McGill.CA / Science / Department of Physics

Physical Society Colloquium

Interview for Faculty Position

Physics at the energy frontier with the D0 experiment

Brigitte Vachon

Fermilab

The study of the fundamental building blocks of nature and how these particles interact with each other at the very highest energy provide invaluable information toward a better understanding of our Universe. The highest energy proton-antiproton collisions in the world are currently produced at the Fermilab Tevatron collider located near Chicago. The DZero experiment is one of two large multi-purpose detectors designed to study the results of these high energy collisions. A brief description of the DZero experiment with emphasis on the trigger system will be presented. The DZero trigger is a complex hardware and software-based system designed to identify potentially "interesting" events in the high collision rate environment of the Tevatron. Events selected by the trigger system for further offline analysis are used to study a wealth of different physics topics. As an example, highlights from some of the ongoing studies of the top quark will be presented. The Tevatron collider is currently the only place in the world where the top quark, discovered in 1995, can be directly produced and studied.

Wednesday, January 14th 2004, 16:00
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, R.E. Bell Conference Room - room 103