To book a live or taped interview with Aidan Randle-Conde in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News at 214-768-7650 or email SMU News at news@smu.edu.
SMU postdoctoral researcher Aidan Randle-Conde, SMU Department of Physics, posted about his experience working at CERN on the blog Quantum Diaries. His March 6 entry details his thoughts about “Cleaning the world’s biggest machine,” CERN’s Atlas detector.
Researchers at Switzerland-based CERN, the largest high-energy physics experiment in the world, have been seeking the elusive fundamental particle the Higgs boson since it was theorized in the 1960s. The so-called “God” particle is believed to play a fundamental role in solving the important mystery of why matter has mass.
Thousands of scientists from around the world seek evidence of the Higgs particle through experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. The researchers analyze a flood of electronic data streaming from the breakup of speeding protons colliding in the massive particle accelerator.
Our shift starts with a briefing in the control room.
By Aidan Randle-Conde
Quantum Diaries Tuesday, March 6th, 2012 Today I spent much of my time crawling around on hands and knees, picking pieces of rubbish from the innards of the ATLAS detector. It’s just one of those things that comes with the job and gives you a different view of the experiment (literally.) Before we start taking data we need to make sure that the ATLAS cavern is clean and safe. I call this process “Grooming the Beast”.
The ATLAS detector is housed in the ALTAS cavern, just behind the Globe at CERN. The journey down is long (more than 100 meters) and convoluted, with all kinds of doorways, locks, passages and elevators. Work has been taking place in the cavern during the winter shutdown to make improvements and sort out minor problems with the detector. Is a piece of the hardware getting damaged by interactions with matter? This is an excellent time to replace it!
Some of the team survey the work ahead of them.
Cleaning the cavern just as people start to leave it may seem like an unusual thing to do, but it serves a very important purpose. There has been a lot of work to improve the detector during the shutdown, and this leaves some debris. The engineers clear up as much as they can as they go along, but the odd screw or piece of wire goes missing, and over the months this builds up. The real danger to the machine is metal debris. The detector contains large magnets and these can interact with metallic objects lying around. They need to be removed before we turn on and take data!
SMU has a team of researchers led by SMU Physics Professor Ryszard Stroynowski working on the CERN experiment. The team includes three other Physics Department faculty: Jingbo Ye, Robert Kehoe and Stephen Sekula, six postdoctoral fellows, including Randle-Conde, and five graduate students.
Quantum Diaries, as the site explains, “is a Web site that follows physicists from around the world as they experience life at the energy, intensity and cosmic frontiers of particle physics. Through their bios, videos, photos and blogs, the diarists offer a personal look at the daily lives of particle physicists.”
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
Study finds e-readers have opposite effect on middle school girls who struggle with reading
Book a live interview
To book a live or taped interview with Dr. Dara Williams-Rossi in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call SMU News at 214-768-7650 or email SMU News at news@smu.edu.
Middle school boys rated reading more valuable as an activity after two months of using an e-reader, according to a new study.
The findings come from a study of 199 middle school students who struggle with reading and who participated in a reading improvement class that included Amazon’s Kindle e-reader, said one of the study’s authors, Dara Williams-Rossi, Southern Methodist University, Dallas.
The researchers found that boys consistently had a higher self-concept of their reading skill than girls both before and after using the e-readers. After use of the e-readers, boys’ attitudes about the value of reading improved, while girls’ attitudes declined, said Williams-Rossi, an assistant clinical professor in the Annette Caldwell Simmons School of Education and Human Development at SMU.
Technology motivated boys; girls appear to prefer actual books
“The technology appeared to motivate the boys to read, while many girls preferred the actual books,” said Williams-Rossi, who is also director of undergraduate programs in Simmons. “The data showing the girls’ preference were statistically significant and particularly intriguing. This is part of a 3-year study and this data came midway through, so we are continuing our investigation and interviewing girls to understand their reaction to the e-readers. It may be that they prefer curling up with actual books and that they enjoy sharing their reading with their friends.”
Among the findings, students generally liked using e-readers and many felt that using it helped their reading improve. Sixth- and seventh-graders were more enthusiastic than eighth-graders about the e-readers, the researchers found.
