The Particle Physics Collaboration would like to extend its proudest congratulations to Pieter for completing his work in fulfillment of his Master’s Thesis on the SUEP search at CMS!
MIT and the PPC have been lucky to host Pieter over the course of the last year, ‘borrowing’ him from the Imperial College of London as part of an exchange program with MIT.
Left to right, Chad, Pieter, Christoph, and Luca, proudly holding the SUEP soup bowls, a parting gift from Pieter!
Coming in with no experience in high energy particle physics research was no problem for Pieter, who quickly overcame the steep learning curve of mastering the understanding of all the complex and interconnected areas needed to do research in this field: a theoretical understanding of the physics of the Standard Model, the physics of accelerators and detectors, as well as programming, data science, and statistics.
Pieter’s work at the PPC focused on the search for Soft Unclustered Energy Patterns (SUEPs) at CMS, a signature that is related to several beyond the Standard Model theories, as well as instantons; in particular, the search focused on dark QCD models that could have very interesting properties in explaining dark matter structure and interactions, if they are observed to exist.
Pieter had a large impact on every aspect of the analysis: from the studies of the background and background estimation methods, to studying validation methods for our background estimation, to implementing and studying the impact of the systematic uncertainties involved in this search, to optimizing the analysis to improve its sensitivity reach, and finally to interpret its results in excluding areas of the phase space of possible new particles.
By the time of his leaving, Pieter has helped to get the analysis all the way to being pre-approved by CMS. His hard work, deep desire to understand, and attention to detail will be very missed at the PPC – We wish you all the best in the continuation of your academic journey!