Completion of the CLEO-c Experiment

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

The CLEO Collaboration has led a renaissance in experimental charm physics that is expanding the frontiers of the subject and our knowledge of heavy flavor physics. The precision and reach in charm decay measurements achieved by CLEO are due to unprecedented data samples in the charm threshold region and an excellent detector. The CLEOc detector is unsurpassed by any other detector that has operated in this energy region and it is uniquely suited for studying charm production and decay. Cornell's Laboratory for Elementary Particle Physics (LEPP) hosts the CLEOc experiment, which over the last five years, has collected data near the charm production threshold. This proposal presents a request for three years of funding to allow the CLEO collaboration to complete analyses and publication of these data. The Intellectual Merit of this proposal is derived from its potential impact on heavy flavor physics and QCD. These results will substantially extend the reach and understanding of heavy flavor physics, allowing the world to reap the benefits of investments in CLEOc, BaBar, Belle, LHCb and the Tevatron. Also, this proposal has the potential to enable numerous other measurements that will deepen our understanding of D and Ds meson phenomenology and will substantially advance charmonium and upsilon physics, which probe perturbative and non-perturbative QCD. The Broader Impact of this proposal includes the extensive LEPP program of educational outreach and a new initiative. Each year, more than 1000 visitors tour the Laboratory and more than 500 attend its annual open house. Laboratory personnel also bring their science to the schools, traveling as far as New York City to reach underserved students, and they participate in programs that help middle and high school teachers develop course material on modern physics. The Laboratory hosts a Research Experience for Undergraduates program, which draws about one -third of its students from Wayne State University in Detroit. In connection with this proposal, LEPP plans to launch a new initiative, Quarks Alive!, that will provide simple CLEO-c data analysis projects for undergraduates. CLEOc DD data are ideally suited to this purpose because of their simple event topology and high reconstruction efficiency. The package, which will be accessible via the WWW, will include a list of projects and all the tools needed to carry them out, including software and Monte Carlo samples. Once Quarks Alive! has been implemented for undergraduates, a team of high school teachers will evaluate possibilities for adapting it for high school students.