Based on anecdotal comments from the children, the researchers found the e-readers sparked excitement among the students, resulting in positive attention for the students in the reading improvement classes. Over the course of the study, word about the e-readers spread around the school, and students who weren’t in reading improvement classes began asking how they could join “the Kindle classes.”
Access to Internet a challenge; boosts need for teacher monitoring
For the study, the researchers provided e-books on the Kindle e-readers to 199 students at an urban middle school in Fort Worth, Texas. The students had about 15 to 25 minutes during their silent reading improvement class period to read high-interest chapter books and stories on the Kindle. Books included 25 classics, including The Wizard of Oz and Black Beauty, as well as ghost stories and scary stories, which were the most popular. Students said they read between one and four e-books over the course of the two-month study.
Teachers generally thought the e-readers were better at getting their reluctant readers engaged, but they reported being frustrated by students’ easy Internet access through the district’s Wi-Fi, which required them to monitor the students more closely. Also, the teachers had to spend time keeping the e-readers charged, checked-out and locked up each night, but teachers told the researchers they plan to incorporate e-readers into their classes in coming years.
Overall, the students and their two teachers rated the experience as highly satisfying. In asking individual students what they liked about the e-readers, they said they liked not having to carry a lot of books; they liked other students not knowing their reading level or choice of book; they liked that the book they were reading was always available and hadn’t been removed from the classroom. The voice-to-text feature was popular with students for whom English is a second language.
In describing their reactions to the e-readers, students advised improvements to the Kindle and the books: a light, so it can be read in the dark; pictures; more books; and graphic novels.
“It’s inevitable that e-reader technology will enter school classrooms,” said the study’s authors. “Our study presents reasons e-readers may be beneficial, in particular, to reluctant readers in middle grades.”
Previous research in the field has shown that upper elementary and middle school students tend to read less than younger students because of time spent with their friends and in other activities. Also, these same students, particularly boys, may not value reading as much as they did when they were younger. One study found that most students indicated reading is a “boring way to spend time.”
Among those students, research has shown that low-skilled readers have trouble starting, continuing and finishing a book, and that they are stymied by vocabulary and reading comprehension challenges. Skilled readers, on the other hand, enjoy books.
Researchers have suggested that technological gadgets, enlarged text and a more favorable environment might encourage reluctant readers. For those reasons the authors pursued a study to see how reluctant readers would respond to e-readers. Rotary International purchased the e-readers for the research.
The findings also will be published in “E-Readers: The Next Big Thing for Reluctant Middle School Readers,” in Educational Leadership, which Williams-Rossi authored with Miranda and Johnson; and “Using E-Readers to Engage Middle School Students” in the “Proceeding of the 35th Annual Reading Association of Ireland Conference,” which Williams-Rossi authored with Miranda, Johnson and McKenzie. — Margaret Allen
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
National Geographic has launched its new Explorers web site, which includes SMU graduate student Andrés Ruzo.
The Explorers site acknowledges the work of the world’s scientists whose research is made possible in part through funding from National Geographic.
In a video description of the site, National Geographic explains: “In 1888 a club was formed, with a mission to explore. Today that spirit lives on in a new generation of National Geographic explorers. Innovative thinkers who redefine exploration. Living the mission and making the world a better place.”
To book a live or taped interview with Andrés Ruzo in the SMU News Broadcast Studio call News and Communications at 214-768-7650 or email news@smu.edu. (Photo: Octavio Mateus)
What did you want to be when you were growing up? For me, it was never what I wanted to be, but rather what I wanted to do with my life. I’ve wanted to be just about everything from a zoologist to an actor to a diplomat, and even a monk. However, what I want to do with my life has never changed: I want to be a force of positive change in the world.
How did you get started in your field of work? There is really no exact start, but rather, a lifetime of small coincidences that have led me to the world of geothermal energy.
As a boy I would spend my summers on the family farm in Nicaragua, which rests on top of a volcano called the Casita Volcano. I was able to see firsthand the power of the Earth’s heat. Later, as an undergrad at Southern Methodist University (SMU), these childhood memories inspired me to take a volcanology class. The first time I opened my class textbook, there on the page was a photo of the Casita Volcano! This created a personal connection with the subject that awakened my passion for geology. My desire to learn more about the Earth’s heat, and how we can harness it for power, eventually led me to the SMU Geothermal Lab, where I have studied, researched, and pursued my career in geology for the past six years.
