The Search for a Force from the Dark Side - By Professor Joseph Izen
- Durée: 75 Minutes (environ)
- Lieu: Gingin, WA
- Code produit: PV0VJF
The mass of galaxies and galactic clusters doesn’t add up! The mass of all the protons, neutrons, and electrons that comprise stars, planets, interstellar and intergalactic gas clouds, and people are just 15% of the mass needed to explain the rotational period of galaxies, the collisions of galactic clusters, and the gravitational lensing by galaxies and galaxy clusters. The remaining 85% is “Dark”. Dark Matter is still known almost exclusively from its gravitational influence, but if ordinary matter feels gravity plus at least three known forces, perhaps there are analogous Dark Side forces. At CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the hunt is on for the Dark Photon, a gauge boson akin to the electromagnetic photon, but for a conjectured Dark Force between Dark Matter particles. This talk will describe the ATLAS experiment’s search for Dark Photons using LHC collision data. A bonus attraction will be home movies from inside the ATLAS detector located on the LHC beam line, 60 m below the surface of Geneva, Switzerland.
About Professor Izen;
Joe Izen is Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Texas at Dallas. He specializes in Experimental Elementary Particle (High Energy) Physics. In 2012, Izen was recognized with the (Texas) Regents’ Outstanding Teaching Award. In addition to formal teaching, Izen occasionally speaks to astronomy groups and to the public about his research. Izen was awarded a BS in Physics and Mathematics, summa cum laude at The Cooper Union in 1977 and a Ph.D. in Physics at Harvard University in 1982. His post-doctoral preparation was at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Izen is a member of the ATLAS Collaboration which carries our precision electroweak studies of the Higgs boson and the top and bottom quarks, and which searches for new particles, new forces, and new phenomena. These studies are carried out with the world’s highest energy laboratory collisions produced at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider. Izen has previously worked on collider experiments at the SLAC National Laboratory at Stanford, with the Beijing Electron Positron Collider, at DESY – the German national accelerator laboratory, and with CESR, the Cornell Electron Storage Ring. Izen has been an avid amateur astronomer and an astrophotographer since 1968, and it is the 20 April solar eclipse in Exmouth that brings Izen to Western Australia. The Exmouth eclipse will be his third time “in the shadow”. Izen’s current search for Dark Photons, the gauge boson of a conjectured new force affecting Dark Matter and the subject of Izen’s public talk at the Gravity Discovery Centre and Observatory, closes the circle on his career as the Dark Photon search is motivated by astronomical
observations. When not working or observing, Izen plays clawhammer banjo with Squirrelheads in Gravy. He is an avid contra and square dancer, a backpacker, an inline skater, and a cross country skier.