Category: Event

Rock bands hit all the major cities when they’ve got something to sing. Physicists aren’t much different – we hit all the institutions we can when we have something to share. I’ll be doing a seminar tour this fall, starting in September. Here are confirmed dates at various institutions. If you would like me to give a seminar at your institution, let me know! Otherwise, pop on by if I’m in the neighborhood!

• September 19: Cornell University (Seminar)
• September 22: MIT (Lab for Nuclear Science Colloquium)
• September 29: Syracuse University (Seminar)
• October 1: McGill University (Seminar)
• October 3: The Ohio State University (Seminar)
• October 7: Case-Western Reserve University (Seminar)
• October 9: University of Cincinnati (Colloquium)
• October 13: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Seminar)
• October 21: University of California – Davis (Seminar)
• November 17: Indiana University (Seminar)
• November 18: Purdue University (Seminar)
• December 8: Southern Methodist University (Colloquium)

Here is the title and abstract of my intended talk:

The White Elephant: Upsilon Physics at the BaBar B-factory

For a decade, the PEP-II/BaBar B-factory has been a flagship experiment in precision measurements in the flavor sector, notably in the decays of B and charm mesons. Before its shutdown in April, the B-factory took a new direction and secured the world’s largest samples of Upsilon(3S) and Upsilon(2S) mesons and performed an extensive scan above the Upsilon(4S) resonance. I will talk about the motivation for this change of course and our new results in both the search for the ground state of bottomonium and the search for evidence of new physics at a low mass scale, including both the Higgs and dark matter.

Update (8/27/08): The Cincinnati colloquium date is moved from 10/13 to 10/9

Update (9/3/08): I’ve been confirmed for a seminar at Case-Western Reserve University

Update (9/19/08): A seminar at the home base, OSU, is now arranged.

Update (10/3/08): A seminar at UC-Davis has been setup

Update (10/9/08): Seminars at Indiana University and Purdue have been arranged

Update (12/7/08): My colloquium at Southern Methodist University has been added

This week, particle and astro-particle physicists from all over the world have converged on Philadelphia for the 34th International Conference on High-Energy Physics, or ICHEP (pronounced “Eye-Chep”). I’ve seen many friends and colleagues, and gotten a lot of exercise running from building to building to see the overlapping talks. There is a thick air of anticipation over the startup of the LHC, which is becoming imminent. However, there has also been a very exciting back-and-forth from the flavor factories and the Tevatron experiments. In addition, there is a lot to say about particle astrophysics – dark matter detectors, the launch of GLAST, neutrinos.

The Tevatron Higgs searches are approaching that critical period where the two experiments, combined, are ruling out Standard Model Higgs at certain mass points. Currently, the strongest exclusion is >95% exclusion of the Standard Model Higgs at 170 GeV/c2. This doesn’t sound like much, but it means that with 6-8/fb of data (more than twice what they now have) they stand a serious chance of doing the same at many more mass values. More importantly, they stand a serious chance of seeing something. With current constraints on the Higgs mass requiring it to be below 150-190 GeV/c2, this is growing to a crecendo.

The flavor factories have had a lively back-and-forth on a number of topics, including rare decays, new states of matter, and CP violation. For my money, the most interesting results were on the properties of the VERY rare B decay B -> K(*)ll, which shows some tension with the Standard Model [1]. The larger Belle data sample, when compared to the BaBar data sample, confirms some features of this decay and has tension with others. Belle’s latest search for B -> tau nu, an important rare decay, also led to questions from old hands at the technique like me and other BaBarians [2]. There is definitely something going on with the Belle result, but more information is needed to understand the concreteness of their results. Finally, the claimed observation of a state called the Z(4430) from Belle a year ago is in some question with BaBar’s latest study of the final states involved in this alleged particle [3]. BaBar seems to refute its existence, and a lively discussion ensued at the parallel session where this was presented.

I’m very proud of the results from the Upsilon sample that have been shown by BaBar at this conference. We have unveiled our scan of the parameter Rb [4], which tells us about the rich structure of hadron production above the Y(4S) resonance and which is nearly unparalleled in its resolution. We have shown the results of the search for the eta_b [4], with a full plenary talk this coming Tuesday [5]. We have also shown our first results in the search for new physics, a light, invisible Higgs, which I had the pleasure of presenting in a parallel session talk [6].

The excitement is not over. Tomorrow, we have a full plate of plenaries and Tuesday we conclude with hot results from several experiments!

[1] B -> K(*)ll from BaBar and Belle
[2] B -> tau nu from Belle
[3] The Z(4430) from Belle and BaBar
[4] Rb and the eta_b from BaBar
[5] Plenary on the eta_b
[6] Search for Y(3S) -> gamma A0 from BaBar

I’m looking forward to attending this week’s International Conference on High-Energy Physics (ICHEP) in Philadelphia, PA. I’ll be attending almost the entire conference (missing just a little at the very end), and I’m excited to see my colleagues from many excellent experiments. I’m still not sure what sessions I’ll be attending, but I will be speaking at “Exotics II” on Friday evening and I look forward to presenting recent results from BaBar on many topics. I am also looking forward to the lively give-and-take of the parallel sessions, and the hot results filling the plenaries.

See you in Philly!