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Dr. Lee Sawyer
Charles & Nelwyn Spruell Endowed Professor of Physics
An Overview of the Center for Applied Physics Studies
Prepared for the Louisiana Tech Energy Systems Conference
5 Nov 2009
Particle Physics and the search for the ultimate building blocks
of matter
Dr. Lee Sawyer
Charles & Nelwyn Spruell Endowed Professor of Physics
A Board of Regents recognized research center -
Faculty Associates:
Greenwood, Sawyer, Wobisch
Grimm, Johnston, Simicevic (dir.), Wells
Genov
Interdiscplinary projects in association with
TTC (Allouche, Jaganathan)
IfM (Wilson)
LONI (Leangsuksun, Baggag)
Sandi Perry – Administrative Assistant
Sabine Fuchs – Lab Manager/Technician
Michael Bryant – Systems Manager
Overview of CAPS
Dr. Lee Sawyer
Charles & Nelwyn Spruell Endowed Professor of Physics
Nuclear Radiation Measurement Laboratory
Dick Greenwood- Radiation Safety Officer• Licensed by LA DEQ for radioactive material use
and storage• Low Background Alpha-Beta Counting Facility• Nuclear radiation spectroscopy
– Fast Nuclear Instrumentation Electronics– NaI Spectrometer– (2) Germanium High Precision Spectrometers
• Portable beta-gamma radiation detectors (radiacs)• thermoluminescent dosimeter reader • Oversight by the university BRIRC
Dr. Lee Sawyer
Charles & Nelwyn Spruell Endowed Professor of Physics
CAPS Projects
• Several Major Experimental Collaborations• D0 Experiment at Fermi National Accelerator Lab
(Illinois) • ATLAS at CERN (Switzerland)• G0 and QWEAK Experiments at Jefferson
National Accelerator Lab (Virginia)• ILD and SiD Design Efforts for the Proposed
International Linear Collider
• Detector Development Activities• Gas Electron Multipliers (GEMs) for tracking• Nanoparticle implantation in scintillators • High speed trigger electronics
• Advanced Computing Projects• Data reconstruction and simulation on the GRID• Applications of GPGPUs to particle physics
experiments• FDTD simulation of fundamental & applied physics
processes• FDFD computational electrodynamics & modeling
of metamaterials
• Interdisciplinary Activities
Dr. Lee Sawyer
Charles & Nelwyn Spruell Endowed Professor of Physics
What Do Particle Physicists Do?• We search for the most
elementary building blocks of matter
• We study how those pieces come to together in more complicated structures
• We study the fundamental forces of nature in particle interactions
Dr. Lee Sawyer
Charles & Nelwyn Spruell Endowed Professor of Physics
The New Periodic TableQuarks group into larger structures, like protons and neutrons
Electrons and their relatives (muons, neutrinos,…) are fundamental
Forces are mediated by another set of fundamental particles
Dr. Lee Sawyer
Charles & Nelwyn Spruell Endowed Professor of Physics
How do we know these particles exist?
How do we produce them and study them?
Dr. Lee Sawyer
Charles & Nelwyn Spruell Endowed Professor of Physics
Particle Accelerators• Accelerators allow us to explore the interactions of
particles at high energies– See the underlying physics not the dressing
• We can collide beams of either electrons or protons
– Because electron beams radiate when accelerated, proton accelerators are the best way to reach very high energies
– But electron accelerators play an important complementary role in making precision measurements and to probe new physics via “higher order” effects
• Proton-antiproton collision: UnderlyingEvent
u
u
d
gq
q u
u
d
Hard Scatter
Dr. Lee Sawyer
Charles & Nelwyn Spruell Endowed Professor of Physics
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory(“Fermilab”)
• About 50 miles west of Chicago• Named for Enrico Fermi• Currently the highest energy particle accelerator in the world
Dr. Lee Sawyer
Charles & Nelwyn Spruell Endowed Professor of Physics
The Dzero Experiment
• One of two large collider detectors at Fermilab• A five-story tall device with over 1 million channels of electronics• Began current data taking run in 2001
Dr. Lee Sawyer
Charles & Nelwyn Spruell Endowed Professor of Physics
The Next Frontier• The Large Hadron
Collider (LHC)– Due to start this year– Proton-proton collision
from 10 to 14 TeV– Also Nucleus-nucleus
collisions up to lead• Four large detectors
– LATech is participating in the ATLAS experiment
– Faculty, grad students, and undergrad students have spent significant time at CERN
Dr. Lee Sawyer
Charles & Nelwyn Spruell Endowed Professor of Physics
Deconstructing a Detector: ATLAS
A general purpose detector:
-Inner Tracking: Central and Forward Pixels, Silicon Strip (SCT), and Transition Radiation Tracker )TRT)
-- 2 T solenoid
-- EM liquid argon calorimeter
-- Hadronic scintialltor tile calorimeter
--Air-core superconducting toriods
-- Muon detectors (total area of 12,000 m2)
Dr. Lee Sawyer
Charles & Nelwyn Spruell Endowed Professor of Physics
• The hardest job I have is explaining the need for basic research
• The best way to think of it as “seed corn”
– You cannot have applications in a generation if you do not have the basic science now
– The expenditures on basic research are miniscule compared to the future economic benefit
• Or as Faraday said to Gladstone when asked “Of what use is it?”
The Relation Between Discovery & Application
“One day, sir, you may tax it!”
Dr. Lee Sawyer
Charles & Nelwyn Spruell Endowed Professor of Physics
1900 1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990
Nuclear Fission Timeline
Nuclear Fusion Timeline
Dr. Lee Sawyer
Charles & Nelwyn Spruell Endowed Professor of Physics
A final Thought on Energy…
Chemical ReactionFew eV/atom
Nuclear ReactionMeV/nucleon
Quark – Gluon ReactionsFew GeV/parton
