Research Statements from Successful QuarkNet Proposals
February, 1999

      


Boston University

This is the Boston University part of a proposal for a joint site with Northeastern University.

We outline two possible projects, which will be chosen according to the interests and time constraints of the teacher. The primary mentor for the teacher assigned to BU will be Prof. U. Heintz. Mentoring responsibilities at Fermilab will be shared with Prof. D. Wood from Northeastern University.

Project 1:
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Experience & skills: some experience with instrumentation and the use of a computer is useful. The teacher will be instructed in the use of the software emplyed to control the instrumentation.

Project title: Irradiation Studies of Silicon Microstrip Detectors

Mentor: Ulrich Heintz

Narrative Description: D0 is constructing a Silicon Microstrip Tracker for Run II. During Run II, the silicon detectors will be exposed to radiation doses of about 1 Mrad. This exposure will change the characteristics of the detectors. The bulk material will change from n-type silicon to p-type. After this so-called type inversion, the depletion voltage will increase with the radiation dose. The useful lifetime of the silicon detectors is determined by the dose at which the depletion voltage reaches the maximum value at which the detectors can be biased without breakdown. It is thus important to study how the characteristics of the detectors change with dose.

During this project, we will use the radiation source at U Mass, Lowell to irradiate prototype silicon detectors with neutrons. The properties of the detectors will be measured before and after irradiation. The teacher would be involved in testing the detectors using a probe station and computer controlled measurement instruments, preparing the detectors for the irradiation, developing a computer program to monitor the detectors during irradiation, and the analysis of the data. The teacher is expected to document the results in the form of a D0 internal note.

Where will the teachers spend the bulk of their research time? Boston

Project 2:
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Experience & skills: some experience with instrumentation is useful. Experience with excel and general idea about databases is useful.

Project title: Quality Control of Silicon Microstrip Detectors

Mentor: Ulrich Heintz

Narrative Description: D0 is constructing a Silicon Microstrip Tracker for Run II. This device will consist of some 700 silicon detectors. These detectors have to be carefully characterized before they are incorporated into the tracker. Using a semiautomatic probe station, capacitances, breakdown voltages and leakage currents are measured for the approximately 1000 strips on each detector. Based on the results of the tests, detectors are either rejected or accepted as production grade devices.

We expect that construction of the detector will be well under way in summer 1999. During this project, the teacher will operate the computer controlled test setup, which consists of a probe station and measurement instruments. The teacher will acquire data about each detector, and develop criteria to classify the detectors. He/She will develop software to implement these criteria and enter the information into a database for later use in the analysis of the data from the tracker. The format of the data entries will be chosen in consultation with researchers involved in the project. The teacher will document the results in the form of a D0 internal note which will act as a reference for future users.


Florida State University

Within the framework of our group's contribution to the Dzero experiment at Fermilab, there are many research projects in which high school teachers could make a worthwhile contribution and at the same time learn something interesting. All of them require familiarity with computers and/or the willingness to learn. We would teach them whatever they need to know and/or provide them with opportunities to acquire the necessary skills. We plan to engage our high school science teacher colleagues in well-defined roles in these projects, depending on their tastes and predilections, and they will work together with faculty members, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students.

We are working on a major project to build a device, called the Silicon Track Trigger, to identify online the tracks produced by particles containing b-quarks. An important goal of our group is to develop a fast algorithm to find clusters of hits, from which the tracks can be made. To aid in the optimization of this algorithm, we plan to develop a simple visualization tool, based on readily available software, to display the hits and clusters. We also need a way to simulate the data stream that will enter the hardware processor in which the algorithm will be executed. We have begun work on such a simulation and we expect this will provide valuable opportunities for our science teacher colleagues to learn about algorithm development and testing. We shall also begin work on the design and prototyping of programs to monitor the status of some aspects of the Silicon Track Trigger. Our principal tools will be the high-level object-oriented language python and its associated software modules. In all of these projects, the high school teacher could play an important role and make a clear impact. The principal mentors for these projects would be Harrison Prosper and Horst Wahl.

Another area where the help of a high school teacher would be welcome and useful for both sides is the simulation of physics processes of interest in the future exploitation of the D0 detector, and connected to this, the development of search strategies for "new physics". The teacher could help in running existing software packages to generate events, simulate the response of the D0 detector to these events, and interpret the results with the aim of understanding how to optimally recognize these interesting events, and how to distinguish them from the less interesting "background". The principal mentors for this would be Susan Blessing and Laura Reina.


