Honorary Lecture - Prof. Tatsuya Nakada: "Making an experiment with b-quarks from A to Z"
"Making an experiment with b-quarks from A to Z"
The b-quark is about five time heavier than the proton and the second heaviest quark. Unexpectedly from the large phase space available from its mass, it has a rather long lifetime of an order of 10-12 sec compared to other lighter quarks. This would allow quantum fluctuations to play an important role in the decay processes and they become sensitive to not yet discovered very heavy elementary particles which cannot be produced by the accelerators. To carry out detailed studies of b-quark decays, dedicated accelerators with dedicated experiments and a dedicated experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN were constructed. This presentation will illustrate how such endeavours, which naturally start from physics motivation, are actually executed, through the experience of the speaker.
Biography
After doctorate degree from the University of Heidelberg in 1984, Tatsuya Nakada worked as a research associate at the Swiss Institute for Nuclear Physics, later became Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) and was awarded a permanent researcher position in 1990. With leave of absence from PSI, worked at CERN as Scientific Associate and later Senior Research Staff from 1997 to 2008 leading the realisation of the LHCb experiment at CERN Large Hadron Collider, and also was Professor Extraordinaire of the University of Lausanne from 1999 to 2003. Lastly, Professor of Elementary Particle Physics from 2003 to 2020 and since March 2020 Emeritus Professor, of Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. The main research work has been realisation of flavour physics experiments in elementary particle physics. Recipients of Honorary Doctorate from the University of Zürich and Enrico Fermi Prize from the Italian Physical Society for this contribution. Served in many committees at CERN, ERC and in several Asian, European and US laboratories, being a chair in some of them.
The b-quark is about five time heavier than the proton and the second heaviest quark. Unexpectedly from the large phase space available from its mass, it has a rather long lifetime of an order of 10-12 sec compared to other lighter quarks. This would allow quantum fluctuations to play an important role in the decay processes and they become sensitive to not yet discovered very heavy elementary particles which cannot be produced by the accelerators. To carry out detailed studies of b-quark decays, dedicated accelerators with dedicated experiments and a dedicated experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN were constructed. This presentation will illustrate how such endeavours, which naturally start from physics motivation, are actually executed, through the experience of the speaker.
Biography
After doctorate degree from the University of Heidelberg in 1984, Tatsuya Nakada worked as a research associate at the Swiss Institute for Nuclear Physics, later became Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) and was awarded a permanent researcher position in 1990. With leave of absence from PSI, worked at CERN as Scientific Associate and later Senior Research Staff from 1997 to 2008 leading the realisation of the LHCb experiment at CERN Large Hadron Collider, and also was Professor Extraordinaire of the University of Lausanne from 1999 to 2003. Lastly, Professor of Elementary Particle Physics from 2003 to 2020 and since March 2020 Emeritus Professor, of Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. The main research work has been realisation of flavour physics experiments in elementary particle physics. Recipients of Honorary Doctorate from the University of Zürich and Enrico Fermi Prize from the Italian Physical Society for this contribution. Served in many committees at CERN, ERC and in several Asian, European and US laboratories, being a chair in some of them.
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