Cristina Mantilla Suárez

CMS at the LHC — searches at the energy frontier

We comb through millions of proton–proton collisions at the LHC to search for elusive and anomalous new particle interactions — signatures that would point beyond the Standard Model. These signals are rare and easily buried.

Recent analysis topics include: characterizing highly-energetic Higgs bosons (boosted Higgs) in decays to b-quarks and tau-leptons, searching for the simultaneous production of two or even three Higgs bosons (HH), and somewhat off-topic: searching for new di-electron resonances at "low mass".

LDMX at SLAC — hunting light dark matter

We are members of the proposed Light Dark Matter eXperiment (LDMX) at SLAC, a fixed-target effort designed to probe dark matter in the sub-GeV mass range that colliders struggle to reach. LDMX uses technology from the LHC to acquire data with a high frequency electron beam. 

HGCAL & DAQ — detectors and data acquisition

We contribute to the CMS High-Granularity Calorimeter (HGCAL) detector which will be installed in 2027-2029 for the next run of the LHC. Members of our group are contributing to the assembly of this ginormous silicon and scintillator detector with a focus on the data-acquisition system and online software.

Pushing this science forward with AI

Particle transformers for identifying Lorentz-boosted Higgs bosons decaying to a pair of W bosons

CMS Collaboration

A transformer based algorithm for classifying Higgs boson decays, used ubiquitously by the CMS collaboration

[arXiv, Submitted to JHEP]

Search for Higgs boson production at high transverse momentum in the WW decay channel in proton-proton collisions at √s = 13 TeV

CMS Collaboration

First search for boosted Higgs in the WW final state

[arXiv, JHEP 07 (2026) 248]

Improved results on Higgs boson pair production in the 4b final state

CMS Collaboration

First results with the LHC Run-3 dataset in the search for H(bb)H(bb)

[arXiv, Submitted to Physical Review D]

LDMX — the Light Dark Matter eXperiment 

T. Åkesson et al. (LDMX Collaboration)

Design report of the LDMX experiment

[arXiv]

New technique to discriminate the charge of heavy flavour tagged jets using Particle Transformer in the CMS experiment

CMS Collaboration

A reasonable first attempt at jet charge tagging with transformer models, now onto calibration...

[CDS]

ECON-T and ECON-D: Endcap Concentrator ASICs for the CMS HGCAL

C. Mantilla-Suarez et al.

Design and testing of custom microelectronics devices, one of which uses AI-on-chip

[JINST, JINST 19 (2024) C03050]

Jul 2026 · Group

Summer 2026 activities

Ali visited Fermilab to help with pre-production HGCAL cassette assembly.
Undergraduates Pierce, Will, and Jack joined us this summer to configure and prep the readout boards for the LDMX Hcal cosmic test stand.
Undergraduate Sam is doing great work at the local HGCAL test stand.
Undergraduate Kyle is thinkering with HH(4b) events and helping with the CalVision matrix assembly!

Jun 2026 · Workshop

HGCAL workshop at CERN

Gabi and Clara gave excellent talks at the internal HGCAL workshop at CERN.

Dec 2025 · Travel

At SLAC for LDMX beamline commisioning

Josh traveled to SLAC to help with the "vertical-slice" test at SLAC. We had a couple of intense days that culminated with one successful (but uncalibrated) run of the Hcal, before a rat chewed on cables and ended our run...