Heavy Flavor Physics with FOCUS and BTeV

Vanderbilt University, Nashville TN

Investigators

Abstract

This proposal requests support for a group at Vanderbilt University for a program of research and education in experimental elementary particle physics based on several heavy quark experiments. They are finishing up the FOCUS experiment at Fermilab, preparing for BTeV, a second-generation B-factory experiment, also at Fermilab and considering working on CLEO-c at Cornell. Heavy flavor physics yields information about the strong and electroweak interactions, quark mixing and CP asymmetry and may lead to hints concerning the source of the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe, one of the most fundamental questions in science. FOCUS is a fixed-target, charm production experiment searching for D0`D0 mixing in semielectronic and hadronic decays, searching for rare and forbidden charm decays, studying charm baryon spectroscopy and semileptonic charm decays. BTeV is a Tevatron collider experiment that will study charm and beauty decays in order to confront the Standard Model explanation of CP violation in B0 and Bs mesons, Bs mixing and rare b decays. The CLEO-c program includes precision measurements of charm and QCD physics in the vs = 3-5 GeV CM energy range.