ABSTRACT

Funds are requested to support a program of experimental particle physics research at the world's highest energy hadron colliders. The program involves the continuing collaboration in the CDF experiment at the Fermilab Tevatron and the CMS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The CDF experiment is currently in a data-taking phase and is expected to run for a number of years. The CMS experiment is being prepared to begin operation in 2007. The proposed program has considerable intellectual merit. The scientific goals of the program are to determine the source of spontaneous symmetry breaking and to make precise heavy quark measurements that constrain physics beyond the Standard Model. The proposed program is beginning at the lower luminosity and energy at the Tevatron where the short term goals are to study heavy quark physics. Many theoretical mechanisms of spontaneous symmetry breaking include states that preferentially decay into heavy quarks or other long-lived states. If the luminosity of the Tevatron increases significantly, the search for new states related to spontaneous symmetry breaking may become feasible and will rely on techniques associated with heavy flavor physics. Current theoretical ideas suggest that mechanisms of spontaneous symmetry breaking should manifest themselves at the LHC. For hardware, the JHU group has chosen to contribute to the silicon-based vertex tracking of both experiments. The silicon technology permits the identification of long-lived states by searching for secondary vertices displaced from the primary vertex. JHU has contributed to the hardware, software, commissioning, and calibration of silicon strip vertex detectors for CDF. Similar contributions are proposed for the forward pixel tracking system of CMS, particularly in the areas of sensor development, system design, infrastructure, and software. JHU has created an N-tiered database for CDF that will have direct application to CMS and other experiments. A number of studies of heavy quark states with the moderate statistics are currently available at CDF. Results of these analyses are the first step in continuing studies that may eventually give new insight into the origin of the matter dominance in the universe and may contribute to the understanding of the origin of mass. The impact of the proposed research program reaches beyond particle physics. The proposed work on active pixel detector technology has application to instrumentation used at synchrotron light sources which study materials and biological systems. The pixel simulation code developed by the JHU group may have applications in astronomy in the understanding and optimization of infrared detectors used in satellite-borne telescopes. The proposed work on distributed databases has strong overlap with work being done by JHU colleagues for several large astronomy projects. Distributed databases are another internet-based technology that could have far-reaching application in all sectors of the society. In addition, the proposed research has a strong educational component. It provides direct support and training for a number of graduate and undergraduate students. JHU hosts a QuarkNet center which has a current membership of 11 Baltimore area high school teachers. There is a plan to work on a user friendly web interface that will permit high school students to submit particle physics queries to the Open Science Grid. The JHU QuarkNet Center has initiated an annual regional Physics Fair.

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