The UCSB Experimental High Energy Physics Group

Taken From UCSB

u stands for the u quark

c stands for the c quark

s stands for the s quark

b stands for the b quark

d and t do not fit!

I am proud to write here, that in 1973-74, I was an honorary member of this group. Honorary, because I did not do experimental work, at the behest of professors Rollin Morrison, and  David Caldwell, I studied the   π  meson scattering cross sections with protons and neutrons, using the Glauber Eikonal Model.

My thesis adviser was Robert L. Sugar, and he was on a sabbatical leave here in Batavia, near where I live now in Illinois.

I studied then,  from the phenomenological point of view, the photon-proton interactions at high energy, at the UCSB Experimental High Energy Physics Group. Prior to that, at CINVESTAV, Mexico, I had studied Professor Sakurai's Vector Meson Dominance Model, following the advise of Professor Jean Pestieau.  


Professor Robert Brout, the inventor, together with François Englert, of the scalar field, necessary to break the symmetry, and give mass to the W and Z bosons, without giving mass to the photon; lectured on Critical Phenomena, during the Summer School, at the invitation of Jean Pestieau. Both were Belgian physicists, with a commitment to teach Third World students, like myself, and my classmates.


Since 1969 or so, the UCSB group has studied high energy photon interactions with hadrons. The photon acts like a hadron, therefore Sakurai had the idea, of just finding the constant, which will make the photon look like a ρ boson discovered by UCSB Physics Professor, Jose Fulco. (W. R. Frazer and J. R. Fulco, Phys. Rev.117, 1603 (1960).)


 Now I come to the same experimental group, but to the year 2012. UCSB Professor Joseph Incandela, announced the discovery of the Higgs boson. One important channel, unsurprisingly for me, is the diphoton channel.




Long Live to the UCSB Experimental High Energy Physics Group!