Langston University

Project Title: D-Zero Experiment Remote Visualization project

We are proposing to establish a Quarknet site at Langston University in collaboration with North East Academy High School and Millwood High School in the Oklahoma City area.

This collaboration will involve two professors at Langston University, Tim McMahon and John Coleman, and two teachers at the local High Schools, Rosemary Bradley at North East Academy and Larry Wray at Millwood.

North East Academy is a "magnet" school located and operating in the Oklahoma City school district. This school attracts the brightest students from the Oklahoma City area through an entrance exam and is tuition free for the students that go there. The school specializes in Health, Science and Engineering and has advanced placement for physics, chemistry and statistics to name a few. The school has an ethnically diverse student population of 800 students comprising approximately 60% African American, 5% Hispanic, 25% Caucasian and 10% Asian. (School brochures are attached)

Millwood High School is located inside the Oklahoma City district and has a student population of approximately 400. The school has a high university placement ratio with 57% of the students attending college and a student population of 99% African American. They offer advanced placement for physics B and chemistry. The school has received numerous awards for academic achievement. (School brochures are attached)

Langston University is an Historically Black College and University (HBCU) with an undergraduate population of about 4000 students comprising an ethnically diverse ratio of 55% African American, 40% Caucasian, 2.5% Native American and 2.5% Hispanic. Langston University is a land grant college with the main campus located about 40 miles from Oklahoma City. The University has extension campuses in Oklahoma City and Tulsa. John Coleman has for the past 5 years coordinated a Summer Science Academy at Langston University for high school sophomore, juniors and seniors. The Academy is designed to teach physics, math and science at the college level.

For the summer program here at Langston University the two High School teachers will work with the Langston professors for the majority of the eight weeks at the main campus. The teachers will work on some ongoing projects with the Remote Visualization software under development with the D-Zero Experiment at Fermilab. Attached to this proposal are some figures of a "Virtual Control Room" (VCR) remote visualization program written in the JAVA programming language which would allow researchers, teachers and students to remotely view the ongoing operations of the experiment dynamically. Data on the different screens is updated both automatically and through user interaction. The two High School teachers will be helpful on this project in several ways. They will be an invaluable source of help in evaluating the functioning of the program in terms of ease of use, features, accessibility for students and ideas for features to include in the client software. We envision that a VCR for the D-Zero experiment will have two versions: one for experts and scientists on the D-Zero experiment and another version for the public, High School students in this case. The teachers will during the course of the summer be given some tutorials on JAVA and VRML and may have some opportunity to develop some small pieces of code in either of those languages. VRML is much more accessible than JAVA and they probably would be able to make some good contributions to the VRML scene of the D-Zero experiment (please see attached Figures or see the figures at http://possible.lunet.edu/~mcmahon/projects.html). We envision that out of this experience may come some products which will be useful for the later phases of the Quarknet program, providing software which will fulfill the mission of allowing High School students to view and interact from their location the operations of the experiments at Fermilab and CERN.


Michigan State University

The MSU high energy physics group is actively involved in 3 experiments: CDF and D0 at Fermilab and ATLAS at the LHC. Much of the activity for this project would be related to detector construction for ATLAS. At MSU, we will be instrumenting and testing 32 10 ton modules that will form a portion of the ATLAS hadron calorimeter (the "Tilecal"). The instrumentation will include inserting scintillator tiles into the modules, coupling wavelength shifting fibers to the tiles and then routing the fibers to the phototubes. The teachers will then be involved in testing the modules using cosmic rays, UV light sources and/or radioactive sources. The teachers will initially be involved in developing software for the data acquisition system. As we have done in the past, there will be a great deal of pedagogical interaction between the MSU physicists and the teachers, so the teachers can gain a better understanding of the physics goals of ATLAS and how their efforts fit in. It is likely that (independent of this program) that we will also seek out one or two area high school students to also participate in this work.

In parallel to this effort on the Tilecal modules,we will also be working on special scintillator planes for ATLAS that will be designed, constructed and tested with the participation of the teachers. We will also continue our work on physics demonstrations.

The initial work described above begins this summer and continues until the fall of 2002. A great deal of work is also going on at MSU relating to the two Tevatron experiments, CDF and D0. It is possible for the teachers to be involved in this as well.

Much of the time would be spent at MSU, but with the options of frequent trips to Fermilab (in addition to the initial stay).


