Miriam Watson is a member of the ATLAS collaboration at the Large
Hadron Collider. Her current research involves studying the
properties of the top quark, the heaviest of the known fundamental
particles. One such property is the correlation between the spins of
the top quark and its antiparticle, the top anti-quark. Deviations
from the expected result could indicate new physics processes, such as
supersymmetric or more exotic particles.
Miriam previously studied charm and bottom hadrons at ATLAS, including
charm meson cross-sections and quarkonium production (bound states of
charm or bottom quark-antiquark pairs). She analysed the production
of J/psi states in association with Z bosons: a very rare process,
which is sensitive to the behaviour of the strong interaction in heavy
quark bound states. During this time, she co-ordinated ATLAS working
groups on quarkonium physics and the hadronic decays of heavy flavour
states.
Prior to joining ATLAS, Miriam worked on the OPAL experiment at LEP
and studied the strong interaction (QCD) and W boson physics. After
taking a career break, she returned to academia on a Daphne Jackson
Fellowship and was then awarded a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin
Fellowship. She is now a University Lecturer.