D. Kar

My current interest is bottom-up approach of designing searches based on uncovered topologies, rather than the top-down, mostly signature driven approach mostly employed so far at the colliders. I have managed to publish pioneering search results using ATLAS data. They include the search for a boosted heavy neutrino, and the search for semi-visible jets, which arise if we consider a strongly interacting dark-sector (as opposed to the weakly interacting scenario searched for so far). I work closely with theorists and phenomenologists to design such models, design sensitive observables (potentially using anomaly detection algorithms) for these signatures, and also to check what are the current constraints on such models. Previously I worked on different aspects of QCD, including first measurement of underlying event at the LHC, novel jet substructure measurements, and tuning of Monte Carlo event generators. I have authored a textbook on experimental particle physics based on the honours course I started at Wits, which was the first such book in the field, which was published by Institute of Physics (UK) and has been downloaded over thousands of times. I have secured support from NRF (South Africa) CNRS (France), STINT (Sweden) and was awarded the UCL-Wits seed fund. The funding from CNRS is to organise a school on computing in High Energy Physics for African students at Wits in January 2024 with leading international researchers as lecturers. I was awarded Royal Society Wolfson Visiting Fellowship to spend my sabbatical year at the University of Glasgow in 2024.