The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is at the heart of the worldwide effort to uncover the fundamental laws of physics, and has already discovered the Higgs boson. My research focusses on the effect of quantum chromodynamics on LHC collisions, which is important for the stringent tests of the Standard Model and search for new physics carried out at the LHC. Much of my work focusses on jets, which are collimated sprays of energetic particles (see image). They are copiously produced at the LHC and play a crucial role in many analyses. To describe these intrinsically multi-scale processes, I use effective field theory.

Selection of recent work:

• Extending the framework I developed for calculating track-based observables to high precision. Measurements based on tracks of charged particles benefit from superior angular resolution and are naturally robust to pile-up. A particularly interesting recent application is energy correlators.
• Exploring the more robust (recoil-free) jet definitions to e.g. study the three-dimensional structure of the proton, which we recently extended to next-to-leading power.
• Developing a framework to extract double parton distributions, which encode correlations between constituents of the proton, from lattice QCD.
• Studying the effect on the energy and direction of a jet due to "grooming", which removes various sources of contamination.
• A computer code to efficiently count operators in effective field theories.

Selected earlier contributions:

• The N-Jettiness observable, which is employed in high precision calculations (N-jettines slicing) and to identify jets produced by the decay of heavy particles (N-subjettiness), which could prove crucial in uncovering new physics.
• The first precision calculation of Higgs+0 jets, which involved the introduction of beam functions. Many LHC analyses select events based on the number of jets, to improve the signal sensitivity.
• A study of the potential of the electric charge of a jet to characterize a new physics signal, and its calculation.
• A rigorous QCD analysis of double parton scattering, which has been modeled by Monte Carlo simulations without a solid field-theoretic description.
• Multi-differential resummation techniques (SCET+), reliably accounting for correlations between observables, hierarchies in jet angles and energies, etc.

A full list of my publications can be viewed on Inspire.

After studying physics and mathematics at Utrecht University, I went on to obtain a PhD at MIT and was a postdoc at UC San Diego. I started as a junior faculty member at the UvA in 2013 and am also affiliated with the Nikhef theory group. I have ongoing collaborations with colleagues at various institutions, including MIT, DESY, Yale, Complutense Madrid, Manchester, Los Alamos, and Zheijang University.

When I am not doing physics, I enjoy running, reading, and of course spending time with my lovely wife and kids.

Research group

• Johannes Michel (D-ITP fellow)
• Ankita Budhraja (Postdoc)
• Max Jaarsma (PhD student)
• Epameinondas Chasapis (master student)

Grants

• SPARC (2019-2021)
• NWO Projectruimte (2018-2022)
• ERC Starting Grant (2016-2021)
• MISTI Global Seed Fund (2015-2016)
• Veni (Lisa Zeune, 2015-2017)
• Marie Curie Fellowship (2013-2015)