Tag: Fredrick Olness

Observed! SMU’s LHC physicists confirm new particle; Higgs ‘God particle’ opens new frontier of exploration

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date July 4, 2012

Physicists from SMU and around the globe were euphoric Wednesday with the revelation that a new particle consistent with the Higgs boson “God particle” has been observed.

Described as a great triumph for science, the observation is the biggest physics discovery of the last 50 years and opens what scientists said is a vast new frontier for more research.

The achievement is the result of the global CERN scientific collaboration of thousands of scientists, including physicists from SMU, and CERN’s massive $10 billion Large Hadron Collider proton smasher.

“The observation opens up clear directions for physicists at SMU and throughout the world to study the properties of the Higgs,” said SMU physicist Ryszard Stroynowski, a principal investigator in the search for the Higgs and the leader of SMU’s team from the Department of Physics on the experiment.

“The experimental physics group at SMU has been involved since 1994 and is a major contributor to this study. This discovery was many years in the making, but it was worth the wait,” Stroynowski said.

The results, which are preliminary, were announced at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, near Geneva, Switzerland, and at the International Conference of High Energy Physics in Melbourne, Australia.

SMU Dean of Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences William M. Tsutsui noted that the crucial work contributed by SMU scientists gives Dallas standing in the discovery.

“Although the world’s eyes are on Switzerland, it is important to remember how much of the expertise driving the revolutionary experiments at CERN came from right here in Dallas,” Tsutsui said. “Distinguished scholars in Dedman College’s Department of Physics, including Ryszard Stroynowski and Jingbo Ye, have played critical roles in the search for the tiniest and most elusive building blocks of the universe.”

Observation is culmination of nearly 50 years of research
In making the announcement, CERN’s scientists stopped short of declaring the new particle the Higgs, saying they will further analyze the data to see whether it is the Higgs boson as originally theorized more than 40 years ago, but which has never been observed through experiments.

A Higgs particle is necessary to round out the fundamental particles that make up physics’ Standard Model, which describes the fundamental particles and their interactions.

Without a Higgs, the Standard Model does not fully explain how the universe emerged from the Big Bang. The Higgs explains how matter acquires mass.

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider along the border of France and Switzerland made it possible to observe evidence of the Higgs by smashing together protons at high energies so their breakup replicates the Big Bang. The LHC, which took a decade to build, started operation in 2010. It is home to the largest high-energy physics experiments in the world, including the ATLAS and CMS particle detectors, which supplied the data for Wednesday’s results.

Scientists from 45 collaborating nations work on the LHC experiments, including more than 1,700 from 89 U.S. universities. They have helped design, build and operate the LHC accelerator and its particle detectors.

LHC’s data equivalent to grains of sand needed to fill Olympic-size pool
The LHC is a 17-mile tunnel some 100 meters below ground. Within the tunnel, billions of protons are sent hurling into one another to re-create the high-energy explosions present at the Big Bang. In those rare instances when protons collide in the LHC tunnel, the smashing protons break up into smaller particles. In a process akin to reverse engineering, the resulting particle sprays are captured as data that are then analyzed for evidence that they emerged from the fundamental Higgs.

In announcing the results, CERN scientists said data taken the past two years represent 500 trillion collisions. That equates to the grains of sand it would take to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool. Within that data, evidence pointing to the Higgs equals an amount of sand covering the tip of a finger, they said.

Discovery made possible by global supercomputing grid that includes SMU
Credit for the discovery goes not only to the scientists and to CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, but also to a vast worldwide computing grid at partnering institutions. Physicists rely on supercomputers to assist their analysis of the massive flow of raw data containing the Higgs.

The SMU High-Performance Computing system is part of that grid and routinely runs data that contributed to the observation, Stroynowski said.

“Much of the success of our small group in the highly competitive environment of a large international collaboration has been due to an easy access and superb performance of the SMU High Performance Computing system,” Stroynowski said. “We used the HPC for fast data analyses and complex calculations needed for the discovery.”

Discovery of the new particle demonstrates the importance of basic research, said James Quick, associate vice president for research at SMU and dean of graduate studies.

“SMU is proud and excited that its Department of Physics has been an active participant in this effort and looks forward to the department’s continued participation at CERN,” he said. “Launched by a federal research project sponsored by Congressman Pete Sessions, high-performance computing at SMU played a role in the Higgs discovery and is a primary focus in the university’s drive to expand research and enhance education.”