Northeastern University

Project title: Commissioning the DZero Muon Detectors with LED pulses and Cosmic Rays

Mentor: Darien Wood

Note: mentoring at Fermilab will be shared between Northeastern (Wood) and Boston University (Heintz) QuarkNet leaders.

Before the DZero detector rolls back into the Tevatron beam in the year 2000, all of the muon detectors and their associated electronics must be deployed and tested in situ. These detectors include 94 large proportional drift tube chambers, 48 wedges of mini-drift tube chambers, and about 6000 scintillation counters. One of the best ways of verifying that the detectors are working properly is to use them to observe the natural flux of cosmic-ray muons from space. Another method is to send light pulses from LEDs along optical fibers to the scintillators using a specially designed calibration system.

We anticipate that this commissioning effort will be well underway in the Summer of 1999. A teacher could work with physicists on setting up the detectors, examining the cosmic ray data and pulser data, and attempting to locate and correct any problems observed with the detectors. A teacher with good software skills could develop programs to automate the calibration or to display the results. The teacher would be expected to document the test results and the tools developed in the form of a "D0note" which would become part of the reference material for the upgraded detector.


The State University of New York - Stony Brook

Alignment of the D0 Silicon Detector (John Hobbs) The project is directly related to the use of the D0 silicon tracker: for precision vertexing, finding of separated vertices (decay vertices), and triggering on tracks stemming from such decays. Two projects (within the context of Hobbs' work):
(1) Working on the prototype alignment process either the mathematics or coding.
(2) Understanding the assembly precision for use in the STT design.
A connection between these nitty-gritty projects and general concepts is the desire to use distance-of-flight as a measure of particle lifetime. To measure the distance-of- flight precisely, we must have a well-aligned detector. The bulk of this work would be done at Fermilab - in cooperation with postdoc Wendy Taylor, with follow- up/continuation at Stony Brook.

Trigger Algoritms for the D0 Preshower Detectors (Grannis) Projects that might involve a suitable teacher would center on the trigger activities: the writing and testing of preshower detector Level 1 algorithms, running simulations of various choices of AND/OR terms and of specific triggers to find maximum background rejection and optimal signal acceptance. I'd expect that the teacher would work closely with our postdocs Arnaud Lucotte, Mrinmoy Bhattacharjee and others in the trigger trade, all located at Fermilab. One would hope to involve a teacher also some in a particular physics topic that directly relates to trigger work -- e.g. measurement of sin(2beta), B mixing, top, susy searches, etc. The point is not so much to get help on these topics, as to give the teacher a connection to the end physics product of the research.

ATLAS Calorimeter: HV Feedthroughs (McCarthy) Stony Brook is designing and prototyping HV feedthroughs for the ATLAS Liquid Argon calorimeter. A participating teacher, located at Stony Brook, would participate in the CAD design, prototype testing (Ultra high vacuum techniques, pumps, pressure gauges, computer interfaces), and help with the High Voltage testing of the device in argon gas, where one would learn about HV beakdown, corona measurement, materials, etc. The greater context of the project would be provided by excursions to Brookhaven, where the US-ATLAS center for liquid argon calorimetery is located. Follow-up would be he continued involvement of the teacher in the construction and testing of the feedthroughs at Stony Brook, and possibly extend into some level of participation in other aspects of the Liquid Argon calorimetery at Stony Brook or Brookhaven.

Particle Tracking with Driftchambers (Rijssenbeek) The D0 Central Driftchamber (CDC) was build by the Stony Brook group. This detector is now retired, and new tracking detectors are under construction for particle tracking in D0. This project aims to revive a prototype CDC module for educational purposes: the passage of cosmic ray muons at sea-level, the detecton of charged particles, and the advanced electronics needed for the detection. The teacher would spend time at Fermilab to make the readout of the detector work: using two 16-channel D0 Flash ADCs connected to a PC. Assistance would be provided by Fermilab-based experts (Bob Angstadt et al.). Afterwards, the project would continue at slower pace: the readout would be set up at Stony Brook, and connected to the CDC prototype. Once in working order, the setup could be given on loan to local High Schools.

The Precision Measurement of the W mass (Rijssenbeek) Working with Rijssenbeek and graduate students Dennis Shpakov and Zhong-Min Wang at Fermilab, the teacher would develop software for the measurement of the W mass with the new D0 detector. Starting from the basics of simulation techniques, the teacher would study the existing measurement techniques and modify the packages to work with the new D0 detector configuration for run II. Follow-up would consist in continued low-level involvement with this important measurement.


