The Falkiner High Energy Physics group, which is a part of the School of Physics operates an active and broad-ranging program in various areas of modern high energy and particle physics.

There is scope for research leading to PhD and MSc degrees in a variety of areas. Most of these programs involve data taken at accelerators overseas - in particular the European Centre of High Energy Physics, CERN, near Geneva and the Japanese National Laboratory, KEK, at Tsukuba. It is common for our graduate students to spend some time overseas at these laboratories, running shifts, taking data, assessing equipment in test beams and generally interacting with the international community at these centres.

We also have an active Sydney-based program reducing and interpreting data from the various experiments, building and testing equipment as well as additional activities that do not require overseas installations.

Research training in High Energy Physics can stand one in good stead for a variety of endeavours. To find out what some of our former students are doing, click here.

Students can undertake research projects in High Energy Physics in either the third or fourth years of their degree. Fourth-year studies form the research component of the B.Sc. honours or graduate diploma programs, whilst third-year studies consist of shorter special projects.

• CURRENT 4TH YEAR PROJECTS

Anyone interested in more informationshould contact one of the members of the group.

A more general list of our current research activities is given below. For further details, come and talk to any of the personnel in our group who would be delighted to fill you in with more details.

BELLE

This KEK experiment came on line in Japan in May 1999, and has to date taken over 700 million particle/antiparticle decays using the world's highest intensity colliding beam accelerator. Belle is designed to look for CP symmetry violations in the B meson sector (mesons carrying a b quark). This has direct bearing on why nature has selected a particle rather than an antiparticle universe. Our current involvement is in development of software algorithms for vertex finding, and physics analysis, particularly detecting rare decays involving a bottom quark turning into an up quark, and so called Initial State Radiation (ISR) events which can be used amongst other things to search for and study new particles.

4th year projects on Belle.

ATLAS

This is a major long term experiment being assembled now at CERN. It is due to commence data-taking in 2008 and will search for the Higgs Boson, the postulated quantum of the field responsible for endowing everything with mass, supersymmetric particles, extra dimensions, and more. Australia has primarily been involved with the development of some of the central silicon vertex detector, test beams, and simulation of the electromagnetic calorimeter. Attention is now very much turning towards being ready for beam turn-on and the exciting physics which is going to come.

4th year projects on ATLAS.

For further information please contact:

Dr. Kevin Varvell - Room 355 - Extension 12539 -