Discovery is once-in-a-lifetime milestone for SMU researchers
SMU researchers contribute to the experiment through hardware and software development, as well as by taking operations shifts, both in the control room and in the United States, by remote, and through review of their colleagues’ work.

Besides Stroynowski, the SMU team includes Physics Department researchers Jingbo Ye, Ryan Rios and Julia Hoffman. In addition, physics faculty Robert Kehoe and Stephen Sekula are part of the SMU team. Theoretical faculty include Pavel Nadolsky and Fredrick Olness.

“It’s a very happy day for all of us in particle physics,” said Nadolsky, who with other physicists contributed calculations extensively used by LHC experimentalists, including for discovery of the Higgs boson candidate and for ongoing analyses to establish the properties of the new particle. Those working with him include postdoctoral researchers Marco Guzzi and Jun Gao, graduate student Zhihua Liang, and senior lecturer Simon Dalley.

Other researchers who have participated on the SMU team include Ana Firan, Haleh Hadavand, Sami Kama, Aidan Randle-Conde, Peter Renkel, Rozmin Daya, Renat Ishmukhametov, Tingting Cao and Kamile Dindar-Yagci.

Electronics development was carried out by research professors Andy Liu and Annie Xiang, with computer support by Justin Ross.

“The discovery of the Higgs is a once-in-a-lifetime event; this is the culmination of a 50-year quest,” said Olness, chair of the SMU Physics Department. “The last time a discovery of this import occurred was in 1983 with the observation of the W and Z boson — also at CERN; this achievement was recognized with the 1984 Nobel Prize. Many speculate the discovery of the Higgs boson also merits a Nobel Prize.”

The vast majority of U.S. scientists participate in the LHC experiments from their home institutions, remotely accessing and analyzing the data through high-capacity networks and grid computing.

“The results released on July 4 are truly a ‘team effort,’ not just by SMU but throughout all of ATLAS,” said Sekula, assistant physics professor. “These results are not possible without both the cooperation and competition that are needed to drive scientific innovation and progress.”

Waiting for Higgs for more than half a century
Physicists theorized in 1964 the existence of a new particle, now known as the Higgs, whose coupling with other particles would determine their mass.

SMU’s Kehoe said the observation changes our view of the universe. “It further transforms our daily experience of mass, which is hard and heavy, into the ghostly world of quantum mechanical interactions,” Kehoe said. “If what we are seeing is the Higgs particle, we will have identified the last unknown particle in the Standard Model.”

The Standard Model of particle physics has proved to explain correctly the elementary particles and forces of nature through more than four decades of experimental tests. But it cannot, without the Higgs boson, explain how most of these particles acquire their mass, a key ingredient in the formation of our universe.

CERN reported that both the ATLAS and CMS experiments within the LHC independently observed the new heavy particle in the mass region around 125-126 billion electron volts.

“So far, more than one study indicates an excess, but by a bit more than expected,” Kehoe said. “And the mass is in the range predicted for a Standard Model Higgs. However, measurements from other analyses need also to be brought to bear.”

The preliminary results announced Wednesday are based on data collected in 2011 and 2012, with the 2012 data still under analysis. A more complete picture will emerge later this year after the LHC provides more data.

Scientists to gather more data to learn about new particle
Sekula, who was at CERN and live-blogged Wednesday’s announcement, reported that “the atmosphere in the Main Amphitheater at CERN was electric, and all this energy burst forth in thunderous applause when first CMS, then ATLAS, showed independent and overwhelming evidence for the existence of a new particle in nature, consistent with the Higgs particle. Decades of scientific hope and frustration suddenly turned to joy and excitement — I can only imagine what the future holds as we gather more data and learn more about this particle.”

The CMS and ATLAS experiments in December announced seeing tantalizing hints of a new particle in their hunt for the Higgs. Since resuming data-taking in March 2012, the CMS and ATLAS experiments have more than doubled their collected data.

In the future, physicists will have to determine the properties of the new particle.

“How much does it weigh precisely? What are its quantum mechanical properties?” Kehoe said. “There are several theories that are consistent with what we’ve seen so far, like the theory of supersymmetry, and we need to make careful measurements to tell which one is correct. If what we’re seeing is a new type of particle that only superficially resembles the Higgs right now, then this will revolutionize our understanding of matter and energy at a fundamental level.” — Margaret Allen, CERN, Fermilab

Follow SMUResearch.com on Twitter, http://twitter.com/smuresearch.

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.smuresearch.com.

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 SMU Broadcast Studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650.

