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Archana Sharma is an Indian physicist and senior scientist at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. [1] Her research focuses on high energy physics. [2] [3] She is internationally recognized for her work in instrumentation and gaseous detectors, specifically for her pioneering work on micro-pattern gaseous detectors. [1] She received the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman Award in 2023 for her contribution in science and technology. [4] [5]
Sharma was born to a middle-class family in Aligarh and raised in Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh. [6] Both of her parents were teachers––her father taught mechanical engineering, and her mother taught economics and geography. [7]
Sharma studied physics at Banaras Hindu University as an undergraduate student and received her masters in nuclear physics from the same university in 1982. [7] [8] In 1989, she received her PhD in experimental particle physics from Delhi University. [1] [9] Sharma earned a second doctorate degree from the University of Geneva in 1996 [10] and an executive MBA degree from the International University in Geneva in 2001. [1]
Sharma's involvement at CERN began in 1987 when she won a three-year fellowship to conduct research in the detector development group led by Georges Charpak. [11] After finishing her first PhD in Delhi, Sharma moved to Geneva with her family in 1989 to conduct her post-doctoral research in gaseous detectors, through which she realized her lack of expertise in instrumentation and thus decided to pursue a second PhD at the University of Geneva. [7]
After finishing her second PhD, Sharma held positions at the GSI-Darmstadt in Germany and the University of Maryland, College Park. [8] Since 2001, she has worked at CERN on the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, designing high-efficiency detectors to facilitate the detection of the Higgs-Boson particle. [9] She has mentored around 20 PhD students during her time at CERN and has authored or co-authored over 800 publications. [1] [7] [12]
Sharma is best known for her work in gaseous detectors, through which she contributed to the discovery of the Higgs boson. She works at the CMS experiment in the Large Hadron Collider, developing a new muon system called GEM (Gas Electron Multiplier), which can detect muons in the outermost layer of the CMS. [6] Detecting a muon can confirm the production of a Higgs boson, and the CMS is also important in studying other dimensions, background radiation, and the components of dark matter. [7] [6] Sharma is also known as a pioneer for her work on wire chambers, resistive plate chambers, and micro-pattern gaseous detectors, all of which laid the foundations for her larger work in the CMS experiment. [6]
Particle physics or high energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The fundamental particles in the universe are classified in the Standard Model as fermions and bosons. There are three generations of fermions, although ordinary matter is made only from the first fermion generation. The first generation consists of up and down quarks which form protons and neutrons, and electrons and electron neutrinos. The three fundamental interactions known to be mediated by bosons are electromagnetism, the weak interaction, and the strong interaction.
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, is an intergovernmental organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Established in 1954, it is based in a northwestern suburb of Geneva, on the France–Switzerland border. It comprises 23 member states. Israel, admitted in 2013, is the only non-European full member. CERN is an official United Nations General Assembly observer.
ATLAS is the largest general-purpose particle detector experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator at CERN in Switzerland. The experiment is designed to take advantage of the unprecedented energy available at the LHC and observe phenomena that involve highly massive particles which were not observable using earlier lower-energy accelerators. ATLAS was one of the two LHC experiments involved in the discovery of the Higgs boson in July 2012. It was also designed to search for evidence of theories of particle physics beyond the Standard Model.
The Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP) was one of the largest particle accelerators ever constructed. It was built at CERN, a multi-national centre for research in nuclear and particle physics near Geneva, Switzerland.
DELPHI was one of the four main detectors of the Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP) at CERN, one of the largest particle accelerators ever made. Like the other three detectors, it recorded and analyzed the result of the collision between LEP's colliding particle beams. The specific focus of DELPHI was on particle identification, three-dimensional information, high granularity (detail), and precise vertex determination.
The High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider is an upgrade to the Large Hadron Collider, operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), located at the French-Swiss border near Geneva. From 2011 to 2020, the project was led by Lucio Rossi. In 2020, the lead role was taken up by Oliver Brüning.
The MicroMegas detector is a gaseous particle detector coming from the development of the wire chamber. Invented in 1992 by Georges Charpak and Ioannis Giomataris, the Micromegas detectors are mainly used in experimental physics, in particular in particle physics, nuclear physics and astrophysics for the detection of ionising particles.
Joseph Incandela is an American particle physicist, a professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara and currently based at CERN, where he spent two years as the spokesperson for the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at the Large Hadron Collider.
Sir Tejinder Singh Virdee,, is a Kenyan-born British experimental particle physicist and Professor of Physics at Imperial College London. He is best known for originating the concept of the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) with a few other colleagues and has been referred to as one of the 'founding fathers' of the project. CMS is a world-wide collaboration which started in 1991 and now has over 3500 participants from 45 countries.
Sau Lan Wu is a Chinese American particle physicist and the Enrico Fermi Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She made important contributions towards the discovery of the J/psi particle, which provided experimental evidence for the existence of the charm quark, and the gluon, the vector boson of the strong force in the Standard Model of physics. Recently, her team located at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), using data collected at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), was part of the international effort in the discovery of a boson consistent with the Higgs boson.
Mayda Velasco is a physicist and professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Northwestern University. She works in experimental particle physics and is a leading member of the CMS Collaboration at the CERN LHC. She founded COFI and is its first director. She is a pioneer in the physics potential of photon colliders.
Michel Della Negra, born 1942, is a French experimental particle physicist known for his role in the 2012 discovery of the Higgs Boson.
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Tulika Bose is a Professor of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, whose research focuses on developing triggers for experimental searches of new phenomena in high energy physics. Bose is a leader within the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment, a CERN collaboration famous for its experimental observation of the Higgs boson in 2012.
Stephanie Zimmermann was a German physicist who worked on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. As a researcher from the University of Freiburg, she was involved in the Muon Detector Control System activities, and she served as muon run-coordinator. She was elected and served as ATLAS Run-Coordinator in 2012–2014. She then became Project Leader of the New Small Wheel project (NSW), part of an extensive upgrade, the largest phase 1 upgrade project for the ATLAS detector.
Teresa Rodrigo Anoro was a Spanish scientist who worked in particle physics. She worked at CERN, Fermilab and the Instituto de Física de Cantabria and was professor at the University of Cantabria. Whilst at CERN, Rodrigo worked on the Compact Muon Solenoid and research for the Higgs boson.
Steven Michael Errede is an American experimental physicist, known for his leadership in the collaboration that experimentally confirmed the existence of the top quark.
James Lewis Pinfold is a British-Canadian physicist, specializing in particle physics.
Linda Gail Stutte is an experimental elementary particle physicist. After an appointment as a postdoc at Caltech in 1974–76, Stutte was a research staff scientist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory from 1976 through her retirement in 2007. She is known for work on neutrino experiments and her expertise with Fermliab neutrino beam facilities.