Studies in Elementary Particle Physics

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This proposal requests funds for a program of experimental particle physics research at the world's highest energy hadron colliders. The Johns Hopkins University (JHU) group would continue their collaboration in the CDF experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron and the CMS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). CDF is currently in a data-taking phase and is expected to run for a number of years. CMS is expected to begin operation in 2008. The specific scientific goals of the proposed program are to determine the source of electroweak spontaneous symmetry breaking and to make precise heavy quark measurements that constrain physics beyond the Standard Model. The initial program is concentrated at the Tevatron, where the short-term goal is to study heavy quark physics, since many theoretical mechanisms of spontaneous symmetry breaking include states that preferentially decay into heavy quarks or other long-lived states. The most accepted theoretical ideas currently suggest that mechanisms of spontaneous symmetry breaking should manifest themselves at the LHC. The JHU group contributes to the silicon-based vertex tracking of both experiments. This technology will permit the identification of long-lived states by searching for secondary vertices displaced from the primary vertex. The proposed work on silicon pixel detector technology has application to instrumentation used at synchrotron light sources to study materials and biological systems. In addition, the pixel simulation code may be applicable to infrared pixel sensors used in satellite-borne telescopes. The proposed work on distributed databases has strong overlap with work being done for several large astronomy projects and could also have far-reaching application in all sectors of society. The proposed research would provide direct support and training for a number of graduate and undergraduate students. JHU hosts a QuarkNet center and the group plans to work on a user-friendly web interface that will permit high school students to submit particle physics queries to the Open Science Grid. QuarkNet teachers will help in the design and debugging of the system with the longer-term goal of making the system available to the general public.