The University of California at Santa Cruz/Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics

Teachers will be able to choose and do one hardware and one software project:

1) New Detector Materials (SiC, etc) Hartmut Sadrozinski / Teela Pulliam

We are looking for new materials which have a larger band gap than silicon but are grown as single crystals. One new material is silicon carbid SiC. We will do I-V, C-V curves to characterize the DC behavior. Then we will do charge collection studies with light transients and charged particles.

2) ATLAS Comparator Chip Tim Dubbs / Abe Seiden

The ATLAS project uses for the readout of the silicon detectors a combination of a bipolar comparator chip and a CMOS pipeline to store the data. The chips are tested in a realistic way and the response of the different channels compared. In addition, radiation hardness of single test structures and full chips are tested

3) GLAST detector testing Hartmut Sadrozinski / Wilko Kroeger

One of the challenges of the GLAST instrument development is the requirement of Space qualification and reliability. We are developing methods to assure the proper functioning of the large numbers of detectors before we start assembling them to larger subsystems. This includes automation of I-V and C-V curves, and dimensional measurements.

4) GLAST ASIC Testing Robert Johnson / Wilko Kroeger

The readout ASIC's for the GLAST silicon detectors are highly integrated and perform data reduction like zero suppression. Careful testing is needed to ascertain proper functionality. This will be done with a probe card on an automatic probe station.

5) GLAST Tray development Gwelen Paliaga / Bill Rowe

The GLAST instrument will be build modular, consisting of 25 towers, which in turn consist of 16 trays which carry the silicon detector. These trays will be assembled with an automatic bonder, using special glues, and the integrity of the design tested with vibrations and temperature cycling., to find out if the wire bonds and glue joints survive.

6) GLAST Detector simulations Wilko Kroeger / Jose Hernando

The design of the GLAST instrument is based on extensive computer simulations of the performance. This is done by generating gamma-rays traversing the GLAST instrument and following their interaction with the detector material. Many issues in the optimization of GLAST will be addressed.

7) Project in Bipolar VLSI David Dorfan

David Dorfan has a special project in VLSI design using bipolar technologies, for participants with very good understanding and interest in of analog electronics.


The University of Indiana

For summer 1999 (or 2000), the selected high school teachers would be given their choice to work in one of three general areas: D0 Upgrade, ATLAS, or projects planned for Jefferson Lab. They could make their choice depending on both their interests and strengths. Although particular skills beyond enthusiasm and a willingness to learn are not necessary, proficiency with computers and programming could be an asset when working in areas requiring software work.

All three of the areas listed have significant construction projects physically based at Indiana University, as well as the resources and facilities to effectively contribute to software projects. It is therefore planned that the teachers would be resident at or close to the university in Bloomington, Indiana. There would definitely be trips to Fermilab related to the D0 project, and the other two areas may include trips to CERN or Jefferson Lab.

A. Upgraded D0 for Run II at the Tevatron at Fermi National Laboratory

Mentors: Prof. Van Kooten, Prof. Zieminski, Zieminska (Senior Research Scientist)

The D0 detector is being upgraded to begin running scheduled Spring 2000 at the Tevatron following the Main Injector upgrade of the collider.

The proposed software/analysis project is to evaluate expected trigger rates and efficiences for various Run 2 triggers for b-physics and supersymmetric particle searches. Both signal and background Monte Carlo simulated events would be explored. Some preliminary analysis based on small samples has been done; however, it has to be repeated with larger statistics and improved triggering schemes and Level 3 trigger evaluations included. We expect to have Level 3 software tools for muons (Indiana group responsibility) developed before summer and assistance in further development and testing of these tools would be appropriate.

Charged particle tracking at large radii is being implemented in the upgraded D0 detector through a scintillating fiber tracker. The scintillation light from these fibers, indicating the passage of a charged particle, is piped out through clear fiber optical bundle/waveguides. Self-contained hardware and testing projects are available in the fabrication, testing, and commissioning of these fiber optic "jumper cable/waveguides" (Notre Dame University is constructing the longer waveguides preceding these cables). Software projects involved in data acquisition, increased automation, and the archiving of test results in databases are also available.

