Ben Kilminster's Home Page

Many greats are left-handed, but did you know that the sun burns left-handed ?

Physics experiments have concluded that some forces actually behave differently when viewed in a

mirror

I am currently a particle physics researcher (associate scientist in physics division) for Fermilab. I received a PhD in physics from the University of Rochester under the direction of Professor Kevin McFarland, and after that I was a postdoctoral researcher for Ohio State University until I became a staff scientist at Fermilab. My research is done at Fermilab (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) on an high energy physics experiment called CDF (Collider Detector at Fermilab). Fermilab is located just outside of Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. Click here for a satellite view of Fermilab. As you can see this is a large facility !

Particle physics explanations for the public

By studying particle physics at the highest energies, we learn about the structure of matter, the forces of nature, and get a glimpse into the first moments of the universe after the Big Bang. Currently, our goal is to find a model for the universe which will explain the unanswered questions of our current Standard Model of Particles and Interactions . It is expected that the new model will introduce new particles and forces. While this may make things appear more complicated, we expect this line of research to eventually provide us with a very simple and elegant model, from which all the observed forces, particles, and interactions can be derived.

Plain English Summary of what particle physicists do

Plain English Summary of my thesis analysis

Satellite view of a particle physics facility (Fermilab) (scale -> one side is 10 miles)

Recent research : Searches for a Higgs boson produced in association with a Z boson

Higgs bosons are produced at the Tevatron at Fermilab once every few days. One way they are produced is along with a Z boson. Both the Higgs boson and Z boson are unstable particles. Therefore, we have to search not for the Higgs and Z, but for what they decay into. If the Higgs boson is light, it decays mainly into a b quark and an anti-b quark. Free quarks cannot exist for long in nature, and they go through a process which basically converts them into a spray of charged and neutral particles which we can detect, called "jets". A Z boson can decay invisibly, meaning it decays into neutrinos which we cannot detect. Or a Z boson can decay into an electron (the same one that is the basis of electricity) and an anti-electron. A Z could also decay into heavier versions of electrons called muons. In my research, I search for events in collisions which have jets and either electrons or muons. Once we find events with these particles, we attempt to reconstruct what happened in the event. It is a bit like Sherlock Holmes following a group of footprints through the snow, and reconstructing what happened, and what the people who made the tracks looked like. For more information, please see some explanations of the Higgs boson I prepared for the CDF Higgs public webpage.