Physics rap is becoming popular… June 18, 2009
Posted by apetrov in Funny, Near Physics, Science.add a comment
Apparently, rapping about physics becomes increasingly popular. While major label producers are still not considering those for their star performers like Usher or Six Cents (?), physics rap star AlpineKat (widely praised for her recent single “LHCRap“) has released a new single. This time she tackles nuclear physics at NSCL, which is located at the Michigan State University. The piece actually made it to the New York Times and can be found here.
Would it bring more participants to DPF-2009?
CHARM-2009 May 22, 2009
Posted by apetrov in Particle Physics, Physics, Science.1 comment so far
I am at the CHARM-2009 conference in Leiman (a suburb of Heidelberg, Germany). This is the third charm conference that I’m participating in since the rebirth of the series in 2006. That year the conference was in Beijing and it finally made it to Germany by the way of Cornell University. All of those places have rich connections to charm (BESII/III experiment in Beijing, CLEO-c at Cornell and the upcoming PANDA at GSI just a short drive from Leimen). The conference is winding down, so I wanted to update you on what happened. Please see the talks posted on the website next week.
The program of talks has three days of plenary presentations. The first day is mainly devoted to hidden charm states, both conventianl and exotic. So everything you wanted to know about states from J/psi to X, Y, and Z was discussed. The second day is all about open charm states, with strong and electroweak studies of all of those with a main concentration on mixing of DDbar mesons and CP-violation. The topic continued today (during the third day), gradually moving to “future hardware” — i.e. how upcoming data from current BESIII and upcoming PANDA, LHCb, and SuperFlavor factories will change the world.
The first day had a lot of discussions on QCD studies with charmonia. The main reason one wants to study QCD with heavy quarkonium states is the fact that this is one of the simplest QCD systems, kina like positronium in QED. But unlike QED, QCD is much more complicated, so one can study quite non-trivial systems such as molecules built of heavy mesons that behave just like hidden charm states. The cool thing is that those things are actually experimentally observed!!! In fact, most of discoveries (not “anomalies” as in cosmic ray physics) done in the past seven years were done in charm systems.Pierre Artoisenet, Antonio Vairo, Gunnar Bali, Steve Olsen, Helmut Vogel,Kay Yi, Daniel Gamermann,Ruslan Chistov, and Claudia Patrigiani talked about various experimental and theoretical issues in quarkonium states. I wanted to mention that, according to Pierre Artoisenet, there problem of chamonium polarization in ppbar collisions has been solved. The problem is (was) that in non-relativistic QCD (NRQCD), at the leading order, one predicts that a J/psi state that is transvesely polarized. This comes from the fact that the dominant mechanism is gluon fragmentation to charm-anticharm pair — so J/psi retains polarization of a gluon, which is transverse (as gluon is a massless particle). Now the problem was that experiment (CDF) saw J/psi’s being quite an opposite condition – longitudinally polarized. So he claimed that at higher orders in QCD one gets new channels (new machainisms for J/psi production) that for some reason (?) makes J/psi polarized longtudinally. Steve Olsen reported a (yet another) new charmonium state, X(3915). It’s amazing that some years ago people talked about the fact that experimentally we see too few charmonium states. Now I think we have too many. Helmut Vogel pointed out an intersting problem in radiative decays of J/psi and psi(2s) into eta and eta’ mesons. In addition, charmonia production in heavy ion collisions was discussed by Carlos Lourenco, Hermine Woehri, and Peter Petreczky.
The second day was mainly about DDbar mixing. It is the last meson-antimeson mixing observed experimentally (in total agreement with theoretical predictions 
). Tina Cartaro, Marko Staric, Paras Naik, Angelo di Canto gave talks on DDbar measurments from different experiments, AlanS chwartz gave an HFAG (Heavy Flavor Averaging Group) take on that — and provided us with most recent averages of mixing and CP-violating parametres. Ikaros Bigi and I gave theoretical reviews on mixing and CP-violation. Then it was an area of Dalitz plot analyses… It’s interesting that there are not so many people who know how to “work” Dalitz plots…
And today we talked about open charm exotic states. An interesting discussion came after Christoph Hanhart’s claims about mlecular nature of some states and Fulvia de Fazio’s statements about their “conventioal” nature. Leptonic and semileptonic decays of charm were also discussed, with the recent controvercy about f_Ds, the observation vs. lattice computation of leptonic decay constants… And then there are “machine” talks. BESIII was just over. What I also learned from Yifang Wang’s talk, besides the current status of BESSIII (they are slowly getting to their design lumnocity of 10^33 cm^-2 s^-1, now getting a third of it), is ajoke that they wanted to buy a beampipe in the US, but they wouldn’t sell it to them. I wonder why…
CERN bids farewell to Austria? May 8, 2009
Posted by apetrov in Near Physics, Particle Physics, Physics, Science.add a comment
Reuters (along with other news outlets) broke the news that Austria has decided to quit CERN. While it is not going to happen until 2011, it is a rather interesting decision. The official reason that has been cited is that Austria does not have enough money for other international projects (would be nice to know what projects they cite). Also, the claim is that Austria does not get enough out of CERN — after all CERN is big, right?
