OXFORD, Miss. – The contributions of the University of Mississippi High Energy Physics Group in the search for the Higgs boson, the subatomic particle thought to be responsible for all mass in the universe, is the focus for a monthly public science forum organized by the UM Department of Physics and Astronomy.
The fall semester’s first meeting of the Oxford Science Cafe is set for 6 p.m. Aug. 21 at Lusa Pastry Cafe, 1120 North Lamar Ave. in Oxford. Lucien Cremaldi, chair and professor of physics and astronomy, will discuss “My Memories of the Higgs boson.” There is no charge for admission. “Scientists now believe they have discovered the Higgs boson,” Cremaldi said. “I will give my recollections of the boson and tell you how it was seen by the most complex scientific apparatus created by mankind.”
Cremaldi’s 30-minute presentation will detail how an international team of researchers confirmed the existence of the particle through experiments at the massive Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The talk will be followed by a question-and-answer session.
Cremaldi joined the UM faculty in 1988. A graduate of Northwestern University, he holds memberships in the American Physical Society, American Association of Physics Teachers and Institute of Electronics and Electronical Engineers. His research interests involve the properties of heavy quarks.
“In 1988, I worked with an international group of physicists at Fermilab, then the highest energy accelerator in the world, to produce some of the most precise measurements on charmed particles ever made,” Cremaldi said. “In 2009, I began experimentation at the Large Hadron Collider in CERN when seven TeV collisions were realized. In the 20-year lead-up to the LHC, I worked on the CMS Pixel Detector and the CMS Hadron Calorimeter.”
For more information about Oxford Science Café programs, go to http://www.phy.olemiss.edu/oxfordsciencecafe. For more information about the Department of Physics and Astronomy, go to http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/physics_and_astronomy/ or call 662-915-5311.