University of Rochester
High Energy and Nuclear Physics Seminars 2007-2008
Spring 2008 -
January 18:
Elliot Lipeles, Univ. California, San Diego
"Searching for the Higgs and Diboson production at the energy frontier"Abstract: At the core of the standard model of particle physics is the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking. The key ingredient of this mechanism, the Higgs boson, has yet to be seen. I present a search for the Higgs decay to the WW final state and measurements diboson production which is sensitive to the electroweak symmetry breaking predictions for the couplings between gauge bosons.
January 22:
Ben Monreal, Mass. Institute of Technology
"title TBA"
January 29:
Alysia Marino, Univ. of Toronto
"Tokai-to-Kamioka: Beaming Neutrinos from sea to sea"Abstract: Over the past decade compelling evidence has emerged that neutrinos have non-zero masses and that neutrinos change from one flavour to another. Intense neutrino beams generated by particle accelerators are now being used in order to more precisely probe the spectrum of neutrino masses and mixing. This talk will focus on the Tokai-to-Kamioka (T2K) experiment, now under construction in Japan, which will study a beam of muon neutrinos produced at J-PARC on the east coast of Japan. With two neutrino detectors, one located near the origin of the beam, and another detector located 295 km away, T2K will look for the disappearance of muon neutrinos and the appearance of electron neutrinos over a long distance. T2K will begin taking data in 2009. The current status, physics goals, and future measurement potential of T2K will be presented.
February 5:
Niki Saoulidou, Fermilab
"title TBA"
February 26:
Benjamin Monreal, MIT "Slow counting of slow neutrinos: precision measurements of solar neutrinos and tritium beta-decay"
Abstract: The Sun generates huge numbers of electron-flavor neutrinos, then provides two laboratories for changing the flavors: the Sun itself drives the MSW oscillation effect, and the vacuum between the Sun and the Earth gives the neutrinos space for free oscillations. The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory has played key role in disentangling these phenomena, resulting in measurements of the mass splittings and mixing angles of the neutrino sector. In this talk, I will present SNO's history and current status, and give a preview of the data analysis from its third and final running period. SNO's oscillation data puts a lower bound on an important cosmology question: what do neutrinos contribute to the mass of the Universe? A measurement, or an upper bound, must come from direct measurements of beta decay kinematics. I will introduce the KATRIN experiment, now under construction, whose goal is to search for an electron neutrino mass greater than 0.23 eV via precision spectrometry of tritium beta decays.
March 11:
Cristobal Cuenca Almenar,
"Search for Neutral MSSM Higgs Bosons decaying to tau pairs"Abstract: The latest results of a search for neutral MSSM Higgs bosons in proton-antiproton collisions at 1.96 TeV will be presented in this seminar. This analysis is performed with 1.8 fb$^{-1}$ of data collected at the Tevatron collider, by CDF Run II. The search is performed in the di-tau decay mode, with at least one of the taus decaying leptonically. We observed no significant signal over the predicted Standard Model backgrounds and set limits on the production cross $\sigma \times$ BR as a function of Higgs mass. The results are also interpreted as exclusions of parameter space in the $\tan \beta$ vs $m_A$ plane for several benchmark scenarios.
April 22:
Johan Alwall , SLAC
"Finding unexpected gluinos at the Tevatron "
Fall 2007 -
October 2 :
Ben Kilminister, Ohio State University
"Netting the Higgs Boson at the Tevatron"Abstract: Discovering or excluding the Higgs boson at the Tevatron will require advanced analysis techniques in order to extract a small signal from overwhelming backgrounds. This talk focuses on how one particular Higgs search channel is able to greatly improve its sensitivity for distinguishing Higgs events. By making use of Artificial Neural Networks to both reconstruct the Higgs mass, and distinguish its signature from that of the background, we are able to get one step closer to netting the Higgs.
October 9 :
Richard Cavanaugh , University of Florida - topic TBA
"LHC: The Road to Discovery and Beyond..."Abstract: While the Standard Model of particle physics has been well tested and verified with high precision within the current energy limits of present day colliders, there are several reasons to expect that the Standard Model is an incomplete theory and that new physics should appear around the TeV scale. Low energy Supersymmetry, which postulates an additional symmetry between fermions and bosons, offers possible solutions and is a promising candidate for new physics beyond the Standard Model. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is expected to circulate and collide proton-proton beams at a center-of-mass energy of 14 TeV in 2008. The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) is one of four experiments at the LHC and is entering the final phases of construction and initial phases of commissioning. In this talk, I will discuss the potential of the CMS Detector to discover Supersymmetry (or something similiar) at the LHC, detailing some of the expected challenges in understanding the early detector and in calibrating the expected backgrounds using "Standard Candles" from real data. Finally, I will present some recent LHC "weather forecasts" for Supersymmetry using global fits to existing experimental data.
October 16 :
Eric Zimmerman, University of Colorado
"Results of the neutrino oscillation search at MiniBooNE"Abstract: The MiniBooNE neutrino oscillation experiment was motivated by evidence reported by LSND for oscillations at the delta m**2 squared scale around 1 eV**2. Oscillations at this scale cannot be reconciled with the results of atmospheric, solar, reactor, and other accelerator experiments without introducing at least a fourth neutrino mass or other novel physics. MiniBooNE tests LSND using a substantially different experimental technique, including a higher energy beam and detection of oscillations through a different neutrino interaction channel. The recently published results for the muon neutrino to electron neutrino appearance search will be presented.
October 30 :
Aran Garcia-Bellido, University of Washington
" Evidence for Production of Single Top Quarks at D0 and A First Direct Measurement of |Vtb|"Abstract: The analysis of W+jets events is an important topic at hadron colliders since many interesting signals share this final state: a W boson and two or more jets. I'll present the latest efforts to understand these events in the search for electroweak production of top quarks. And what we have learnt about how to extract a small signal from very large backgrounds using three different multivariate techniques: boosted decision trees, Bayesian neural networks and a matrix element calculation. I will discuss these results and their significance with 0.9 fb-1 of D0 data, which led to the first evidence for the production of single top quarks.
November 6 :
David Asner, Carleton University
"Charm school for physicists: on the impact of the CLEO physics program"
November 13 :
Amnon Harel, University of Rochester
"Top quark physics at D0"
November 20 :
Ashutosh Kotwal, Duke University
"First Run II Measurement of the W Boson Mass by CDF"Abstract: The measurement of the W boson mass provides a stringent test of the Standard Model, and constrains the mass of the Higgs boson via electroweak radiative corrections. We describe a new measurement of the W boson mass at CDF, using both the electron and muon decay channels and 200/pb of Run II data at the Fermilab Tevatron. We measure Mw = 80.413 +- 0.034(stat) +- 0.034(syst) GeV. With a total measurement uncertainty of 48 MeV, this CDF result is now the most precise single measurement to date of the W boson mass. Combining it with other measurements worldwide leads to an average value of the W-boson mass of 80,398 +/- 25 MeV/c^2. We will discuss the implications of this measurement for the Standard Model Higgs boson.
November 27 :
Gerd Kunde , Los Alamos National Laboratory - cancelled
"Z0 tagged jets at the LHC "
December 11 :
Gabriel Perdue , University of Chicago
"Constraining CP Violation in the CKM matrix: A Direct Search for $K_{L}^{0} \rightarrow \pi^0 \nu \bar{\nu}$ at the E391 experiment"