Michael Hildreth
Professor
Physics
A.B., Princeton Universty, 1988
Ph.D., Stanford Univrsity, 1995
E-mail: mhildret@nd.edu
Address: NSH 414
Phone: (574-63)1-6458
Fax: (574-63)1-5952
or try
Phone: (574-63)1-6386
Research Interests
Prof. Hildreth’s primary physics interest is in discovering and understanding the mechanism or mechanisms responsible for Electroweak Symmetry Breaking. Simply put, this would answer questions like: “why is there mass?” and “is there a Higgs?” As a member of the DØ Experiment at the Tevatron collider at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Prof. Hildreth is exploring these questions with the large dataset from the Tevatron Run II. He is working on precision measurements of top quark and W boson properties which can be combined with searches for physics beyond the standard model to yield as complete as possible of physics at the highest accessible energies.
While providing greatly enhanced capability, the upgraded DØ detector, especially the scintillating fiber tracker built under Notre Dame supervision, requires a significant effort devoted to understanding the calibration, event reconstruction, the detector simulation, and the impact of all of these on the physics analyses. Prof. Hildreth is involved in all areas of these investigations.
Prof. Hildreth is also a part of the CMS Experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland, where he will extend the research mentioned above. He is currently leading the CMS group responsible for modeling the interaction of particles with the material of the detector elements. This is essential for understanding the response of the detector to the signals for all of the various physical processes one wishes to study at the collider. The initial years of data taking are a critical time for this work, since the detailed comparison can be made between the modelling and real collider data.
Prof. Hildreth is also involved in an accelerator instrumentation project at SLAC and the KEK laboratory in Tsukuba, Japan. He leads a primarily undergraduate group of students who are building laser interferometer systems to monitor the mechanical stability of accelerator components at the 10 nanometer level. The primary goal of this research is to demonstrate that a precision energy spectrometer based on beam position monitors can attain the necessary resolution.
Selected Publications
“Determination of the bending field integral of the LEP spectrometer dipole,” R. Chritin et al., Nucl. Inst. Meth. A 545, 31 (2005).
“Calibration of centre-of-mass energies at LEP 2 for a precise measurement of the w boson mass,” R. Assmann et al., (LEP Energy Working Group) Eur. Phys. J. C. 39, 253 (2005).
“B Physics at DØ,” M.D. Hildreth et al., (DØ Collaboration), Eur. Phys. J. C 33, S192-S194 (2004).
“The Run IIb Trigger Upgrade for the DØ Experiment,” M Abolins, et al ., IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. 51, 340-344 (2004).
“Precise determination of the Z resonance parameters at LEP: ‘Zedometry’,” G. Abbiendi et al. (OPAL Collaboration), Eur. Phys. J. C 19, 587 (2001).
“Evaluation of the LEP Center-Of-Mass Energy Above the W Pair Production Threshold,” A. Blondel et al. (LEP Energy Working Group), Eur. Phys. J. C. 11, 573 (1999).
“Measurement of the W Mass and Width in e+e- Collisions at 183 GeV,” G. Abbiendi et al. (OPAL Collaboration), Phys.Lett. B 453, 138 (1999).
“Calibration of Center-Of-Mass Energies at LEP-1 for Precise Measurements of Z Properties,” R. Assmann et al. (LEP Energy Working Group), Eur. Phys. J. C 6, 187 (1999).
Awards:
- Department of Energy Outstanding Junior Investigator, 2002
- Research Corporation Cottrell Scholar, 2003
Full Curriculum Vitae (pdf)
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