Tags Aidan Randle-Conde, Dedman College, Fredrick Olness, Jingbo Ye, Julia Hoffman, Pavel Nadolsky, Robert Kehoe, Ryan Rios, Ryszard Stroynowski, Stephen J. Sekula

Energy & Matter Researcher news Student researchers Technology

SMU physicists at CERN find hints of long sought after Higgs boson — dubbed the fundamental “God” particle

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date December 13, 2011

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.

Tags Annie C. Xiang, Dedman College, Fredrick Olness, Jingbo Ye, Julia Hoffman, Pavel Nadolsky, Robert Kehoe, Ryan Rios, Ryszard Stroynowski, SMU Department of Physics, Stephen J. Sekula

Energy & Matter Researcher news

Theoretical universe: Olness to present at DESY premier research center

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date February 9, 2010

Fredrick Olness, a professor in SMU’s Physics Department, has been named the inaugural lecturer in a program launched by the DESY laboratory, Germany’s premier research center for particle physics.

DESY’s “Theorist of the Week” program will bring prominent theorists from around the globe to spend a week at the lab’s analysis center in Hamburg, Germany. Olness, who will visit the laboratory in March, is the program’s first guest physicist.

Fredrick Olness

The visit is hosted by DESY. The “Theorist of the Week” program is sponsored by the prestigious Helmholtz Alliance, a structured research network comprising 18 German universities and three institutes, as well as DESY.

SMU’s Olness is co-spokesman of the CTEQ collaboration, an international collaboration of 30 experimentalists and theorists from 16 universities and five national labs working on quantum chromodynamics. Known as QCD, quantum chromodynamics is the theory of the strong nuclear force that binds the protons and neutrons inside the atomic nucleus.

At DESY, Olness will present a seminar on his research specialty and also will participate in extended discussions with German experts. This program will improve the exchange between theory and experiment, provide a forum for presenting the latest research advances, and will also generate an active intellectual environment for Ph.D. students.

The Alliance is part of a broad international effort to explore the physics at the Terascale — the highest energy scales available in the laboratory, enabling scientists to study interactions at the smallest distance scales as they try to characterize the fundamental forces and building blocks of nature.

An important component of this Terascale program is the new CERN particle accelerator near Geneva, Switzerland, called the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC. It is the highest-energy particle accelerator ever built. By accelerating protons to nearly the speed of light, the LHC functions as a “high-energy microscope” to study matter at the smallest distance scales.

“With the start-up of CERN’s LHC this past fall, we soon expect revolutionary results that will help us explain the origin of matter and decode the nature of dark matter,” Olness said. “Additionally, these results may provide glimpses of proposed extra spatial dimensions and new particles predicted by grand unified theories. Evidence for any of these phenomena would dramatically change our view of the world.”

Olness will visit DESY from March 8 to 12 and present his recent work on the “benchmark” processes that will be used to calibrate the discoveries that scientists anticipate will be made at CERN’s LHC. For example, Olness’ work on the W and Z boson production at the LHC can be used to calibrate various searches for the important Higgs boson, the hypothesized notion of super symmetry and other “new physics” processes that scientists hope to discover. Olness, with his CTEQ collaborators, will analyze a combination of data from DESY’s HERA electron-proton collider, the Tevatron proton-antiproton collider at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago, Illinois, and various fixed-target experiments to distinguish “new physics” from “old physics” and thereby maximize the discovery potential of the LHC.

Moving an ATLAS end-cap calorimeter, which measures the energy of particles produced close to the axis of the beam when protons collide. Credit: CERN

Olness is part of an SMU physics group working on projects related to the LHC. The team is led by Ryszard Stroynowski, chair and professor of physics at SMU. Other SMU physics faculty include Robert Kehoe, Pavel Nadolsky, Stephen Sekula and Jingbo Ye.

Stroynowski, Kehoe, Sekula and Ye work on the ATLAS detector, the largest of the four detectors that will study particle collisions at the LHC. Nadolsky is a leading researcher in the area of parton distribution functions, which are an essential component for making accurate predictions for LHC physics.

Olness was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2005 for significant contributions to understanding nucleon structure and heavy quark production in perturbative quantum chromodynamics. In addition to the DESY laboratory, Olness has worked at DOE’s Fermilab and at CERN’s LHC. Olness is co-author of the textbook Mathematica for Physics, which integrates new computer algebra tools into the core physics curriculum. This text is now in its 2nd Edition and also has been translated into Japanese.

At SMU, Olness received an SMU Ford Fellowship, the SMU “M” Award, and the President’s Associates Outstanding Faculty Award. He is director of the Dallas Regional Science & Engineering Fair, serves as president of the SMU Faculty Senate and brings physics to North Texas students with his “Physics Circus” public lectures to local schools.