B. ATLAS at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN

Mentors: Profs. Ogren, Gardner, Luehring (Senior Research Associate), Rust (Senior Research Scientist)

The ATLAS detector is being built in preparation for data collection at the Large Hadron Collider scheduled to begin in 2005. Indiana is part of the Inner Detector Group and are developing the barrel part of the transition radiation tracker (TRT). Straw tubes provide tracking points and the transition radiation can supply particle identification. About half of the barrel detector modules will be built at Indiana University. The group also plays a leading role in the computer simulation of the ATLAS tracking system.

Projects include assisting physicists and staff in the construction of transition radiation modules for the ATLAS detector and the testing of complete TRT modules using cosmic ray and radioactive source tests. Software projects include assisting physicists with the computer modeling of the operation of the TRT modules and help with the computer display of results.

C. Task-D at Thomas Jefferson Accelerator Facility (TJAF)

Mentors: Prof. Dzierba, Teige (Research Scientist)

Task-D is involved in experiments utilizing the photons from the continuous electron beam available at TJAF. A current experiment explores the rare decays of photoproduced phi mesons and a future project is to build a new experimental hall and detector at TJAF to study the photoproduction of mesons.

Projects would include working on tests of a heavy-liquid calorimeter using cosmic rays, evaluation of phototubes for a time-of-flight system, and helping with engineering issues in moving a large superconducting solenoid from Los Alamos to Jefferson Lab.


The University of Iowa/Iowa State University

QuarkNet Proposal for One Iowa Center for Experimental Work Primarily on the CMS Detector at the Large Hadron Collider

submitted jointly by Profs. N. Akchurin, E.W. Anderson, J. Cochran, J.M. Hauptman, and Y. Onel

University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 52242
Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011

Abstract

We are experimentalists working on the CMS detector at the LHC and on the D0 detector at Fermilab for Run II. We propose to sponsor high school physics teachers during the next two summers on experimental work on the Hadronic Forward (HF) calorimeters of the CMS detector. This work will involve testing of the {\it hanging file} calorimeter in Ames and possibly {\sc geant} simulations of its performance. The work in Iowa City will concentrate on the construction of the fiber bundles and phototube readout of the preproduction prototype of the HF module. The presence of these two teachers at the two-week beam test at CERN in early September 1999 will bring their earlier work into focus where they will actively participate in data collection and analyses.

Introduction

The Iowa City group maintains a lead responsibility for the design, construction, installation and physics output of the HF calorimeters of the CMS detector at the LHC. The Ames group works closely with the Iowa City group on performance simulations and beam testing at CERN. Our groups have always been interested in education at all levels, including volunteer education at elementary schools. Our proposal below is our present idea on a profitable summer for two high school physics teachers which naturally lends itself for a rewarding curriculum development in modern physics for their students.

Proposal Specifics

The work in Ames will involve the refurbishing of the {\it hanging file} calorimeter --an earlier version of a hadronic calorimeter intended for an SSC experiment-- for CERN tests. We will install new phototubes and perform preliminary tests with cosmic rays. The single muon rate will be high enough for easy testing of connections and for a basic response calibration. The readout will probably be directly to a PC; a laptop we will buy ourselves for portability. In addition, we will write a {\sc geant} code to simulate the beam tests and benchmark the measurements for future design alterations. The {\sc geant} work also involves a simulation of cosmic muons, and thereby a direct comparison and calibration of the {\it hanging file} calorimeter before the test begins. If appropriate, one or both teachers may participate in this work. The work at CERN will involve two weeks of beam time. We expect that at this time the teachers will be sufficiently versed in the mechanical and electronic aspects of the {\it hanging file} and the HF preproduction calorimeters to participate effectively in the tests.

The work in Iowa City will involve the preparation of quartz fibers for the HF calorimeter, optical couplings and a new set of photodetectors. These components will be a part of the preproduction prototype for the HF detector which we plan to test in the beam in September 1999. One of the teachers may be involved in these tasks earlier in the summer. These tasks require some mechanical and electronics experience.

We maintain close contacts between institutions and hold monthly all-day meetings. In these meetings we discuss the progress of the entire project; from simulations to construction and to data analyses. These meetings prove very fruitful to our students and will benefit the teachers where they can hear different aspects of a scientific endeavor and also present their work as active collaborators.

The faculty in Ames are John Hauptman (CMS and D0), Walter Anderson (CMS and D0) and Jim Cochran (D0). We anticipate spending most of the summer in Ames, although we will also be travelling to meetings and experimental facilities during the summer.

