Kārlis Dreimanis, a scientist at the Riga Technical University (RTU) Center of High Energy Physics and Accelerator Technologies, who works at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), has become the Team Leader of the CMS group for Latvia. His deputy will be RTU scientist Andris Ratkus.
Latvian group has been a part of the CMS (The Compact Muon Solenoid) collaboration, which aims to discover new phenomena in physics, since 2017. The group unites scientists from RTU and University of Latvia (UL), working on topics including Top Quark physics, Big Data processing and Mechanical Engineering.
As the leader of the group Dr Dreimanis is representing Latvian scientists at the CMS experiment and provides the necessary support for the group to perform their duties. The group leader is also responsible for ensuring that Latvian scientists fulfil all the obligations that Latvia has undertaken by participating in the experiment as well as representing Latvia in the CMS Collaboration Board, which makes decisions on various aspects related to the experiment.
The CMS collaboration is one of the four major high-energy physics experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and it is designed to observe and capture new phenomena in physics. One of the most popular discovery is the Higgs Boson, the existence of which was proved by CERN scientists in 2012. The CMS collaboration is comprised of more than 4,000 physicists, engineers and computer scientists representing 200 scientific institutions from more than 40 countries.
The RTU group is a part of this collaboration and currently consists of 5 scientists – Professor Toms Torims, who is also the representative of Latvia at CERN, and researchers Kārlis Dreimanis, Artūrs Ivanovs, Guntis Pikurs and Viesturs Veckalns. Other scientists, including Dr Ratkus, are waiting for the opportunity to head to CERN as soon as the Covid-19 Pandemic receds.
