The
UCR Babar group
Professors Gary,
Long,
and Shen
are members of the Babar
collaboration at the Stanford
Linear Accelerator Center. This experiment was the first to observe
CP violation in B meson decays. Measurements from the Babar
collaboration have now established the Standard Model CKM mechanism as
the dominant source of CP violation in flavor transitions, confirming a
theory that stood for nearly 30 years without experimental
verification. The UCR Babar group is now focused on searching for signs
of new physics by studying rare B decays. Virtual particles from
beyond the Standard Model can cause the CP asymmetries in
penguin-dominated decays to differ substantially from the precise
predictions of the Standard Model. There is a hint of such a
disagreement in the current data. The experiment plans to increase the
size of the current dataset by a factor of 4.
The UCR Babar group is responsible for the maintenance and operation of
a new gas system for the instrumented flux return (muon and neutral
hadron detector). The system was designed, constructed, and
tested by the UCR group.
Our full-time research staff members based at SLAC, which is the
center of the Babar collaboration data analysis activity.
We are currently seeking to add students to the group.
Students will participate in software development, hardware
maintenance, and data analysis. A period of residency at the
laboratory is expected and strongly encouraged, including summer
research terms. The experiment is sheduled to continue taking
data until the end of 2008. There are many opportunities for
students to persue independent research topics. Interested
graduate students are encouraged to contact the group faculty members.
Faculty:
J.
William Gary, Owen
Long, Ben
C. Shen
Research staff: Lei
Zhang, Feng Liu
Graduate students: Steve
Foulkes