The faculty in Iowa City are Nural Akchurin (CMS) and Yasar Onel (CMS). In addition, the Iowa City group maintains a large laboratory with good engineering staff.

The work at CERN will involve a detailed test of the difficult $\eta=3$ region where the end cap and the HF calorimeters come into contact. There will be additional material which will degrade the resolution of both devices. The {\it hanging file} calorimeter will mimic the HF calorimeter in these tests of the $\eta=3$ region. The separate HF calorimeter, presumably with a Russian-built iron absorber, will be tested separately. There is a lot of work to be done during these tests, and we would expect, as we do of our own personnel, that the high school teachers will be full participants and not bystanders.

The work at CERN will require release from school for two weeks during the first half of September. This is not difficult, since a typical school district already makes provision for absences of several kinds during the school year. In fact, the absence of a physics teacher for two weeks near the beginning of the term will probably be better than any other time, and the returning teacher will have lots of stories to tell his or her students of this big lab in Geneva, Switzerland.

Budget

We accept the main outlines of the present budget as outlined by Dr. Thomas Jordan in our 29 January 1999 meeting in Iowa City. We will need a guarantee of sufficient travel and {\em per diem} funds if we are to involve both teachers in the beam tests at CERN.


The University of Notre Dame

1. CMS Readout Boxes and Optical Decoder Units.
(Ruchti/Bishop)
Notre Dame is responsible for the optical decoding of the barrel, endcap, and outer barrel calorimeters for CMS. We are establishing a factory to build special modules to convert optical signals to electronic signals, with production beginning in September '99. In addition, we will be developing quality control devices to verify proper construction and assembly. These are optical units, so the participating teacher(s) will learn about scintillators, waveshifters, fiber optics, calorimetry, and energy and missing energy measurements. Work will be done at Notre Dame in a new lab (under development) and in a new area assigned for QuarkNet.

2. Dÿ fiber waveguide development.
(Cason/Wayne)
Notre Dame is responsible for building fiber-optic waveguide bundles for the Dÿ experiment. The effort includes construction, assembly, quality control. This work will be performed at Notre Dame in a new Dÿ Clean Lab. Participation in the cosmic ray testing of the Dÿ central fiber tracker in Lab 3 at Fermilab is also offered as part of this work. Participant(s) will learn about tracking and momentum measurement, and momentum conservation in particle physics experiments.

3. Development of a single-photon counting experiment to study particle/wave duality in double-slit interference.
(Ruchti/Sarid)
Using image intensifiers and video data acquisition connected to a PC, we will develop an experiment to reveal that the interference and diffraction pattern associated with a classic two slit experiment is built up one photon at a time. Work will be performed at Notre Dame in the new QuarkNet/CMS lab. Study of optical and quantum mechanical phenomena will be included with this work. This is anticipated to carry over into the second year to attract associate teachers to the program.

4. Construction of hand-held cosmic ray and particle detectors.
(Ruchti/Bigi)
Image intensified fiber-optic plate detectors will be built for lecture demonstrations and beam experiments. Work will be performed at Notre Dame in the new QuarkNet/CMS lab. Devices will be placed in particle beams at Fermilab and/or CERN to reveal the behavior of muons, electrons, photons and pions in fiber-optic scintillator material. Discussion of the nature of particle interations and importance in uncovering new physics will accompany this project. This effort is also expected to carry over into second and later years of the program to attract associate teachers to the program.


The University of Oklahoma

In order to encourage participation in Quarknet by a broad spectrum of teachers, we plan to gear our projects to areas that the teachers are familiar with or have expressed interest in learning more about. In addition, we hope to attract the best teachers possible by allowing each individual the choice of either doing a project which can be carried out in our lab at the University of Oklahoma, or one which would be implemented at Fermilab. This will give teachers the option of working with local physicists while staying in Oklahoma, or in teaming up with an international collaboration of physicists out of state. Therefore, we are proposing more projects than the number of teachers we expect to participate in the first summer. The projects are here describe only in general terms since we are still some months away from summer, making it difficult to elucidate the specific aspects of the project, and to anticipate new projects that inevitably appear. Nonetheless, the general descriptions should still be valid.

1) Testing and characterization of silicon strip detectors using electronic based tests. This is work to be carried out at the university by M. Strauss or P. Gutierrez

2) Assist in construction and alignment of silicon detector modules. Work to be carried out at Fermilab M. Strauss

3) Test charged particle tracking software. This work could be carried out either at the University or Fermilab, would be most efficient at Fermilab P. Gutierrez

4) Test and refine analysis code (software). This work could be carried out either at the University or Fermilab, would be most efficient at Fermilab P. Gutierrez


The University of Rochester

We propose two possible areas of research this summer. How we place the teachers this summer will depend on their individual skills. The intended placement would be one teacher per project.

