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| Jim Pivarski
(Born James Adam McCann, my name is now James McCann Pivarski.) | |
(Take that, ye spammers!) |
Who am I and What do I do?
I am an experimental particle physicist (postdoc) at Texas A&M University,
preparing to search for Z prime bosons at the Compact Muon Solenoid
experiment at CERN. I am
also studying the alignment of the muon chambers as a means of
improving the precision of the Z prime search.
Z primes are hypothetical particles with the properties of photons
(light), except that they are at least 1000 times heavier than protons
(matter). A similar particle called the
Z boson (no prime), a mere 90
times heavier than the proton, was discovered in 1983. Of all the
theorized particles one could search for at CMS, I like Z primes
because a very broad range of theories predict such a creature, from
gauge unification
to extra dimemsions to
Little Higgs.
This makes the search for Z prime bosons, or anything that looks like a
Z prime (e.g. a KK graviton), model-independent. Another way to say
this is that self-adjoint particles are very generic: the photon,
neutral pion, J/ψ, Upsilon, and Z boson all play major roles in
particle physics. So would a Z prime, if it exists.
My wife, Melanie
Pivarski, is a mathematician studying analysis, (very advanced
calculus). Our cats, Galen and Paszenko, are anthropologists.
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