“I particularly enjoy bringing my excitement for science discovery into the classroom with the ‘Physics Circus’ demonstration shows,” Olness said. “My love for science was fueled by my curiosity of how things work. Whether we are understanding the physics principles of a bed of nails or the substructure of the atom, curiosity is an essential ingredient for discovery.”

Tags CERN, Dedman College, Fredrick Olness, SMU Department of Physics

Energy & Matter

Before God particle, scientists must learn soul of new machine

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date May 20, 2009

After a huge success in first testing, followed by a very public meltdown last September, the Large Hadron Collider may be ready for action again as early as June.

But before the science can proceed, the world’s scientists must come to terms with the complex organism they have created, says one project manager.

“We will have to understand the detector first,” says Ryszard Stroynowski, chair and professor of physics at SMU.

Stroynowski is U.S. Coordinator for the Liquid Argon Calorimeter, the literal and experimental heart of ATLAS, the largest particle detector in the LHC array.

Pictured right: Work progressing in the LHC tunnel.
Photo courtesy of CERN.

The first priority for operation of the ATLAS detector is “to get all those billions of elements to work together in synch again,” Stroynowski says. “We want to see during the summer whether the circulating beam will induce any noise in the system.”

Stroynowski leads an SMU delegation that includes Fredrick Olness, professor of physics, and Robert Kehoe and Jingbo Ye, assistant professors of physics, all in Dedman College. Kehoe is currently at CERN for his research.

The SMU team is focusing on three projects in parallel:

improvements of the graphic and software interfaces for control and monitoring of the detector and of the quality of its data
preparation of the software packages to analyze the data
design and prototyping of the modifications of the readout electronics that will be needed for future upgrades of the experiment to much higher-intensity beams — a six-year research and development project led by Jingbo Ye in SMU’s Physics Electronics Lab.

The LHC is considered the world’s largest physics experiment. The particle accelerator is a 27-kilometer circular tunnel that lies 100 meters underground near Geneva on the French-Swiss border. It uses a magnetic field to propel high-energy protons into each other.

A mechanical failure in September 2008 damaged 53 of the super-sized magnets that power and focus the accelerator’s beams. The final replacement magnet was lowered into place April 30. Repairs in the tunnel now focus on connecting the magnets together and installing new safety and monitoring systems to prevent similar incidents from happening again.

In addition, the 37 damaged magnets that were replaced by spares will be refurbished to serve as spares themselves. Sixteen magnets sustained only minimal damage and were repaired and reinstalled.

The earlier malfunction has resulted in a frustrating wait — one that has had a “rather demoralizing” effect on the students and postdoctoral fellows whose time at the LHC may come and go during downtime, Stroynowski says. Yet the importance of protecting the vast high-energy array from future trauma can’t be overstated, and “the goal is worth the wait, as the payoff may be enormous,” he says.

Scientists and technicians at the European Organization for Nuclear Research — called by its acronym, CERN — in Geneva have maintained an aggressive rehabilitation schedule. The ATLAS detector itself was closed on May 5, marking an end to checks and re-checks of the electronics, cables and other connections. Repairs to the accelerator’s underground ring are scheduled to be completed at the end of May.

Beams will start in June, initially at a relatively low 450 gigaelectron volts (GeV) per beam to ensure the integrity of the new parts and connections. Scientists will raise the energy over a couple of days to 2 teraelectron volts (TeV) per beam, and finally to the LHC’s target operational level of 5 TeV per beam.

The ATLAS team will start taking shifts in July and expects to have useful data starting in October 2009, Stroynowski says. The LHC will then run continuously for 11 months.

Stroynowski says he doesn’t expect any major discoveries by this time next year, but that he hopes “significant results” will come early in 2011.

The LHC’s proton collisions release even smaller pieces of matter, and the Atlas particle detector helps measure the tracks they leave. The huge, international project is directed at finding the “Higgs boson,” a subatomic “God particle” that physicists believe could help explain the origin of our Universe.

The theory behind the Higgs boson holds that all particles had no mass just after the “Big Bang.” As the Universe cooled and the temperature fell below a critical value, an invisible force field composed of subatomic particles called the “Higgs boson” developed throughout the cosmos. Particles that interact with the field gain mass and particles that never interact have no mass. But the theory remains unproven because no one has ever seen the Higgs boson at work. — Kathleen Tibbetts

SMU has an uplink facility on campus for live TV, radio or online interviews. To speak with Dr. Stroynowski or to book him in the SMU studio, call SMU News & Communications at 214-768-7650 or UT Dallas Office of Media Relations at 972-883-4321.

