Dan Cronin-Hennessy
Assistant Professor
239 Tate, 624-9079, email hennessy @ physics.umn.edu
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Research Areas: CP-Violation, quark- and lepton-mixing matrices.
Current Research
The Standard Model of Elementary Particle Physics describes well all terrestrial data on CP-violation yet we still do not
have an adequate understanding of the source of CP-violation or mass. Over the next decade the experiments described below
and others such as those at the LHC, SLAC, Fermilab,
and KEK have a high potential of at least elevating
our confusion on these central questions of elementary particle physics.
Currently I am involved in charm-quark threshold physics and
neutrino-oscillation measurements. I am a member of the CLEO
collaboration. CLEO is a multi-purpose high-energy particle detector
located at the Cornell Electron-positron Storage Ring (CESR).
My past research at CLEO has focused on precision extraction
of quark-mixing matrix elements (CKM elements) through
the study of B meson decays (mesons containing one beauty quark).
Recently the experiment has lowered the energy of the colliding
beams to near charm threshold production (center-of-mass energy
in the region of the psi resonances). The experiment is now
referred to as CLEO-c and it has just started its running
period. The main goal of CLEO-c is achieving precise tests of
Lattice-QCD predictions but other physics that will be
pursued include glueball/hybrid searches, D-mixing, charm
resonance physics, tau physics and non-Standard Model
rare decays. My primary focus at this time is rare radiative
D meson decays (D decays that include a prompt photon in the
final state). More information on CLEO-c can be found at
http://www.lns.cornell.edu/public/CLEO/.
I have recently joined the MINOS and NOvA collaborations.
The MINOS detector is a 5400 metric ton steel-scintillator
device located 800 meters below ground in northern Minnesota.
The detector will observe neutrinos generated at Fermi National Laboratory approximately 735 kilometers from the detector.
The primary goal of this experiment is to measure the
probabilty that a muon type neutrino will
transition (oscillate) to a different type neutrino
during its journey from Illinois to Minnesota.
The NOvA experiment is a proposed experiment which
will use a 25000 metric ton detector to measure
the probablilty that the muon neutrino will transition
to an electron type neutrino. Neutrino physics is a rapidly evolving
field at this time. The goal of the oscillation measurements is to
quantify the relatively new neutral-lepton-mixing matrix.
The realization that neutrinos have mass and can therefore mix
opens the possibility of a new source of matter-antimatter asymmetry
(via CP-violation). More info on MINOS and NOvA can be
found at http://www-numi.fnal.gov/ and http://www-nova.fnal.gov/
respectively.
Selected Publications
A. H. Mahmood et al. (CLEO), Measurement of the B Meson Inclusive Semileptonic Branching Fraction and Electron-Energy Moments, Accepted Physical Review {\bf D}, 2004
S.E. Csorna et al., (CLEO), Moments of the B Meson Inclusive Semileptonic Decay Rate using Neutrino Reconstruction, Accepted Physical Review {\bf D}, 2004.
K. W. Edwards {\it et al.} (CLEO), Search for Baryons in the Radiative Penguin Decay $b \rightarrow s \gamma$, Physical Review {\bf D68:011102}, 2003.
D.~Peterson {\it et al.}), The CLEOIII Drift Chamber, Nucl. Instrum. Meth. {\bf A478:142-146}, 2002
A. H. Mahmood {\it et al.} (CLEO), Measurement of the $\Xi_c^+$ Lifetime, Physical Review {\bf D65:031102}, 2002.
D. Cronin-Hennessy {\it et al.} (CLEO), Hadronic Mass Moments in Inclusive Semileptonic $B$ Meson Decays, Physical Review Letters {\bf 87:251808}, 2001.
S. Chen {\it et al.}, Branching Fraction and Photon Energy Spectrum for $b \rightarrow s \gamma$, Physical Review Letters {\bf 87:251807}, 2001.} (CLEO)
(S. Chen {\it et al.}, Improved Upper Limits on the FCNC $B \rightarrow K l^+ l^-$ and $B \rightarrow K^{*}(892) l^+ l^-$, Physical Review Letters {\bf 87:181803}, 2001. (CLEO)
A. H. Mahmood {\it et al.} (CLEO), Measurement of the $\Lambda_c^+$ Lifetime, Physical Review Letters {\bf 86:2232-2236}, 2001.
T.~Affolder {\it et al.} (CDF), Tests of enhanced leading order QCD in $W$ boson plus jets events from 1.8 TeV \pbp collisions, Physical Review {\bf D63}, 072003.
Education
M.S. Physics, Duke University, 1993
B.S. Physics, Boston College, 1990