Elementary Particle Experiment Home Pages
Elementary Particle Experiment
Have you ever wondered what are the smallest constituents of the Nature, and where all the antimatter from the Universe has gone? Does it boggle your mind why the top quark is so heavy and whether neutrinos have mass at all? Have you tried to find a Higgs boson or desperately sought Susy? Are the three spatial dimensions too few for you and are you looking to discover the new ones? These are just a few of a number of challenging goals pursued by the Brown University Particle Physics group. To help meet these goals, they design state-of-the-art particle detectors, build ultra-high speed electronics and data acquisition systems that crunch terabytes of data in a blink of an eye.
Dave
Cutts, Richard Partridge, and Greg Landsberg, together with
a number of research assistants and graduate students are
presently involved in the DØ experiment at the Tevatron
proton-antiproton collider, which operates at the high-energy
frontier and attempts to address the most fundamental problems
of modern particle physics, such as origin of masses. The
DØ Experiment consists of a worldwide collaboration
of scientists conducting research on the fundamental nature
of matter. The experiment is located at the world's most powerful
high-energy accelerator, the Tevatron collider, at the Fermi
National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), near Chicago,
Illinois. The research is focused on precise studies of interactions
of protons and antiprotons at the highest available energies.
It involves an intense search for subatomic clues that reveal
the character of the building blocks of the universe.
The
Brown HEP group plays a major role in the DØ experiment
by carrying important responsibilities of building the luminosity
monitor, assembling the Silicon Microstrip Tracking detector,
and designing the data acquisition and high-level software
trigger systems for the upgrade of the DØ detector
for the next Tevatron run, which will start in March 2001.
Brown physicists have played key role in physics analyses
based on the data taken by the experiment in its first run
in 1992-1996. The highlights of these analyses are the top
quark discovery in 1995 and the study of its properties, the
precision measurement of the mass of the W-boson, and searches
for new physics phenomena, which set stringent limits on their
existence. We will continue to be very aggressive in physics
analyses in the new run starting in 2001. A major upgrade
to the Fermilab accelerator complex, and accompanying improvements
in the DØ detector, opens up exciting opportunities
of finding (rather than ruling out!) new particles. Among
the most interesting topics we will pursue in the next run
are searches for supersymmetrical particles for the Higgs
boson, and for evidence for extra spatial dimensions.
In
an effort to solve the solar neutrino riddle, Bob Lanou, Humphrey
Maris, and George Seidel collaborate on the HERON project.
HERON employs a novel liquid helium based neutrino detector
that is capable of detecting neutrinos emitted by the sun
down to energies that were previously unreachable. More detail
on this novel research initiative can be found in the section
of this brochure devoted to experimental cosmology.
Graduate students in experimental particle physics are actively involved in all aspects of the research, including development of hardware and software systems for the DØ and Heron detectors, as well as in the data taking and analysis. In the course of their thesis research, students work with the cutting-edge electronics and computer systems, learn to use modern object-oriented programming languages, such as C++ and Java, and master powerful data mining, reduction, optimization and other analysis techniques. Many of them continue research in the field of experimental particle physics after obtaining the Ph.D. degree from Brown. Others are pursuing challenging positions in other branches of physics or choose to exercise skills they have developed in the high-tech industry.
Selected Recent PhD Dissertations
David Cullen-Vidal, "Color Coherent Radiation in Multi-Jet Events from Proton-Antiproton Collisions at the DØ Detector"
Thomas Fahland, "Test of the Electroweak Sector of the Standard Model by Measuring the Anomalous WWCouplings"
Freedy Nang, "The Measurement of the Inclusive Triple Differential Dijet Cross-section at DØ"