Austria pulls about 2% of CERN funding — so if other countries follow the suit, funding of CERN operations might become an issue.
I think it’s one of those decisions “better small, but mine” — CERN was created to do big science that only several countries can do together. But maybe Austria just wants to do big science cheap — after all, scientific contacts between Austrian universities and CERN are not going to cease.
The Daily Show’s take on LHC May 1, 2009
Posted by apetrov in Funny, Particle Physics, Physics, Science.add a comment
I would imagine that many were quite delighted yesterday night when The Daily Show’s Science Correspondent John Oliver reported on the Large Hadron Collider. It’s nice to to see that LHC finally made it way to Comedy Central — with answers to the burning questions “Why the @#$% would you recreate the Big Bang?” and “Does that sound a bit @#$% dangerous?”
He interviewed CERN’s John Ellis and, touching on the beaten subject of black hole production (no, not those. the ones that could eat up the Earth) at the LHC. He then traveled to Hawaii and talked to that “nuclear physicist” person who brought in a (failed) lawsuit to stop LHC construction. It was nice to see that John Oliver seemed to know more about statistics than that “nuclear physicist.”
Have fun watching the video! It can be found here: http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=225921&title=large-hadron-collider
Federal isotope beam facility (aka FRIB) comes to Michigan State December 11, 2008
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It has been announced today that DOE chose Michigan State University site as the future location of the new Radioactive Beam facility. Argonne National Lab is on the loosing side of this decision. This facility should provide some boost for the Big Three … not the automakers, but The Big Three Universities (or University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Wayne State University as they are known to the rest of the US).
I actually don’t know how exactly it will benefit our Department. Maybe we’ll get a couple of new faculty lines associated with the facility just 70 miles away… but who knows what’d happen in the current financial situation. Maybe Michigan government finally decides to do a responsible thing and NOT cut funding for state Universities, as has been done year after year… So here is an essential part of official announcement:
=====================================================================
WASHINGTON, DC – The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced today that Michigan State University (MSU) in East Lansing, MI has been selected to design and establish the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), a cutting-edge research facility to advance understanding of rare nuclear isotopes and the evolution of the cosmos. The new facility-expected to take about a decade to design and build and to cost an estimated $550 million-will provide research opportunities for an international community of approximately 1000 university and laboratory scientists, postdoctoral associates, and graduate students.
“The Department of Energy’s new Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at Michigan State University promises to vastly expand our understanding of nuclear astrophysics and nuclear structure,” said Acting Associate
Director of the Office of Science for Nuclear Physics Eugene Henry. “This capability will allow physicists to study the nuclear reactions that power stars and stellar explosions, explore the structure of the nuclei of atoms and the forces that bind them together, test current theories about the fundamental nature of matter, and play a role in developing new nuclear medicines and techniques.”
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Alternatively, you can read an article in Crain’s Detroit Business about that.
Come work for me! If I get the money, that is… December 4, 2008
Posted by apetrov in Particle Physics, Physics, Science.1 comment so far
I thought I’d put this blog “to work for me”. Well, I have a postdoctoral position open this year — of course, subject to “budgetary approval.” In other words, if US Department of Energy approves continuation of my grant… Well, here is the ad anyway…
The high energy theory group at Wayne State University (http://www.physics.wayne.edu/~apetrov/particle_nuclear/) anticipates making one postdoctoral research appointment to start September 1, 2009, subject to budgetary approval. The initial appointment will be for one year, and may be extended for one or more years depending on the performance and availability of funding
Research interests of the group include particle phenomenology, physics beyond the Standard Model, particle astrophysics, Dark Matter phenomenology, effective field theories, heavy quark physics, and CP violation. Applications including CV, list of publications, a brief statement of research interests and three letters of recommendation should be sent to:
- Prof. Alexey A. Petrov
- Department of Physics and Astronomy
- Wayne State University
- Detroit, Michigan, 48201
or electronically to apetrov@wayne.edu. The deadline for application is January 15, 2009. Later applications will be considered until the position is filled. Informal inquiries are welcome. The WSU Department of Physics and Astronomy offers a unique opportunity of close interaction with experimental high energy particle and nuclear physics groups.