Project #1: Data Acquisition at CDF, Mentor: Kevin McFarland

The CDF experiment plans to log data from the detector at a rate of approximately 20MB/s. Currently Professor McFarland's CDF group is designing and building a data hub, the portion of the data acquisition system which acts as the sole source for collecting and distributing data both to be written to tape and to be analyzed for real time monitoring of the CDF detector. In this system, it is important that many types of data monitoring take place, including both low-level monitoring of the flow of data and high level monitoring of the physics signatures in the data.

In this proposed project, the teacher will develop and refine stand-alone monitoring code to take a particular subset of the data, analyze it, and develop automated criteria for assuring the data quality without constant human intervention. The most important parts of this work involve development of algorithms for detecting unexpected results which could indicate failures. For example, if an observed data rate or the rate of an expected physics process suddenly changes, under what conditions is this "normal" and when should an alarm be sounded?

While it is optimal if the teacher has some experience or ability to quickly learn to program in JAVA for this project, the teacher can work on the monitoring algorithm development by studying data exported to a format compatible with any number of data analysis packages, including packages as simple to use as Microsoft Excel.

In studying the physics processes and statistical measures used for this work, the teacher will not only be doing useful technical work for the CDF experiment, but will also gain an appreciation for some of the basics of data analysis used in high energy physics in particular and other sciences in general. Ideally, some of the analysis algorithms and methods developed may be appropriate for analysis of detector data in the Rochester-based project in year two of the center.

Project #2: Hadron Calorimetry for CMS, Mentor: Arie Bodek

A tile-scintillating-fiber hadron calorimeter for the CMS experiment is currently being constructed at Fermilab. Professor Bodek's group is currently involved in the production of the scintillator tiles themselves, including the mechanical fiber readout.

In this project, the teacher will work on the mechanical assembly and testing of the scintillator and fiber readout. In addition to the physical assembly, the work also involves extensive quality control testing of the produced tiles. These checks using LED and radioactive sources are carried out using a computerized test-stand. After acquiring the test data, analysis will proceed using an Excel-based spreadsheet and Visual Basic package. There is also extensive development work needed for the data analysis software, which would make a good independent project supplementary to the assembly and checking work. Although some of this work can be done in Excel, more focus on the data analysis will be possible if the teacher has some experience with Visual Basic or database programming.

In addition to the technical work, the teacher will be able to learn about the design and construction of calorimetry, and will have the opportunity to learn about elements of data analysis. The opportunity also exists to follow up on this work with similar technology in a Rochester-based project in year two of the center.


The University of Texas at Arlington

1) Upgrade of the Intercryostat Detector(ICD) for the D0 experiment at Fermilab.
Mentor: Prof. Andy White.
This project would involve understanding the role of calorimetry in a high energy collider detector, the need to have uniform response across the detector and the physics implications, and how the ICD is used to improve energy measurement in regions of the detector. Practically, this would involve constructing and testing scintillator/fiber detector systems, and learning how to use associated electronics and data acquisition systems to study their performance. This work would also involve a visit to Fermilab to prepare for the installation of the upgraded ICD in the D0 detector.

2) Jet Energy Resolution studies for the D0 Experiment.
Mentor: Prof. Ransom Stephens.
This project would acquaint the teacher(s) with techniques used with the D0 detector/data to investigate the properties of quark/gluon jets. An understanding of the physics would be followed with work on new algorithm(s) to find jets,and measure the inclusive jet cross section. It would also involve working with actual D0 data and simulated data, and provide opportunities to visit Fermilab for physics and algorithm meetings.

3) Calorimetry for the ATLAS experiment at CERN
Mentor: Prof.kaushik De.
UTA is developing and constructing calorimeter modules for the ATLAS experiment. This project involves understanding of the physics requirements of the hadron calorimetry, energy flow in the ATLAS detector, how scintillator based calorimetry works, and how the construction of large detector elements with very tight dimensional tolerances is handled. There would also be opportunities to work on testing of elements of the calorimeter readout in the laboratory, and visit(s) to Argonne National Laboratory where assembly of the calorimeter modules into larger detector elements occurs.