Abstract: As the most recently discovered and thus least studied fundamental particle, the Higgs boson offers enormous opportunity for continuing to understand the fundamental forces and particles that make up our Universe. In this colloquium, I will describe my recent work using the data collected by the ATLAS experiment to search for exotic decays of the Higgs boson to as-yet unobserved particles, search for potential additional Higgs bosons, and perform precise measurements of Higgs boson kinematic distributions. Observing exotic decays of the Higgs boson to axions or supersymmetric particles could shed light on the elusive nature of dark matter. Finding an additional Higgs boson alongside a vector-like lepton could explain the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon observed by the g–2 experiment. Precisely measuring Higgs boson kinematic distributions and comparing them to state-of-the-art theory predictions, including relevant effective field theory operators, can direct future searches. I will highlight local contributions to the above analyses and finish with a brief look at what’s to come.
The College of Arts