What inspires you to dedicate your life to energy issues? Energy can turn deserts into fertile cropland, alleviate the struggle for resources, and permit seven billion people to live longer, healthier, more comfortable lives. Simultaneously, a nation’s economic and environmental prosperity, as well as its international power, are also tied with how that nation uses and creates energy.
Energy is a kingpin problem. By solving our energy issues, we simultaneously take care of other major world problems. The way I see it, by dedicating myself to energy, I am also fighting for the environment, national security, international relations, overpopulation, and economic problems, to name a few.
Although energy can do all of this, it often comes at a cost to our health and environment. This is where green energy comes in. Although I support all green energy development and believe that the right answer lies in developing local resources, given its base-load nature and its tremendous potential synergy with the oil and gas industry, I believe geothermal is the energy world’s sleeping giant.
Good business sense and good environmental practices do not have to be mutually exclusive. It is our job as consumers to ensure that the market demands both practices from corporations. I see geothermal as the best way to reach this end, so it is easy to want to dedicate my life to it—one solution that solves multiple problems.
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
The New York Times has written a comprehensive piece on the long-running global controversy surrounding double-amputee runner Oscar Pistorius, the South African vying to compete in the Olympics.
The Jan. 18 article, “The Fast Life of Oscar Pistorius,” cites extensively the work of SMU’s Peter Weyand, an expert in human locomotion. Controversy has swirled around Pistorius as the debate continues over the scientific advantage he enjoys as a result of his high-tech, carbon fiber artificial legs. Weyand helped lead a team of scientists who are experts in biomechanics and physiology in conducting experiments on Pistorius and the mechanics of his racing ability.
By Michael Sokolove
The New York Times
Oscar Pistorius trains inside a converted garage at the home of his personal trainer, a former professional rugby player. Iron pull-up bars and a variety of ropes and pulleys are bolted to brick walls. Free weights are lined up on the floor, along with hammered-together wooden boxes that serve as platforms for step-ups and standing jumps. Some of the equipment is clamped to an exterior wall of the garage, opposite an uncovered patio; when it rains, athletes just carry on and get soaked. “It’s old-school,” Pistorius said as we drove up to the place early one morning. “Some of the guys who train here, they bang it so hard, they often get sick in the garden. Nobody judges them.” [ … ]
[ … ] Since the initial paper was published, Weyand has been vocal in stating that Pistorius is at an advantage, a substantial one. The reasons he puts forward were not part of the rationale behind the I.A.A.F.’s disqualification of Pistorius — in effect, not among the “charges” against him — so Pistorius’s legal and scientific team did not have to disprove them at his appeal. The basis of the argument made by Weyand is not hard to follow: The Cheetah blade and its hardware are light, about 5.4 pounds as opposed to the weight of an intact leg and foot for someone of Pistorius’s build, about 12.6 pounds. As a result, his “swing times” — how quickly he can reposition his limbs — are unnaturally fast, “quite literally off the biological charts,” as Weyand (who did not testify in Lausanne) put it in a point-counterpoint debate with Herr in The Journal of Applied Physiology.
Weyand and a colleague, Matthew Bundle of the University of Montana (one of the seven authors listed on the initial journal article), expanded on this last year. “Mr. Pistorius can reposition his lightweight, artificial limbs in 0.28 seconds, and therefore 20 percent more rapidly than most intact-limb athletes,” they wrote. “To appreciate just how artificial Mr. Pistorius’s swing time is, consider that the average limb-repositioning time of five former 100-meter world-record holders (Ben Johnson, Carl Lewis, Maurice Greene, Tim Montgomery and Justin Gatlin) is 0.34 seconds. Mr. Pistorius’s limb-repositioning times are 15.7 percent more brief than five of the fastest male sprinters in recorded human history.”
The most provocative aspect of Weyand and Bundle’s argument — and clearly the biggest affront to Pistorius — is their calculation that the Cheetah blades, over the length of 400 meters, or once around the track, give him an 11.9-second advantage. That would make him no better than an average high school runner. Herr has dismissed this as a “back of the envelope” calculation, and in his contribution to the point-counterpoint, signed by four other authors of the initial paper, asked: “Would Weyand and Bundle predict that the world-record holder, Michael Johnson, would run 31s if he had both legs amputated?” [ … ]
SMU is a nationally ranked private university in Dallas founded 100 years ago. Today, SMU enrolls nearly 11,000 students who benefit from the academic opportunities and international reach of seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.
