgs boson. The quest for the Higgs boson and interest in Particle Physics have made my way to join the ongoing efforts at CERN with CMS and ATLAS experiments.

In general, I have a broad interest in EHEP with the strong impulse to work on the leading physics subjects of interest to the CMS and other ongoing experiments in the field e.g. standard model, beyond the standard model, electroweak physics, data analysis, detector operations and hardware related activities. My research activities were directly related to the search for the Higgs boson in H → ZZ → 4l decay channel and the doctoral thesis was focussed on "Background Estimation for the Search of the Standard Model Higgs Boson in the Decay Channel H → ZZ → 4l with the CMS Experiment at √s=7 TeV and 8 TeV". On account of the discovery of Higgs boson, the Nobel Prize in Physics was given to Prof. Peter Higgs and Prof. Francois Englert in 2013 for 'the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles'.

The Higgs discovery is an outstanding breakthrough towards one of the major convictions of our time to discover the prime mechanism for electroweak symmetry breaking as well as to look for any phenomenology beyond the standard model if it exists. The CMS has been unraveling the physics at the "TeV" scale, with plenty of opportunities for analyzing high-energy collisions in the time ahead.

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