SMU is a private university in Dallas where nearly 11,000 students benefit from the national opportunities and international reach of SMU’s seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smu.edu.

Tags CERN, Dedman College, Fredrick Olness, Jingbo Ye, Robert Kehoe, Ryszard Stroynowski, SMU Department of Physics

Energy & Matter Researcher news

Science morphs into science fiction in “Angels & Demons”

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date May 19, 2009

“Antimatter” is one of the big stars in the new Ron Howard film “Angels & Demons.” After seeing the movie, people may wonder how much of the science in the film is actually real.

SMU Physics Professor Fredrick Olness says the new action thriller exploits cutting-edge science to create an exciting tale of science fiction mystery and imagination. “Angels & Demons” takes key ideas that are based upon scientific fact, Olness comments, and then exaggerates the details for the purpose of storytelling — and that’s the transformation from “science” to “science fiction.”

In the movie, which opened May 15, members of a centuries-old secret society steal a small container of antimatter from the CERN particle physics laboratory in Europe and threaten to blow up the Vatican. Tom Hanks, as a Harvard professor, tries to stop the society.

“Angels & Demons” is billed as the prequel to the 2006 box-office hit “The Da Vinci Code,” both of which are based on books by best-selling author Dan Brown.

Watch the official “Angels & Demons” movie trailer

When asked to separate fact from fiction, Olness noted:

• CERN is indeed an international particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland where hundreds of scientists from around the world study the fundamental laws of nature.

Pictured right: Atlas collision event

• While it is also true that CERN has created antimatter, it would take more than a billion years (with current technology) to make the quantity of antimatter described in the movie. If you collected all the antimatter that CERN has ever created, it would only power an electric light bulb for a few minutes.

• It is true that when antimatter and matter meet, they annihilate into pure energy; however, antimatter is not a source of energy. The production of antimatter is very inefficient, so it takes much more energy to create the antimatter than you get back.

• It is also true that we are able to store antimatter, but scientists don’t actually keep antimatter on the lab shelf. Even small quantities of antimatter are difficult to store. Charged antimatter can be stored in a “magnetic bottle,” but the repulsive force of the antimatter charges greatly limits the quantity. Uncharged (neutral) antimatter cannot be contained by a “magnetic bottle.”

• The CERN laboratory was established in 1954 and has a long history of important scientific discoveries. Two of the discoveries from the CERN lab have been awarded Nobel Prizes, and CERN is the birthplace of the World Wide Web.

Olness spent his 2007-08 sabbatical in residence at CERN as part of a team of SMU scientists working with the Large Hadron Collider, which is featured in the opening scenes from “Angels & Demons.”

The collider, known as the LHC, is the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. Located near Geneva on the French-Swiss border, the LHC consists of a 17-mile, circular ring of magnets that lies 100 meters beneath the earth’s surface.

“Having spent a year at CERN, I particularly enjoyed the special effects during the LHC scene.” Olness commented. “They paid attention to the details, and even made the background dialogue in the LHC control room credible.”

The purpose of the LHC is to collide two counter-rotating beams of protons traveling at nearly the speed of light. The idea is to smash the protons into smaller particles, and to then gather the mountain of data that results from these “events.” The data will help scientists understand what may have occurred when our Universe came into existence just after the Big Bang. As noted in the movie, LHC scientists are searching for the hypothesized “God particle,” or more scientifically the “Higgs boson.”

As a theoretical physicist, Olness develops the computer models necessary to decipher the results of the LHC experiments. In addition to expanding our knowledge of fundamental science, research at CERN has contributed to important technological innovations such as the World Wide Web, massively parallel (GRID) computing, and improvements in medical imaging.

Tom Hanks toured CERN in February and was visibly impressed with its massive LHC particle accelerator, according to a CERN web site about the science behind the movie.

Olness, with wand, gives a nod to “Star Wars”
at the 2001 SMU Physics Circus

Hanks commented at CERN: “Magic is not happening here, magic is being explained here.”

CERN quotes Hanks as saying the movie “Angels & Demons” will inspire kids to take a greater interest in science.

Tags CERN, Dedman College, Fredrick Olness, SMU Department of Physics

SMU at CERN

Book a live interview

Related links

More SMU Research news

Subatomic particle can explain why matter has mass

Large Hadron Collider

Book a live interview

Related links

More SMU Research news