Dr Marcella Bona

Research

Flavour Physics, Dark Matter Search, Machine Learning, Phenomenology, Pollution Studies

Interests

My research activity focuses on indirect and direct searches of physics beyond the Standard Model. The Standard Model of particle physics is a now well-established theory explaining how elementary particles interact and has allowed for extremely precise predictions, thus proving its effectiveness. The discovery of the Higgs boson represents the last piece in the puzzle of the Standard Model. However the Standard Model is not the full picture as it does not explain a number of phenomena: amongst them, the matter-antimatter unbalance of the universe and the existence and essence of Dark Matter.

The matter-antimatter unbalance can be studies through Flavour Physics. I am active in the field since 1998 having focused on B physics from the experimental and phenomenological point of view. Flavour physics can also provide us a glimpse into physics beyond the Standard Model by indirectly assessing its effects at the lower energy scales. Complementarily to the indirect searches, since the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva is now reaching unprecedented energies, new particles can be directly produced and observed.

As member of the ATLAS collaboration, an experiment taking data at CERN, in Geneva, I lead the QMUL effort on Flavour physics studies and the Dark Matter searches. I contribute to the running, the calibration, the analysis and the management of the experiment and I am deputy leader of the QMUL ATLAS group and leader of the QMUL ATLAS Level-1 Calorimeter Trigger group.

I am leading the QMUL ATLAS group work in searching for new particles and new phenomena. In particular I am focused on the searches of Dark Matter particle candidates. I have been searching for Dark Matter particles produced in association with heavy-flavour quarks and now I kickstarted the investigation of QCD-like dark sectors that would generate special experimental topologies like semi-visible jets.

I am also leading the QMUL ATLAS group working in flavour physics focusing in rare B meson decays that could be sensitive to the presence of new particles. In 2021-2023, I have been Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellow focusing on test of Lepton Flavour Universality with the measurement of the RK* ratio of B decays in K* mesons and lepton pairs (electons over muons) at ATLAS.

As member of the Belle 2 collaboration, an experiment taking data at the KEK accelerator in Tsukuba, Japan, I focus on studying B meson systems which are extremely interesting for understanding matter-antimatter asymmetry and most aspects of flavour physics.

On the phenomenological front, I am founder and active member of the phenomenological collaboration UTfit that extracts fundamental parameters of the Standard Model from results obtained from all the present and past experiments and from the most updated theoretical calculations.

Finally as founder of the SAPIENS project, I am analysing the pollutions and traffic patterns in Mexico City in order to exploit Machine Learning techniques to develop pollution predictions.

Publications of specific relevance to the Centre for Experimental and Applied Physics

Grants