Elementary Particle Physics
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| Leon Mualem tests the efficiency of the detectors made at the Minos Module Laboratory. |
| Photo by Jonathan Chapman |
Elementary particle physics, or high energy physics (HEP), is the study of the fundamental building blocks of the universe. Why is our universe composed of matter rather than antimatter? Why do seemingly superfluous heavier relatives accompany the quarks and the electrons that we need to explain ordinary matter? Can we reconstruct the processes of the Big Bang and understand how the universe evolved into its present state? These are the questions that motivate the work of the faculty and graduate students who are engaged in HEP research.
The experimental particle physics group at the University of Minnesota is engaged on numerous fronts in this exciting worldwide campaign. Our group is led by nine professors and includes twelve postdoctoral research associates, eighteen graduate students, numerous undergraduate students, and a sizable technical staff. Their tools are wonderfully sophisticated (and expensive!) - particle accelerators, laboratories located deep underground, amazingly complex detectors, and powerful computer systems that process massive data samples.
The theory program has a strong phenomological component, focusing on heavy quark physics and quantum chromodynamics, with ties to the experimental group. There is also an interest in the cosmological aspects of supersymmetric gauge theories and Big Bang Nucleosythesis as a tool for discovering dark matter. Minnesota theorists have contributed significantly to a totally new direction, brane world scenarios, which predict that the universe is confined to a brane (domain wall), embedded in a higher dimensional space-time.
Elementary Particle Physics Faculty
| Dan Cronin-Hennessy | CP-Violation, quark- and lepton-mixing matrices.
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| Priscilla Cushman | Dark matter searches, novel particle detectors, collaborative work toward a Center for Underground Science through the DUSEL initiative |
| Kenneth Heller | My research in high energy particle physics focuses on the properties of neutrino oscillations. My research in physics education is in developing ways to coach students to become better problem solvers and to develop techniques to assess problem solving. |
| Yuichi Kubota | I am interested in finding clues to the future theory of particles which will extend our current understanding. Extra dimensions may be the reality, and so may Supersymmetry. We will see what we find after the experiment starts in 2008. |
| Peter Litchfield | Paarticle Physics research, particularly the MINOS long baseline neutrino oscillation experiment and the Nova electron neutrino appearance experiment. |
| Vuk Mandic | Gravitational Wave Physics, Observational Cosmology, Early Universe Physics |
| Jeremiah Mans | Hadron collider physics at the high energy frontier, trigger and data acquisition electronics. |
| Marvin Marshak | Properties of fundamental interactions, including measurement of neutrino mass, tests of stability of matter (proton decay); high energy cosmic ray physics and astrophysics. |
| Keith Olive | Cosmology/Particle Physics |
| Marco Peloso | Astroparticle physics, Inflation, Cosmology of extra-dimensions, Physics beyond the Standard Model |
| Ronald Poling | |
| Serge Rudaz | |
| Roger Rusack | I carry out accelerator based experiments to understand the fundamental forces in Nature. |
| Mikhail Shifman | Gauge field theories at strong coupling and supersymmetric field theories |
| Arkady Vainshtein | Theory of fundamental interactions: gauge theories, supersymmetry.
Operator product expansion and its applications. |
| Mikhail Voloshin | Properties of elementary particles. Gauge theories of strong, weak, and
electromagnetic interactions. Non-perturbative dynamics of quantum
fields. |
| Thomas Walsh | |
| Hans Courant | |
| Stephen Gasiorowicz | |
| Earl Peterson | |
| Keith Ruddick | High energy particle interactions; nucleon decay; neutrino interactions;
high energy cosmic rays; detector development. |
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