SMU has an uplink facility located on campus for live TV, radio, or online interviews. To speak with an SMU expert or book an SMU guest in the studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.
Subatomic particle can explain why matter has mass
In a giant game of hide and seek, physicists say there are indications they finally may have found evidence of the long sought after fundamental particle called the Higgs boson.
Researchers at Switzerland-based CERN, the largest high-energy physics experiment in the world, have been seeking the Higgs boson since it was theorized in the 1960s.
The so-called “God” particle is believed to play a fundamental role in solving the important mystery of why matter has mass. (article continued below)
“It doesn’t matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. If it doesn’t agree with experiment, it’s wrong.” — physicist Richard Feynman
By Fredrick Olness
Chairman and Professor
SMU Department of Physics
A 50 year search for the origin of particle mass nears an end. Maybe.
Mass is a seemingly simple property of everyday objects — atoms, humans, coffee cups. Yet, to understand the origin of mass on a fundamental level has been a challenging problem with a long history. The solution to this problem, suggested nearly 50 years ago, was the Higgs Boson (or just Higgs, for short). However, it has yet to be discovered.
On Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2011, an end to the Higgs search appeared much closer when the CERN Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland presented the latest results from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in a colloquium broadcast around the globe on the World Wide Web.
The announcement was a joint presentation by researchers from ATLAS and CMS, the two largest independent experiments at the LHC, in which they presented evidence for the Higgs based on the results of their 2011 data set.
Both the ATLAS and CMS experiments observed evidence for the Higgs. While the evidence was significant, it was not yet sufficient to claim an unambiguous discovery; however, it is quite compelling that the Higgs mass range obtained by these two independent experiments is consistent.
These results represent a tremendous step forward in explaining why fundamental particles have mass, and whether the Higgs exists.
What is the Higgs boson?
The postulated Higgs boson is responsible for giving mass to the many fundamental particles that make up the universe. This includes the quarks that comprise protons and neutrons, which comprise atoms and molecules, which comprise humans and everything around them. In essence, the Higgs generates the mass of the fundamental particles that make up you and your coffee cup.
We know objects have mass — just lift a heavy suitcase or weigh yourself on a scale. But to explain this seemingly simple idea in the context of our current fundamental theories has been a struggle ever since the idea of the Higgs was introduced 50 year ago. The problem is that to give particles mass in a straightforward manner would spoil a particular symmetry of the theory known as the “gauge symmetry.” Who cares? you ask, and why should I be worried about symmetry?
Symmetries have been an important guiding aspect of physics dating back before Einstein, who used symmetry principles, in part, to conclude that “all reference frames are created equal,” which led to his Theory of Relativity — certainly one of the triumphs of the 20th Century.
And that is what is so special about the Higgs; it gives particles a mass without violating the rules of symmetry.
How does the Higgs solve the problem?
According to our current understanding, Higgs bosons permeate all of space. As fundamental particles move through space, Higgs bosons interact with the particles and effectively exert a drag on them; it is this drag effect which we interpret as the mass of the particle.
Consider the following experiment. First move your coffee cup through the air, and then repeat this motion underwater; the water provides more resistance on the cup and it “feels more massive” as you drag it through the water as compared to the air. It is the interaction between the water and the coffee cup that provides the resistance to motion of mass. In this analogy, the water is playing the role of the Higgs.
It is the same with a quark, one of the fundamental particles that matter is made from. As a quark moves through space it interacts with the Higgs, and this interaction exerts a drag on the quark so that it “feels heavy.” But this is an illusion; in the strict interpretation of the theory, the quark has “mass” only because of the interaction with the Higgs that simulates the effects of the weight.
DÉJÀ VU: Luminiferous aether
To recap, the current theoretical picture is that Higgs bosons are everywhere. They permeate all space, and they must exist so that fundamental particles (that make up you and your coffee cup) have mass.
Have we seen this situation before?
In the late 1800’s, physicists posited the existence of a “luminiferous aether” which permeated all space. Scientists knew that water waves traveled through water, sound waves through air, and so they believed that light waves also needed something to travel through; luminiferous aether was invented to serve this purpose and get the “right” answer. There were many experiments that gave indirect evidence for the aether; however, all attempts to directly measure it were unsuccessful. Eventually it was demonstrated that the luminiferous aether did not exist, and this paved the way for Einstein to show that it was unnecessary and to present an alternative, his theory of relativity.
