Experimental Particle Physics at LEPP
A view of the CMS detector (courtesy of CERN).
Cornell’s particle physicists are deeply engaged in the science of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The LHC, which successfully circulated beams in 2008 and will collide them in 2009, will be the first collider to explore the TeV energy scale, where the Standard Model of particle physics breaks and new phenomena are expected to appear.
Cornell is a member of
CMS, one of the two principle detectors for particle physics at the LHC. Our group is commissioning the pixel detector, identifying electrons in the electromagnetic calorimeter, writing analysis software capable of handling petabytes of data distributed world-wide, and ensuring that the trigger will successfully pluck new physics out of the huge background of conventional processes. We are also beginning to develop hardware upgrades of the pixels and the trigger.
ILC detector development.
Cornell experimentalists also work on the future International Linear Collider or
ILC. Taking advantage of the precision available to electron colliders, the ILC will zero in on the phenomena discovered at the LHC, ruling out some possible explanations, and bolstering others. We collaborate with the Cornell ILC
accelerator group and are developing several ILC detector technologies.
Cornell hosts the
CLEO collaboration, a 120-person operation that utilizes the state-of-the-art CLEO detector at the
CESR storage ring storage ring. CESR has produced a copious and pristine sample of charm quarks that is answering important questions about weak and strong interactions and testing new lattice QCD calculations.
There is a close coupling between Cornell’s particle experimentalists and particle theory group. This leads to lively interactions, discussion and collaboration at all levels, faculty, post-docs and graduate students.
The Cornell CMS group.
