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Collider Detector at Fermilab

Physics Dipl., 1997, Hamburg University. Ph.D., 2001, Hamburg University. Research Assistant, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) 1997-2002. Research Associate, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL) 2002-2005. Assistant Professor, Physics, Cornell University, 2005-present. Guest Scientist at RWTH Aachen, Germany, March-September 2009. Fellow, German National Scholarship Foundation 1993-1997.

Research Areas
Experimental Elementary Particle Physics, Heavy Quark Physics, Hadron Collider Physics

Current Research

We are preparing for detector commissioning and data taking at the Compact Muon Soleniod (CMS) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will soon collide particles at the TeV energy scale, more than an order of magnitude higher than ever reached before. This new energy scale opens up the exciting possibility of great scientific discoveries. Explanations for the origin of electroweak symmetry breaking, the existence of dark matter, and the discovery of supersymmetric particles are finally within our reach. I am particularly interested in a detailed understanding of the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking. In the Standard Model of elementary particle physics, this mechanism is associated with the existence of a Higgs particle that has yet to be discovered. With the LHC we will be in a position to discover the Higgs Boson or other particles that break the symmetry and to measure their quantum numbers. The precision tracking capability provided by pixel detectors is essential to these measurements.

The key aspects of my current work on CMS are silicon pixel detectors and Monte Carlo simulation in preparation for data analysis.

Research work in my group involves development of data analysis algorithms and Monte Carlo simluation of New Physics phenomena expected to be observed at the LHC, as well as detector R&D of novel silicon pixel devices.  As the CMS detector starts taking data, students would travel to or live at CERN, Switzerland, for detector commissioning, data taking and years of exciting new physics discoveries.

Postdocs
Joshua Thompson and Luke Winstrom

Graduate Students
Jennifer Vaughan, Walter Hopkins and Yao Weng

Undergraduate Students
Sueyeon Chung, Tim Lutz, Mickey McDonald and Manan Suri

Spotlight

Heng Li is a graduate student working with professor Julia Thom's research group at LEPP. The group is part of an international collaboration preparing the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment that will operate at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) scheduled to begin operation in 2007 in Geneva, Switzerland. He is calibrating the CMS detector software so that the 66 million pixels of the detector light up at the appropriate voltage, and he's optimizing the software so that it runs fast ...
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