My field of research is in experimental high energy particle physics. Together with Prof. Jim Russ, I am a member of the CDF Collaboration which operates a large experimental apparatus, the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) . The CDF experiment records data from proton-antiproton collisions produced by the Tevatron Collider, the highest energy particle collider in the world. The Tevatron is the main accelerator at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) located about 35 miles west of Chicago. Using the data from the CDF detector, we study a wide variety of phenomena in particle physics. The currently most important result achieved was the discovery of the top quark announced in 1995.

My research interests focus on the field of heavy flavour decays, which provide valuable information on the weak quark mixing matrix within the context of the Standard Model. In particular, I am interested in particle-antiparticle oscillations and the violation of the symmetries of nature under the combined action of charge conjugation C and parity P. Although the violation of CP invariance was first discovered in the system of neutral K mesons in 1964, the origin of CP violation is still not completely understood. However, CP violation is of great interest as it is expected to play an important role in understanding the predominance of matter over antimatter in the universe.

The system of neutral B mesons is expected to yield large CP violating effects. This is one of the motivations to study CP violation at accelerators that produce B mesons at a very high rate, such as the e⁺e^- B factory at SLAC. At the Fermilab Tevatron Collider, the CDF experiment has published an initial study of the CP violation parameter sin(2beta) in B meson decays. I am involved in measuring CP violation at CDF. After a successful detector upgrade period, the CDF experiment will start taking data in March 2001 for a five year data taking period (Run II). The anticipated amount of high quality data offers an excellent opportunity to study CP violation in the B meson system as well as B flavour oscillations and promises a wealth of important physics results from CDF.

Selected Publications

ARGUS Collaboration, H. Albrecht et al., “Search for  in Exclusive Decays of B Mesons”, Phys. Lett. B229 (1989) 304.

ARGUS Collaboration, H. Albrecht et al., “Observation of the Charged Isospin Partner of the”, Phys. Lett. B231 (1989) 208.

ARGUS Collaboration, H. Albrecht et al., “Measurement of the Decay ”,

Phys. Lett. B229 (1989) 175.

ARGUS Collaboration, H. Albrecht et al.; “Inclusive  and  Meson Production in Electron Positron Interactions at  = 10 GeV”, Z. Phys. C46 (1990) 15.

ARGUS Collaboration, H. Albrecht et al.; “Observation of  Production in  Annihilation around 10 GeV”, Phys. Lett. B230 (1989) 169.