1/24/2025
Former NPL Graduate Student Dr. Aric Tate wins one of the 2024 ATLAS Thesis Awards for his PhD dissertation
Tate to receive one of the 2024 ATLAS Thesis Awards
Last week, the ATLAS Collaboration at CERN announced the eight recipients of the 2024 ATLAS Thesis Awards competition. Former NPL graduate student and current NPL Post-Doctoral Research Fellow Dr. Aric Tate was chosen as one of the recipients of this prestigious prize that recognizes outstanding contributions to the ATLAS experimental effort. Congratulations, Aric!
About Dr. Aric Tate
Aric Tate is a physicist and nuclear engineer with a strong background in nuclear detection systems, particle physics, and data analysis. He graduated from Abilene Christian University (ACU) in 2015 with a B.S. in Engineering Physics, contributing to the PHENIX experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and neutron-induced fission studies at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).
Aric joined the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) to pursue graduate studies in Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering (NPRE). During his M.S., he focused on muon tomography for fissile material detection, with additional contributions to Zero Degree Calorimeter (ZDC) research for ATLAS at CERN. Aric officially joined the ATLAS experiment in 2020, when he started his qualification project. Since then, he started working on analyzing the 2016 high-luminosity p+Pb data with Dr. Riccardo Longo (advisor), Prof. Matthias Perdekamp (co-advisor) and Prof. Anne Sickles. He earned his Ph.D. in 2024, specializing in proton-ion collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), exploring the role of proton size fluctuations in nuclear collision data.
As a postdoctoral researcher at UIUC, Aric has continued his investigations of proton-nucleus collisions, working on the extraction of the cross-section for dijet production in p+Pb collisions recorded by ATLAS to inform further the parameterization of the partonic structure of nucleons bound into nuclei. In addition, he continues developing radiation-resistant detectors and mentors junior researchers. His career reflects a commitment to solving complex problems through innovation and collaboration across multidisciplinary projects.
ARIC'S THESIS, IN A NUTSHELL
Is the proton's size fluctuating?
Aric's Thesis focused on measuring the centrality dependence of the triple-differential dijet yield in p+Pb collisions, which provides insights into nuclear modifications and initial-state effects in these asymmetric collision systems. The centrality is determined by looking at the transverse energy deposited in the Forward Calorimeter (FCal) facing the Pb debris. The analysis reports a full measurement of dijet yields in central (high FCal transverse energy) and peripheral (low FCal transverse energy) collisions using the high-luminosity 8.16 TeV p+Pb dataset collected by ATLAS in 2016. The dijets provide direct access to the configuration of the proton at the time of the collision with the nucleus.
The results suggest that fluctuations in the effective size of the proton, as it penetrates the lead nucleus, influence its interaction strength and, therefore, the event activity production. Specifically, smaller proton configurations are likely characterized by a smaller-than-average interaction cross-section and consequently undergo, on average, a lower number of nucleon-nucleon collisions with the Pb nucleus, yielding a lower-than-average activity. The results were published in Physical Review Letters 132 (2024) 102301.
The ATLAS Thesis Awards
The ATLAS Collaboration at CERN has over 5500 active members from over 180 institutions around the globe. Over 1000 of these members are PhD students who contribute strongly and critically to all areas of the experiment while learning valuable skills and pursuing their degrees. A dedicated committee selects The ATLAS Thesis Awards annually to recognize outstanding contributions in the context of PhD theses. The 2024 edition of the ATLAS Thesis Awards received about 50 applications from students in the Collaboration who defended their dissertations between October 2023 and October 2024.