Alexander Mitov (2003 UR Physics PhD) Awarded the First Large Hadron Collider Theory Initiative Postdoctoral Fellowship

Alexander Mitov, who earned his PhD in theoretical particle physics from the University of Rochester in 2003, has received the first $150,000 National Science Foundation Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Theory Initiative Postdoctoral Fellowship. Mitov was a researcher in the Department of Theoretical Physics at Liverpool University until December 1, 2007, when he moved to the University of Hamburg. During the Fellowship, he will collaborate and be hosted by Stony Brook University's C. N. Yang Institute for Theoretical Physics starting in Spring 2008.

In a Stony Brook University press release, Institute director George Sterman states that Mitov "has already made important contributions to the theory of the strong interactions, known as quantum chromodynamics, which is a part of the Standard Model."

The Postdoctoral Fellowship, the result of an international competition, will support Mitov's reaseach on higher-order corrections to LHC processes such as heavy flavor production and precision top-quark studies. Mitov's specialties include predictions about how particles known as heavy quarks will be produced at the LHC.

"How did matter behave a fraction of a second after the Big Bang? How do particles acquire mass? Do new symmetries of nature link matter, energy, space and time? These are just some of the questions that we believe will be answered by the LHC," says University of Rochester Professor Lynne Orr, who served as Mitov's PhD advisor. "The ultimate goal of particle physics is to identify the fundamental principles that govern matter, energy, space and time. The LHC will allow us to explore this new terrain." Along with Professors Jonathan Bagger of John Hopkins University, R. Sekhar Chivukula of Michigan State University, and Ulrich Baur of the State University of New York at Buffalo, Orr is a principal investigator of the LHC Theory Initiative.

The LHC is at CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics in Geneva, Switzerland, and is expected to begin operation in 2008. With its unprecedented energy and luminosity, the LHC promises to revolutionize particle physics and our understanding of the universe. It is expected not only to create new forms of matter, as scientists search for the elusive Higgs boson and a host of other new particles, but also to help answer some of physics' most fundamental questions.

For more information about Alexander Mitov, see his webpage at:
http://www-zeuthen.desy.de/%7Eamitov/index.htm.

(lhg)