Wayne State University is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer. Women and members of minority groups are encouraged to apply
Phrase of the day October 19, 2008
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“Less invasions – more equations!”
Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth, Futurama (protesting invasion of quantum anomaly by military force)
Guest bloggers: PEACE Act or how to solve all Wall Street problems October 14, 2008
Posted by apetrov in Funny, Near Physics.3 comments
It is a well-known fact that it is hard to find a job as a physicist – our profession is very competitive. So, with the skills earned in physics and math graduate schools, many of my colleagues end up on a street, a Wall Street that is, a tiny street in New York City, where they make their living. Apparently, this street has been a source of some financial news recently, which prompted my good friends and colleagues David Cinabro, Rob Harr and Zhi-Feng Huang to propose the following bill to be presented to Congress:
Preserving Every Americans Chance to Earn (PEACE)
A BILL
Given that it is well known that physicists and mathematicians are primarily responsible for the 2008 world wide economic crisis (see http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/05/60minutes/main4502454.shtml), to preserve the American economy, and other purposes.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the `Preserving Every Americans Chance to Earn (PEACE) Act’.
SEC. 2. FUNDING FOR PROJECTS IN BASIC RESEARCH
For the purposes of preventing physicists and mathematicians from getting jobs in the real world where they can do actual damage by putting their ideas and theories into practice rather than having them criticized, peer reviewed, and published in obscure journals there is authorized to be appropriated, and there is appropriated $25,000,000,000 in this and in all following fiscal years to fund projects in basic research. This level may be raised at the discretion of the Secretary of the Treasury if ANY physics or mathematics PhD recipient cannot find a job in basic research.
SEC. 3. EFFECTIVE DATE.
This bill will go into effect immediately after passage in hopes that no more of these brainiacs are tempted by six or seven figure Wall Street salaries, and no more of the idiots who actually make decisions on Wall Street are confused by persons who are smarter than they are.
Phrase of the day October 10, 2008
Posted by apetrov in Uncategorized.add a comment
“Muons are a year yonger than John McCain”
WSU seminar speaker talking about history of discovery of muons.
2008 Nobel Prize in physics… October 7, 2008
Posted by apetrov in Particle Physics, Physics, Science.1 comment so far
… was given today to Yoichiro Nambu of the University of Chicago “for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics” and to Makoto Kobayashi and Toshihide Maskawa “for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature.” A Nobel Prize in particle physics.
Nambu is well-known for his work on the origins of spontaneous breaking of symmetries in quantum field theories (in particular related to strong interactions, where he addressed spontaneous breaking of chiral symmetry – which nowdays is a base of the standard language for description of low-energy pion interactions) and has many things associated with his name (Nambu-Goldstone bosons, Nambu-Jona-Lasinio model, Han-Nambu quarks (which happen to have incorrect color charge assignment), etc.).
Kobayashi and Maskawa are given the prize essentially for the CKM (Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa) matrix. CKM matrix is a generalization of the Cabibbo’s idea that quarks actually mix – he used it to explain strange results in the physics of weak decays of strange quark, where properties of weak transitions of strange quark from non-leptonic hyperon decay rates differ from the ones in semileptonic kaon decays. Since, in particle phsyics, up-, down-, and strange-quarks belong to the first two generations of quarks, this mixing is described by a two-by-two matrix. Anyhow, Kobayashi and Maskawa generalized this idea to the case of three generations (3×3 matrix). It so happens that this “generalization” predicts a new phenomenon in weak decays of elementary particles: CP-violation orginating from the CKM matrix! In other words, it describes a difference between matter and anti-matter interactions in the Standard Model, which is needed for generating baryon asymmetry of the Universe (Ok, this now sounds like my “Introduction to particle physics” lecture for beginning graduate students)… Unfortunately, there is “not enough CP-violation” in the CKM matrix to claim explanation of the baryon asymmetry of the Universe from the Standard Model, BUT: this source of CP-violation was experimentally confirmed! And now studies of the CKM matrix serve as a base for indirect studies of New Physics in low-energy transitions — which, if discovered, will be used as additional information needed to classify possible New Physics possibly observed at the LHC, once they fix it… And that’s why Nobel Prize was given to Kobayashi and Maskawa.
Still, I can’t believe they didn’t give it to Cabibbo as well..
P.S. There is an intersting local story that was told to me once I got to WSU. Nambu is also considered one of the fathers of string theory (look for Nambu-Goto action). So the story is that in the 60s there was a quark-model conference at WSU hosted by Suraj Gupta, during which Nambu came up with his idea to describe hadrons in terms of strings. How about that?