Thus, the non-existence of luminiferous aether actually led to more fantastic discoveries than if it had been proven.
Direct vs. indirect evidence
So we come to the central question: does the Higgs exist?
There is ample indirect evidence that the Higgs exists. We know that fundamental particles have mass, and we believe this mass is due to particle interactions with Higgs bosons. Over the past 50 years physicists have performed a variety of sophisticated experiments, and they all point to the existence of the Higgs.
However, in many ways the Higgs is a contrived solution; inelegant, introduced into the theory because so far there has been no better way to get the right answer — that particles have mass.
Just because it is currently the only solution developed does not mean it is the one that nature chooses.
And that is why we need direct evidence of the Higgs; we need to produce an actual Higgs in the laboratory, study its properties, and verify our theoretical view of the world with cold, hard facts from experimental observation.
The 2011 LHC results
The LHC experiment is producing these facts and evidence.
If the Higgs is confirmed to exist, it would validate our theory of how particles acquire mass, and serve as the foundation for myriad experiments in the future. Many speculate this discovery would also warrant a Nobel Prize.
If the Higgs is confirmed to not exist, it would likely send many theorists back to the drawing board in hopes of finding that nature has an even more clever mechanism of how particles acquire mass than we have yet been capable of conceiving. And, just as the non-existence of the aether set the stage for relativity, the non-existence of the Higgs could set the stage for future surprises.
Either way it will be an exciting journey and the results from the LHC bring us one step closer to the answer.
Fredrick Olness is a theoretical physicist at SMU studying Quantum Chromodynamics (the fundamental force that binds nuclei) to help answer the questions: What are the fundamental building blocks of nature, and what holds them together?
Thousands of scientists from around the world seek evidence of the Higgs particle through experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. The researchers analyze a flood of electronic data streaming from the breakup of speeding protons colliding in the massive particle accelerator. Scientists on Tuesday announced in a seminar held at CERN that they’ve found hints of the Higgs.
“Now we have a strong indication, but not yet a confirmation, of a discovery,” said Southern Methodist University physicist Ryszard Stroynowski, the leader of SMU’s team of scientists working on the experiment.
Higgs: Attempting to discover Standard Model’s missing piece
Theorists have predicted that some subatomic particles gain mass by interacting with other particles called Higgs bosons. The Higgs boson is the only undiscovered part of the Standard Model of physics, which describes the basic building blocks of matter and their interactions.
Higgs bosons, if they exist, are short-lived and can decay in many different ways. Just as a vending machine might return the same amount of change using different combinations of coins, the Higgs can decay into different combinations of particles. Discovery relies on observing statistically significant excesses of the particles into which they decay rather than observing the Higgs itself.
“If indeed we are able to confirm sighting of the Higgs in the months ahead, this clearly focuses our future studies,” said Stroynowski, a professor in the SMU Department of Physics. “Now by the middle of next year we’ll know for sure if this particle exists and we can begin to study its properties. This is a very big step in the understanding of particle physics.”
SMU researchers contributed to the results announced Tuesday by CERN
Besides Stroynowski, the SMU team of researchers includes three other Physics Department faculty: Jingbo Ye, Robert Kehoe and Stephen Sekula, six postdoctoral fellows and five graduate students. Main contributions to the new analysis of the data were made by postdoctoral researcher Julia Hoffman and graduate student Ryan Rios.
Others in the department who have contributed include former postdoctoral fellow David Joffe, now an assistant professor at Kennesaw State University, graduate students Renat Ishmukhametov and Rozmin Daya and theoretical faculty Fredrick Olness and Pavel Nadolsky.
Stroynowski, Hoffman, and Rios are among the more than 70 scientists whose work directly contributed to the conference papers reporting the findings, said Olness, a professor and chairman of the SMU Department of Physics.
While thousands of scientists worldwide participated directly and indirectly in the experiments, SMU is one of only a few U.S. universities whose scientists are named among the 70 researchers directly cited on one of the three conference papers.
