Research Interests of Rick Van Kooten

Experimental High Energy Particle Physics

([Always?] Under Construction) Home Page
 

Background Information

• What is Particle Physics?
• An excellent introduction from the Particle Data Group: The Particle Adventure
• CERN's "Explore the Atom"
• ATLAS's "Physics Tour"
• Particle Data Group's "Particle Adventure"
• FNAL's "Particle Physics"

 
• List of papers for Rick Van Kooten (from SLAC HEP database).

• My Curriculum Vitae (postscript)(pdf)
• Condensed CV/bio as an .html file (but you really need to get yourself a postscript viewer!)
• Selected publications (postscript)(pdf)   All publications (postscript)

 Proton-antiproton Physics at D0 at Fermilab

Indiana University D0 Group Page

Currently one of the Physics Coordinators of the D0 Experiment. Enjoyable, but kind of like drinking from a firehose of information...

From the highest-energy electron-positron machine in the world to the highest energy proton-antiproton machine...
Joining Prof. Zieminski on the upgrade of the D0 detector and physics at Run II
Joined the central scintillating fiber tracker effort. Specifically, with Notre Dame, building the clear fiber waveguides to carry light down to the visible light photon counters below the D0 detector. Here in Bloomington we are building first the waveguides for the Central Preshower Detector, then the Forward Preshower detector, then helping Notre Dame with Fiber Tracker waveguides if necessary. New postdoc Andrei Mayorov is contributing towards the fiber tracker online DAQ, cosmic ray tests, and tracker alignment and online calibration.
Physics interests? Continuing those from e+e- (see below):
• b quark physics : co-convened (Sept. 2003 - Dec. 2005) the D0 B Physics Working Group, b lifetimes (Lambda_b lifetime with grad student Abaz Kryemadhi), mixing, spectroscopy

Some more recent talks:
• NIKHEF Colloquium, 15 May 2006: To B or not to B: New Results on B_s Oscillations and the B_s System from D0
• Fermilab Joint Experimental/Theoretical Seminar (Wine & Cheese), Sept. 2005, Search for B_s Oscillations: New Results from D0
• HEP Seminar, Univ. Michigan, Ann Arbot, Nov. 2004, Heavy Flavor Physics at D0
•  D0 b-id Working Group (convened group until August 2002) Muon tagging, using it for lifetime tagging certification

Electron-Positron Physics at the Next Linear Collider

North American Working Group on Linear Collider Tracking - funded for investigating the effect of intermediate tracker and benchmark Higgs physics processes;
• costing studies, intermediate/timing tracker
• overall costing studies for small and large detector options

 
At long last, the "Orange Book", a source book for Linear Collider physics, preparing for
Snowmass. Contributed to Higgs and tracking chapters, was one of the editors for Higgs chapter.
 

Some recent talks given:

• LHC/LC 2002 Workshop, Fermilab, Dec. 2002, Higgs at the Linear Collider
• Fermilab Wine and Cheese Theory/Experimental Seminar, 8 Nov. 2002
• LCWS2002, Jeju Island, Korea, August 2002,  Mini-Review of North American Activities
• Linear Collider Workshop, Santa Cruz, June 2002
• Linear Collider Workshop, Chicago, Jan. 2002
• Berkeley 2000 Meeting;
• Fermilab Users Group Meeting / SLAC Users Group Meeting (HEPAP input meetings)
• Linear Collider Detector Group
• Status and Plans for Snowmass 2001 Higgs Analyses
American Linear Collider "White Paper": The Case for a 500 GeV e+e- Linear Collider
US/Canada Linear Collider Detector Simulation Group
ICFA Statement about linear colliders
More information about linear colliders
NLC Physics Summary Report
Co-Convening (with Andreas Kronfeld, FNAL) the Higgs Working Group
Higgs Discovery and Properties Report submitted to Snowmass Proceedings

Electron-Positron Physics at LEP II using OPAL

Searches for New Particles, in particular Supersymmetric (SUSY) particles including charginos, neutralinos, sleptons, SUSY Higgs, etc.
APS Talk on Results from LEP1.5 (130-136 GeV)
LEP1.5 Chargino Search Paper
LEP2 - 161 GeV, at the W-pair threshold - first W-pair events!
LEP161 Chargino Search Paper
LEP161 Slepton Search Physics Note
LEP172 Chargino/Neutralino Search Note
LEP172 SUSY 'Hole' analysis note
LEP2 - 183 GeV, at the Z-pair threshold now- first Z-pair events!
LEP172 Chargino/Neutralino Paper - includes limit on neutralinos as dark matter candidate

From the above, scans of SUSY parameter space done on Indiana University HEP computers place exclusion limits on masses of charginos and neutralinos. A big jump in the mass limit of the lightest neutralino now has significant impact on the suitability of this "weakly interacting massive particle" (WIMP) as a candidate for dark matter even compared to direct searches for neutralinos in non-accelerator experiments using cryogenic detectors for observing nuclear recoils.

Supervising grad student Dayong Liu does the number crunching for flying through SUSY parameter space" to interpret the results.

Final Chargino/Neutralino search paper at E_cm= 184 GeV
Chargino/Neutralino search paper at E_cm= 189 GeV submitted to Phys. Lett. B
 

Electron-Positron Physics on LEP at CERN using the OPAL Detector

• The OPAL Home Page

• OPAL Event Pictures (Z boson decays)

• Event pictures of the highest energy electron-positron (anti-electron) collisions in the world!

B Physics
• How often the Z0 decays into a b and anti-b quark (used to work on)
• Studying CPT violation in neutral B mesons (postscript file of paper) (and OPAL's result (postscript file of preprint) which is the first limit on CPT violation in the B system (comparisons to other world average limits) and as a happy byproduct measures the CP-violating epsilon parameter with a precision four times better than CLEO.)
• Supervising grad student Steve Anderson who is digging out the rare decay b -> s gamma from the OPAL LEP1 data. This inclusive branching ratio is very sensitive to new physics such as...... Supersymmetry! (see below).
Properties of b baryons - the closest thing we have to a free quark inside of a bound hadron (top decays too quickly to form hadrons!)
• Lifetimes (talk) and paper. Was the most precise measurement in the world of the average b baryon lifetime for two years (edged out by ALEPH). Lifetime still surprisingly short as compared to theoretical predictions (see talk).
• Polarization: submitted paper, CERN-EP/98-119, and invited talk at ICHEP '98, Vancouver. First exclusion at better than 95% CL of zero polarization!, i.e., b quarks initially longitudinally polarized in production at the Z transfer this polarization to the b baryon containing this heavy quark.
• Masses
• Production rates (talk) and paper.
Phase III upgrade of the OPAL silicon microstrip vertex detector - basically closing up the phi gaps and making it longer in z to improve theta coverage to improve b-tagging with an eye for LEP II physics

Cool project with undergrads Matt Shepherd and Joe Foster

Sonoluminescence

Other stuff I find wildly interesting but have not yet had the time to do much about....

non-accelerator neutrino experiments
medical imaging physics
neural networks
non-linear dynamics and chaos
departures from "normal" gravity at sub-millimeter scales.