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MSU scientists help lead teams in detection of fundamental component of matter
March 20, 2009EAST LANSING, Mich. - Michigan State University scientists and colleagues around the world took a step closer to understanding the universe with the discovery of a fundamental building block of nature. The recent discovery of a single top quark at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago is a major breakthrough in understanding matter and energy.
"The discovery of single top quark production fills in a major piece of the puzzle in particle physics and solidifies our understanding of the basic components of matter," said MSU assistant physics professor Reinhard Schwienhorst.
Quarks are believed the smallest bits of matter and interact to form particles such as protons. Before, top quarks were only known to be produced in pairs. By producing a single top quark, scientists have recorded the most massive of elementary particles and perhaps have paved the way for discovery of the Higgs boson. Sometimes referred to as the "God Particle," the Higgs boson is the theoretical building block of the Standard Model of the universe and could explain how massless elementary particles acquire mass.
"The discovery of a single top quark production marks a milestone in physics," Schwienhorst added. "We anticipate upcoming research at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe to take these findings to the next step and either evolve our understanding of particle physics or overturn the model completely."
Schwienhorst and colleagues periodically work with the LHC at the European Centre for Nuclear Research, or CERN, in Switzerland. A number of MSU scientists contributed to development of the world's most powerful collider there, and researchers will return to apply what they learned about detecting the single top quark to seek the Higgs boson.
MSU physics professor Chien-Peng Yuan pioneered study of heavy top quarks and their relationship to the Higgs boson. He proposed the relevant strategies for discovering single top quarks in 1989. Those were discovered six years later at Fermilab by two groups of scientists combing through data from proton-antiproton collisions with a mass close to Yuan's estimate. Since then Yuan has continued to theorize about top quarks and has collaborated closely with his MSU colleagues.
Scientists involved in the Fermilab project have been working in two groups, each exceeding 600 physicists: the DZero and the Collider Detector at Fermilab collaborations. Schwienhorst co-led the DZero team and MSU doctoral student Jorge Benitez was particularly active in that group, updating hardware and collecting and analyzing data. He also conducted theoretical work with Yuan, and even relocated to Fermilab. "The research we conduct at DZero is unique - there is no other place in the world that conducts such complex, high-energy experiments," Benitez said.
MSU associate professor Kirsten Tollefson led a different group of nearly 150 collider detector team physicists. "MSU is one of only a handful of institutions that have faculty members on both the CDF and DZero experiments, and that can make life in the department very interesting," Tollefson said. "For the last three years, the two groups have been in direct competition with each other over which experiment would be the first to see single top quarks. Both experiments have been close for a while, and it was pretty amazing that we each came out with papers on the same day stating the discovery.
"When you are trying to discover something that is so rare it only appears once in 20 billion collisions, it's nice to have confirmation from two experiments." Tollefson added.
MSU's contributions to this discovery ranged from Yuan's pioneering theoretical work to usage of a large computer cluster in the Department of Physics and Astronomy to conduct data analysis. MSU also hosted a conference with all DZero physicists in 2007.
Michigan State University
"The discovery of a single top quark production marks a milestone in physics," Schwienhorst added. "We anticipate upcoming research at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe to take these findings to the next step and either evolve our understanding of particle physics or overturn the model completely."
Schwienhorst and colleagues periodically work with the LHC at the European Centre for Nuclear Research, or CERN, in Switzerland. A number of MSU scientists contributed to development of the world's most powerful collider there, and researchers will return to apply what they learned about detecting the single top quark to seek the Higgs boson.
MSU physics professor Chien-Peng Yuan pioneered study of heavy top quarks and their relationship to the Higgs boson. He proposed the relevant strategies for discovering single top quarks in 1989. Those were discovered six years later at Fermilab by two groups of scientists combing through data from proton-antiproton collisions with a mass close to Yuan's estimate. Since then Yuan has continued to theorize about top quarks and has collaborated closely with his MSU colleagues.
Scientists involved in the Fermilab project have been working in two groups, each exceeding 600 physicists: the DZero and the Collider Detector at Fermilab collaborations. Schwienhorst co-led the DZero team and MSU doctoral student Jorge Benitez was particularly active in that group, updating hardware and collecting and analyzing data. He also conducted theoretical work with Yuan, and even relocated to Fermilab. "The research we conduct at DZero is unique - there is no other place in the world that conducts such complex, high-energy experiments," Benitez said.
MSU associate professor Kirsten Tollefson led a different group of nearly 150 collider detector team physicists. "MSU is one of only a handful of institutions that have faculty members on both the CDF and DZero experiments, and that can make life in the department very interesting," Tollefson said. "For the last three years, the two groups have been in direct competition with each other over which experiment would be the first to see single top quarks. Both experiments have been close for a while, and it was pretty amazing that we each came out with papers on the same day stating the discovery.
"When you are trying to discover something that is so rare it only appears once in 20 billion collisions, it's nice to have confirmation from two experiments." Tollefson added.
MSU's contributions to this discovery ranged from Yuan's pioneering theoretical work to usage of a large computer cluster in the Department of Physics and Astronomy to conduct data analysis. MSU also hosted a conference with all DZero physicists in 2007.
Michigan State University
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Fermilab collider experiments discover rare single top quark
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Research team co-led by UC Riverside physicist observes production of single-top-quarks
A group of 28 scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, co-led by UC Riverside's Ann Heinson, has made the first observation of the production of single top quarks - an observation that resulted from proton-antiproton collisions measured by the DZero detector in Fermilab's Tevatron, the world's highest-energy particle collider.
Brown physicists play key role in single top quark discovery
Brown University physicists have played a key role in observing particle collisions that produce a single top quark, one of the fundamental constituents of matter. The discovery was announced Monday by scientists of the CDF and DZero collaborations at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.
UC Riverside physicists contribute to state-of-the-art detector installed in Switzerland
UC Riverside scientists led by Gail Hanson, a distinguished professor of physics, are part of a collaboration of approximately 2300 international physicists who announced Dec. 19 that the world's largest silicon tracking detector at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, had been successfully installed.
Discovery of retinal cell type ends 4-decade search
A research team combining high-energy physicists from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and neuroscientists from the Salk Institute in La Jolla, Calif., has discovered a type of retinal cell that may help monkeys, apes, and humans see motion.
CDF precision measurement of W-boson mass suggests a lighter Higgs particle
Scientists of the CDF collaboration at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced today (January 8, 2007) the world's most precise measurement by a single experiment of the mass of the W boson, the carrier of the weak nuclear force and a key parameter of the Standard Model of particles and forces. The new W-mass value leads to an estimate for the mass of the yet-undiscovered Higgs boson that is lighter than previously predicted, in principle making observation of this elusive particle more likely by experiments at the Tevatron particle collider at Fermilab.
DZero finds evidence of rare single top quark; Observation marks a step closer to finding Higgs boson
Scientists of the DZero collaboration at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced in a seminar at Fermilab on December 8, 2006 the first evidence of single top quarks produced in a rare subatomic process involving the weak nuclear force.
UCR-led research team detects 'top quark,' a basic constituent of matter
A group of 50 international physicists, led by UC Riverside's Ann Heinson, has detected for the first time a subatomic particle, the top quark, produced without the simultaneous production of its antimatter partner - an extremely rare event.
It Might Be... It Could Be... It Is !
Scientists of the CDF collaboration at the Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced today (September 25, 2006) that they have met the exacting standard to claim discovery of astonishingly rapid transitions between matter and antimatter: 3 trillion oscillations per second.
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