D0 Physics Research

Suny At Stony Brook, Stony Brook NY

Investigators

Abstract

The D0 experiment operated at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL) proton-antiproton Tevatron collider from 1992 until 2011, and has produced nearly 500 scientific publications to date. Notable among the results during that period was the discovery of the top quark in 1995. During this period, the Tevatron was the world's highest energy collider. This position now goes to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN (proton-proton), but the Tevatron still has some advantages because it is a proton- antiproton collider. This makes a large number of proton and antiproton constituent particles, quark-antiquark collisions, as opposed to the LHC collisions that are dominated by intermediary particles called gluons. This enables unique measurements of quark-dominated processes, including some aspects of single top quark production via the Electroweak interaction and asymmetries between forward and backward produced top quarks or hadrons containing bottom quarks. Analysis of the D0 data continues with some 40 additional publications expected over the next two years. These will contain further studies of the top quark, the Higgs boson and the nature of the strong force. This award will fund one of the two spokespersons of the D0 experiment. The spokespersons are responsible for all physics analyses and guiding them toward publication. They provide mentoring for the graduate students and postdocs conducting analyses, and oversee the internal review of analyses by more senior members of the collaboration. In addition, the spokespersons represent the collaboration to the FNAL Directorate, the funding agencies, other experiments, and the general public. About 500 students have been trained within the D0 experiment, and a similar number of postdoctoral fellows have matured as scientists within the collaboration. The training of students and postdocs will continue through the analyses conducted during this grant. As in the past, we expect that these young men and women will enter careers in physics education and research, medical science, information technology, financial firms and government service. The mentoring of these people is one of the most important tasks of the D0 spokespersons, and provides one of the most lasting impacts on society by the experiment.