Press release: ATLAS Thesis Award for young scientist from Göttingen

Nr. 31/2013 - 06.03.2013

Dr. Anna Henrichs from Göttingen Physics Department distinguished by CERN in Geneva

(pug) Dr. Anna Henrichs, who worked for her doctorate at Göttingen University, has received the ATLAS Thesis Award from the international ATLAS collaboration at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva. Dr. Henrichs completed her doctoral degree in April 2012 at the Physics Institute II of Göttingen University. Her doctoral thesis deals with the heaviest known elementary particle, the top quark. She developed several new methods for measuring with previously unattained precision the strong interaction with other particles in the top quark system.

The physicists at Göttingen have been participating in ATLAS, a major-scale experiment with the world’s biggest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Their research will address central physics questions concerning the material state of the universe shortly after the Big Bang and analyse the results of high-energy collisions between hydrogen nuclei. The top quark belongs to the fundamental building blocks on which all matter is based. By virtue of its large mass, it behaves differently than all other known elementary particles. For example, the top quark is the only quark that decays before it can form bound states. “Using an innovative approach, Dr. Henrichs has now succeeded in making the most precise measurement of a top quark in history. In 2012, she refined the method and increased the precision on an enlarged dataset even further,” says Göttingen Physicist Prof. Arnulf Quadt, who mentored her work.

ATLAS is an international, large-scale scientific collaboration involving around 3000 scientists from all over the world, including close to 600 postdoctoral candidates. From among the top 29 postdoctoral candidates who graduated “summa cum laude”, the awards committee shortlisted the five best theses. Dr. Henrichs was distinguished for her scientific achievements with a Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and has been working since the summer of 2012 as a research fellow at Yale University in the USA. The Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship funds qualified, highly gifted researchers from Germany who have completed their doctoral degree not more than four years previously, giving them the opportunity to collaborate on a long-term research project abroad and with an academic host of their choice.

Contact address:
Prof. Dr. Arnulf Quadt
Georg-August University Göttingen
Faculty of Physics – Physics Institute II
Friedrich-Hund-Platz 1, 37077 Göttingen
Phone: +49(0)551- 39-7635 or -7714
E-mail: aquadt@uni-goettingen.de
Website:www.physik.uni-goettingen.de