Dave E. Kraus (senior scientist)
Peter Lichard (senior
scientist)Julia A. Thompson (professor)Arie Baratt (student)Alexander Sher (student)
Some members of this group participated in Experiment 865 at the Alternating Gradient Sychrotron at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, New York. The main purpose of E865 is to search for the lepton flavor number violating decay K+ -> Pi + Mu+ E-. The experiment finished data taking on New Year's Eve, 1999, and the group are now engaged in data analysis. In the course of her outreach work in South Africa , Thompson developed a popular introduction to E865.
E865: Prof. Thompson's group designed and built the two large volume gas threshold Cherenkov detectors for E865 as well as taking about a quarter of the data taking shifts on the experiment. A few snapshots follow. Dave kraus and physics department machinist Bob Giles helped design and oversaw the building of the counters. Thompson worked with Kraus on the design of the mirrors and on construction of the counter windows , made of kevlar, and, in collaboration with many undergraduates, on the construction and alignment of the mirrors. We even made the local paper! Since the completion of data taking, the collaboration is analyzing both for the primary Pi Mu E search and for a number of related physics results.
Results for the Pi E E and Pi Mu Mu modes have been published, along with improved limits on the K to Pi Mu E search and several other forbidden decay modes. An improved measurement for the Ke3 branching ratio (thesis of Pitt student Alexander Sher) will be one important outcome of the experiment.
Since Thompson's stay as a National Academy Exchange Scholar at the beautiful Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics in Novosibirsk, Russia, in 1989-90, her group has also contributed to the CMD2 experiment. The CMD2 experiment deals with semi-rare kaon and phi decays (at the 10**-3 to 10**-5 level), as well as other precision measurements in ee collisions up to 1400 MeV/c**2. This group will also make a measurement of the Ke3 branching ratio (thesis of Pitt student Arie Baratt). The Ke3 process is important because it determines the Vus element of the CKM matrix. Present measurements of the Ke3 branching ratio show a failure of unitarity at about a 2 standard deviation level.
As analysis on the above two experiments is drawing to a close, she is joining the MINOS experiment at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL). MINOS aims to verify Japanese indications of neutrino oscillations, which in turn would require neutrino masses, and be one indication of lepton number non-conservation.
She has also directed the University of Pittsburgh summer student program REUPFOM in the physics department since 1992. In 2001 and 2002 she directed a sister site at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.
In 2003 she will be an Adjunct Prof. in the Physics Department of the University of Missouri at St. Louis (UMSL), and her educational outreach activities will be carried out from her UMSL base.
As an outgrowth of the REU program and associated work with high school teachers on both research opportunities and on improving hands on experiences for their students, and her longstanding interest in cosmic rays, dating from her postdoctoral work at the University of Utah, Thompson, together with Senior Research Associate David Kraus, is exploring the possibility of studying ultra high energy cosmic rays through detectors placed in high schools.
During part of each year she is in residence in southern Illinois with her family and while there she collaborates with local high school physics teachers on expanding hands on work in their classes.
In summer 2003 she expects to lead a Quarknet workshop for teachers in the southern Illinois area.
An outgrowth of her interest in outreach activities has recently led to collaboration with Bill Willis and Jeremy Dodd of Columbia University in outreach work in South Africa.
In fall, 2003, she will be teaching Physics 577.
