Christopher Hearty, Professor/IPP Principal Research Scientist

B.Sc. Simon Fraser University (82)
Ph.D. University of Washington (87)
Postdoctoral Researcher, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (87-94)

Hennings 268
604 822 9163 or 604 221 3228 (TRIUMF)
hearty@physics.ubc.ca

Experimental Particle Physics Research

I split my research time between neutrino physics and heavy flavor physics, T2K and BaBar / Super-B. I am looking for graduate students; some thesis topics are listed below.

T2K is a long-baseline neutrino beam experiment that will study the phenomenon of neutrino oscillations, the process by which one flavor of neutrino (a muon neutrino, for example) transforms into another. The neutrinos will be produced in J-PARC, a new hadron facility in Tokai, Japan. When T2K starts taking data in early 2010, it will use a "near detector" to measure the properties of a neutrino beam before oscillations occur, then remeasure the properties after the neutrinos have traveled 300 km to Super Kamiokande.

The Canadian group is responsible for the primary components of the near detector. We are currently completing construction and installing the detectors. Here are a few photos of the Time Projection Chambers, which I am building at TRIUMF.

BaBar just completed an 8 year run at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in California, and is currently analyzing the vast data set. One of the most significants results established that CP (the relationship between matter and antimatter) is violated in B mesons as well, the first such observation outside of the Kaon system. I wrote a short article for the non-specialist, or you can read a feature science article on our discovery from the Toronto Star.

I am the Principal Investigator of the Canadian BaBar group, which includes ten faculty members, two research associates and twelve graduate students, and recently completed a one-year term as Physics Analysis Coordinator for the experiment. I have been studying the various unexpected and surprising new charmonium-like particles that have been discovered, including the Y(4260). My student Bryan Fulsom recently published a result that indicates that the Charge Conjugation quantum number of the X(3872) is +1, which makes it also unlikely to be a standard meson. You can get copies of this and our other papers below. We are currently analyzing the data we collected on the Upsilon(3S) and (2S) resonances to search for light Higgs that are present in many Supersymmetry models.

The exciting physics results of the B-Factories have motivated Super-B, a new facility with 100 times the luminosity that has been proposed for a site just outside of Rome, Italy. I am doing R&D on a drift chamber that can operate at these incredible intensities. This is a good opportunity for students to work on a hardware project at the early stages of a major particle physics experiment.

Students

The students I have worked with recently are listed below. I am looking for one or two new graduate students, and occasionally supervise undergraduate theses; here are a few possible projects. Please contact me for additional information.

Thesis Topics

Aging studies for a Super-B drift chamber
Beam tests of a Super-B drift chamber prototype
Study of the intrinsic electron-neutrino component of the T2K beam
Study of an off-axis neutrino beam; near/far ratio
Water and Carbon neutrino interaction cross sections
muon or electron Charged Current quasi elastic scattering
Study of new states in B --> Jpsi pi0 gamma K(*)
Search for the light Higgs A0 in hadronic decays
Inclusive radiative Y(1S) decays

Students and Projects

	Rocky So: Inclusive measurement of Upsilon(1S) production at the Upsilon(4S); Search for a light Higgs in radiative decays of the Upsilon(3S)
	Sebastien Picard: T2K TPC assembly and quality control
	Erin O'Sullivan: T2K TPC Module 0 construction
	Casey Bojechko: Search for the baryon-number violating decay tau --> p h h; laser calibration system for T2K TPC
	Andre Pant: T2K TPC detector development
	Grant McGregor: Development of new B Counting techniques
	Bryan Fulsom: Commissioning of new muon system; Search for radiative decays of new Charmonium states
	Sheila Mclachlin (McGill): Search for B0 --> Jpsi Gamma
	Maxime Brodeur: B-Counting for the BaBar run 3 data set
	Frank Berghaus: B-Counting for the BaBar run 2 data set
	Nasim Boustani: Detector response studies using the phi gamma control sample
	Marko Milek: (PhD at McGill): Charmonium production at BaBar
	Dan Giang: Search for the rare decay B --> K nu nu-bar
	Marie-Helene Genest: Determination of the number of Upsilon(4S) mesons in the BaBar run1 data
	James Griffiths: Selection of two-photon-produced muons pairs as a muon-identification control sample
	Angela O'Neill: Non-flammable gases for the BaBar drift chamber
	Robin Stoodley: Drift chamber assembly
	Wesley Philip Wong: Development of drift chamber assembly techniques

Drift Chamber Construction

A major part of the BaBar detector, the Drift Chamber, was built at TRIUMF as the Canadian contribution to the hardware. I oversaw its construction and was the run coordinator during the first commissioning run of BaBar. Here are some photos (and a link to more photos):

Overview of stringing in the clean room

Putting on the outer cylinder

Chamber arriving at SLAC

Inserting it into BaBar

TPC Module 0 Construction

We are building three TPC modules for the T2K experiment, the first of which will be shipped to Japan in late 2009. Here are some pictures of the prototype.

T2K TPC tracker under construction in the clean room at TRIUMF

Completed TPC ready to ship to Victoria for cosmic ray testing

GEM foils were used for the read out; the final detector will use MicroMegas

Cosmic ray tests at UVic

Selected Publications

Evidence for X(3872) --> psi(2S) gamma in B+/- --> X(3872) K+/- decays, and a study of B --> ccbar gamma K, Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 132001 (2009).
Observation of the bottomonium ground state in the decay Upsilon(3S) ---> gamma eta(b), Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 071801 (2008).
Observation of a broad structure in the pi+ pi- J / psi mass spectrum around 4.26-Gev/c**2, Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 142001 (2005).
Direct CP Violating Asymmetry in B0 -> K+pi- Decays, Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 131801 (2004).
Observation of CP violation in the B0 meson system, B. Aubert et al, Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 091801 (2001).
Measurement of J/psi production in continuum e+e- annihilations near sqrt(s) = 10.6 GeV, Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 162002 (2001).
The BABAR detector, B. Aubert et al, SLAC-PUB-8569, Nucl.Instrum.Meth.A479:1-116,2002.