This is the third in a series of posts covering the basics of particle physics, originally posted back in 2003. In this installment, I talk about some of the hardware involved, specifically the CLAS detector at Jefferson Lab, because I’ve heard a good number of talks about that. It should be noted that the inspiration… Continue reading Classic Edition: Look Closer and It’s Easy to Trace…
Category: Experiment
Classic Edition: Making Quarks Out of Nothing at All
This is the second of a set of old posts, dating back to 2003, discussing the business of experimental particle physics. In this installment, I talk about how you get exotic particles by slamming ordinary ones together at high speed.
Classic Edition: Subatomic Botany
Since I found myself talking about particle physics yesterday, and since I find myself in the middle of a seasonal allergy flare-up that’s sapping my bloggy motivation, I thought I would dust off and re-post some old articles about particle physics. These date back to 2003, but I think they still stand up reasonably well.… Continue reading Classic Edition: Subatomic Botany
Precision Machining and Baking Supplies
I end up buying a lot of weird things for my lab– really expensive sand, for example– but the latest purchase was a little strange even by my usual standards: The other day, on my way into work, I stopped by the store and bought a roll of parchment paper, for use in the lab.… Continue reading Precision Machining and Baking Supplies
Counting Leptons
Quantum Diaries survivor Tommaso Dorigo offers an inside look at experimental particle physics, describing new results from combing through CDF data to look for rare events producing two leptons with the same charge: Indeed, 44 events were found when 33.7 were expected, plus or minus 3.5. That corresponds to a roughly 2-sigma fluctuation of expected… Continue reading Counting Leptons
It’s a Technical Term
Dave Bacon explains heating-induced decoherence: One problem with ion traps qubits has been the heating of the motional degrees of the trapped ions, due mostly to fluctuating potentials on the trap electrodes. The electrode potential goes yee-yaw and the ion goes wee-wah, heating up and thus ruining the motional degree of freedom of the ion.… Continue reading It’s a Technical Term
Cold Atoms for Gravity Probes
This is nearly a month old, now, because I keep saying “Oh, Idon’t have time to do this justice– I’ll write about it tomorrow.” I really need to stop doing that. Anyway, Physics News Update has a story about a scheme to measure gravity using Bloch oscillations, based on a paper in Physical Review Letters.… Continue reading Cold Atoms for Gravity Probes
What I Do for a Living
I’m in the process of putting together my tenure documents (I know I’ve been saying this for weeks. It’s a long process, OK?). Most of these are really not appropriate for reproduction here, but I’ll post a few of the things I’m writing, when it’s reasonable to do so. A major part of the tenure… Continue reading What I Do for a Living
String Theory, RHIC, and Furr’s Law
An off-hand comment in my RHIC post has provided a lot more traffic and entertainment than I would’ve thought possible, and has also accidentally re-confirmed what we used to call “Furr’s Law” back in my Usenet days– namely, that the fastest way to get information on the Internet is to say something wrong, and let… Continue reading String Theory, RHIC, and Furr’s Law
The Chopped Liver Accelerator
I had errands to run this morning before work, which meant that I didn’t have time to queue up the usual handful of blog posts to appear during the day. I don’t want to have the site go dark, though, so I’ll throw up a post or two on my lunch hour, to note some… Continue reading The Chopped Liver Accelerator