On June 5, 2026, as part of the "NangaoShi· Physics Salon" brand lecture series organized by the School of Physics and Technology of Nanjing Normal University, Professor Zhang Lei from Nanjing University was invited to deliver a lecture entitled "Higgs: Flavor, Origin and More" in Room 437 of the Xingjian Building at Nanjing Normal University. The lecture was hosted by Wang Hui from the School of Physics and Technology, and was attended by faculty members, graduate students, and undergraduate students from relevant disciplines.

During the lecture, Professor Zhang first introduced fundamental knowledge such as the LHC and the Standard Model, and then turned to the focus of the lecture: the Higgs boson.

In the first topic, Professor Zhang introduced the Yukawa coupling between the Higgs boson and fermions, detailing the measurements of Higgs decays to two tau leptons and two bottom quarks, as well as the progress in searches for Higgs decays to two charm quarks. He then discussed the Higgs self-coupling, and presented the current progress and future prospects of the di-Higgs decaying to two bottom quarks plus two tau leptons channel.

In the second topic, Professor Zhang presented new physics explorations related to the Higgs boson, including CP violation in the Higgs sector and extensions of the Higgs sector.

In the third topic, Professor Zhang introduced research and development on detector hardware, including the High-Granularity Timing Detector (HGTD) for the ATLAS Phase II upgrade, the LumiCal luminosity detector for the CEPC, and the development of the Zero-Degree Calorimeter (ZDC) for the BESIII experiment, among others.

This lecture not only deepened the attendees’ understanding of the Higgs boson and detector hardware, but also provided a valuable opportunity for academic exchange in related fields. Professor Zhang’s brilliant presentation and insightful analysis were highly praised and sparked enthusiastic discussions among the participants.

Biography of Professor Zhang Lei

Zhang Lei is a professor at the School of Physics of Nanjing University, where he joined in 2018. He participates in the ATLAS and BESIII experiments. He has made significant contributions to establishing the Yukawa interactions between the Higgs boson and bottom quarks and tau leptons. He has been deeply engaged in the search for di-Higgs production, providing the most stringent measurement of the Higgs self-coupling. He has systematically studied new physics such as beyond-the-Standard-Model Higgs bosons, and previously served as the convener of the ATLAS BSM Higgs Physics Working Group. At the BESIII experiment, he conducted the first study of weak decays of excited charmed-strange mesons, and introduced machine learning methods into the physics analyses of BESIII.

In detector R&D, Zhang Lei took part in the HGTD project for the ATLAS experiment, where he co-led the development of the Peripheral Electronics Board (PEB). He has also carried out the development of the high-precision luminosity detector LumiCal for the CEPC, and the Zero-Degree Calorimeter (ZDC) for the BESIII experiment. The ZDC is planned to be deployed at the BEPCII collider by the end of 2026, to provide fast luminosity monitoring and initial-state radiation photon tagging for the BESIII experiment.