“Professor Stroynowski has demonstrated extraordinary scientific leadership in keeping our relatively small Department of Physics at SMU engaged in one of the most significant scientific experiments of our time,” said Jim Quick, SMU Associate Vice President for Research.
SMU’s role in the LHC experiments provides SMU students a chance to participate in pioneering discoveries, said Olness.
“SMU students helped build the ATLAS detector, they were in the control room when the experiment started up, and they contributed to the analysis,” he said. “The results presented today are historic, and they will help shape our view of the matter and forces that comprise our universe; SMU students have played a role in this achievement.”
Higgs discovery would confirm decades-old theory
Discovering the type of Higgs boson predicted in the Standard Model would confirm a theory first put forward in the 1960s.
“This year, the LHC has come roaring into the front of the hunt for the Higgs boson and may be poised to either identify it, or refute its existence, in the coming months,” said Robert Kehoe, associate professor in the SMU Department of Physics. “As I like to tell my students learning modern physics, ‘You still live in a world in which we do not know for sure the mechanism breaking the symmetry between electromagnetic and weak interactions. That world may be soon to change forever. We may soon see a truly new thing.’”
Even if the LHC experiments find a particle where they expect to find the Higgs, it will take more analysis and more data to prove it is a Standard Model Higgs, according to CERN researchers. If scientists found subtle departures from the Standard Model in the particle’s behavior, this would point to the presence of new physics, linked to theories that go beyond the Standard Model. Observing a non-Standard Model Higgs, currently beyond the reach of the LHC experiments with the data they’ve recorded so far, would immediately open the door to new physics, said an official statement from CERN.
Results constrain Higgs’ mass to a range more limited than before
In announcing the findings, CERN noted that two experiments at the LHC have nearly eliminated the space in which the Higgs boson could dwell. The ATLAS and CMS experiments see modest excesses in their data that could soon uncover the famous missing piece of the physics puzzle, the scientists said.
The experiments’ main conclusion is that the Standard Model Higgs boson, if it exists, is most likely to have a mass constrained to the range 116-130 giga-electron-volts (GeV) by the ATLAS experiment, and 115-127 GeV by CMS. Tantalizing hints have been seen by both experiments in this mass region, but these are not yet strong enough to claim a discovery.
Both ATLAS and CMS have analyzed several decay channels, and the experiments see small excesses in the low mass region that has not yet been excluded.
Taken individually, none of these excesses is any more statistically significant than rolling a die and coming up with two sixes in a row. What is interesting is that there are multiple independent measurements pointing to the region of 124 to 126 GeV. It’s far too early to say whether ATLAS and CMS have discovered the Higgs boson, but these updated results are generating a lot of interest in the particle physics community.
The experiments revealed the latest results as part of their regular report to the CERN Council, which provides oversight for the laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland.
Experiments in coming months will refine the analysis
More than 1,600 scientists, students, engineers and technicians from more than 90 U.S. universities and five U.S. national laboratories take part in the ATLAS and CMS experiments. The Department of Energy’s Office of Science and the National Science Foundation provide support for U.S. participation in these experiments.
Over the coming months, both the ATLAS and CMS experiments will focus on refining their analyses in time for the winter particle physics conferences in March. The experiments will resume taking data in spring 2012.
Another possibility, discovering the absence of a Standard Model Higgs, would point to new physics at the LHC’s full design energy, set to be achieved after 2014. Whether ATLAS and CMS show over the coming months that the Standard Model Higgs boson exists or not, the LHC program is closing in on new discoveries. — CERN, Southern Methodist University
SMU is a member of the ATLAS experiment at the LHC. It takes a large team of scientists to search for the Higgs and other new physics; the SMU delegation includes faculty members Ryszard Stroynowski, Jingbo Ye, Robert Kehoe, Stephen Sekula, and a number of research professors, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students.
In addition, recent SMU ATLAS contributors include postdoctoral fellows Julia Hoffman, David Joffe (now at Kennesaw State), Ana Firan, Haleh Hadavand, Sami Kama, Aidan Randle-Conde and Peter Renkel, and graduate students Ryan Rios, Rozmin Daya, Renat Ishmukhametov Tingting Cao and Kamile Dindar-Yagci. Theoretical support was provided by faculty member Pavel Nadolsky, electronics development by research professors Andy Liu and Annie Xiang, and computer support by Justin Ross.
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