Experimental Elementary Particle Physics
Peter Wittich
Assistant Professor of Physics
214 Newman Lab
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York 14853-2501
(607) 255-3368
(630) 840-2389 (FNAL)
B.S., 1993, Yale University. Ph.D., 2000, University of Pennsylvania. Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Pennsylvania, 2000-2005. Assistant Professor, Physics, Cornell University, 2005-present.
Research Areas
Elementary Particle Physics; Hadron Collider Physics; Neutrino Physics
Current Research
My research involves understanding the most basic building blocks of matter. At this point, we have a pretty good idea what matter is made of (quarks and leptons, at its base), but we don't really understand the relations between the parts or, in the language of particle physics, the symmetries that govern our current best theory. Some of the questions we are struggling with are, what is the origin of mass? Why is there a discrepancy between the number of matter and anitmatter particles in the universe? What is the reason for the masses of the experimentally observed particles? Are the four forces we know about (gravity, strong, weak, electromagnetic) actually all manifestations of one unified force? How does gravity fit into quantum mechanics?
Understanding these relations is the goal of my current research at the CDF experiment at Fermilab's Tevatron collider and at the CMS Experiment at the CERN LHC.
This is an exciting time in particle physics: when we start taking data with the LHC we will be exploring an energy regime never before created in the lab. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!