Brad Abbott
2007- Associate Professor
2000-2007 Assistant Professor
B.A. 1989 University of Minnesota, Morris
Ph.D. 1994 Purdue University

RESEARCH DESCRIPTION

My research in experimental particle physics has been in a number of different areas. I was involved in the BaBar experiment at the Stanford Linear Accelerating Center located near the Stanford campus. I was involved in building and commissioning the silicon vertex tracker (Picture 1) and Picture 2 (That's me on the left) for BaBar. The BaBar experiment has now shut down after a wonderful run and after many interesting physics papers. My recent primary physics interest is working on B physics in order to better understand CP violation. I have also worked on many analyses studying QCD at the D0 experiment at Fermi Lab. These analyses were designed to look for quark sub-structure and to test the current theoretical understanding of QCD. Over the past few years I have been working on the D0 detector. D0 is probing many interesting physics analyses. I have been involved in a number of interesting measurements at D0. These include the observation of the X(3872) , a measurement of Bs mixing and a discovery of a new particle, the cascade_b . See an article on the cascade_b in Fermilab Today . To see more about the cascade_b see our paper and a power point presentation by one of my colleagues. Shortly after the discovery of the cascade_b, I was involved in the discovery of the Omega_b at D0. This result is currently controversial since the CDF experiment at Fermilab has also observed the Omega_b but with a slightly different mass. Further analysis will be required to resolve this discrepancy. Most recently I have been involved in trying to measure the CP violating phase, phi_s, in Bs decays. Current measurements show a larger value than expected from the Standard Model and may indicate some previously unknown physics. By including a second analysis, it is hoped the uncertainties can be reduced to show a significant deviation from the Standard Model.

I am also working on the ATLAS experiment at the LHC . The ATLAS experiment began taking data in early 2010 at the world's highest energy of 7 TeV. We hope to find evidence of the Higgs Boson and perhaps even Super Symmetry by studying the data. I am currently studying the top quark cross section and searching for Supersymmetry. With the D0 experiment running so well and the LHC now running at the energy frontier, the next few years will be very exciting to see what is discovered.

For a list of my publications see: Run 1 and Run 2

Last updated Apr, 2010