Mark S. Neubauer

Assistant Professor of Physics

Professor Neubauer received his Ph.D from the University of Pennsylvania (2001) after obtaining a bachelor's degree in physics from Kutztown University (1994). After receiving his Ph.D, he worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2001–2004) and the University of California, San Diego (2004–2007). Professor Neubauer joined the faculty at the University of Illinois in Fall 2007.

Professor Neubauer is an experimental physicist whose research has spanned a diverse set of topics in the study of elementary particles and their interactions. The ultimate goal of this pursuit is to gain a deeper understanding of Nature at its most fundamental level and to elucidate the physics that lies beyond the standard model.

His research began as a Ph.D. student at the University of Pennsylvania working on the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) experiment, which was designed to resolve the long-standing deficit of solar n_e observed in previous experiments. His Ph.D. thesis, Evidence for n_eFlavor Change Through Measurement of the ⁸B Solar n Flux at SNO demonstrated in 2001 that ~2/3 of all solar n_e's change flavor (n_e®n_m,t) before detection on Earth, which can occur if neutrinos have non-zero mass and mixing. This result was published soon thereafter in a Phys. Rev. Lett. article that became the most cited paper in physics in the two years following its publication.

As a postdoctoral fellow at MIT and then UCSD, he conducted research at the current energy frontier provided by proton-antiproton collisions at the Fermilab Tevatron. As member of the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) experiment, he made important contributions to heavy flavor and high-pt physics, including searches for the Higgs boson and new physics. In 2002, he and colleagues at MIT undertook a complete re-design of the CDF analysis computing model, out of which emerged the CDF Analysis Facility (CAF), for which he served as project leader from 2002 to 2004. He played a leading role in the study of electroweak dibosons at CDF as convener of the Diboson Physics Group (2006–2007). In 2006, he led the first-ever observation of WZ diboson production. In 2007, he and colleagues provided the first evidence for ZZ production at a hadron collider and the most stringent limits on Higgs boson production to date (in decay to W boson pairs).

Research areas: experimental particle physics, particle astrophysics, neutrino physics, heavy flavor physics, electroweak diboson physics, searches for the Higgs boson and new physics, computing and trigger/DAQ in high-energy physics.

Description of CURRENT RESEARCH

The CDF II Experiment

Run II at the Fermilab Tevatron Collider began in March of 2001 and will continue to probe the high energy frontier in particle physics until the start of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. My current research at CDF is primarily focused on searches for the Higgs boson and new physics. In the standard model, the Higgs plays a central role in electroweak symmetry breaking and the generation of particle masses. It has not yet been observed, and there are many reasons to believe that the story may be more complicated than a single scalar Higgs boson realized in Nature. I am searching for Higgs boson production and decay to diboson final states, such as pairs of W bosons decaying leptonically. My research also involves more general study of heavy diboson final states such as WZ and ZZ and searches for anomalies that may signal the existence of new physics.

 The ATLAS Experiment

Particle physics is about to embark on a unique, and possibly defining, period in its distinguished history with the turn-on of the LHC at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. At the LHC, protons are collided together with seven times the center of mass energy of p-pbar collisions at the Tevatron. At last, we will be able to directly probe the TeV energy scale, where it is believed that some new physics should be lurking, although we can only speculate about what form this will take. My research is focused on early searches for the Higgs boson and searches for new physics in final states involving lepton, jets, and missing energy. In addition, our group is involved in detector commissioning and development of a fast hardware tracker (FTK) for ATLAS to provide high-quality tracks from the silicon hit information for use in trigger decision and downstream processing.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

T. Aaltonen et al. (CDF Collaboration), "Strong Evidence for ZZ Production in ppbar Collisions at √s = 1.96 TeV," Phys. Rev. Lett. 100, 201801 (2008)

T. Aaltonen et al. (CDF Collaboration), "Search for Chargino-Neutralino Production in ppbar Collisions at √s = 1.96 TeV," Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 191806 (2007).

A. Abulencia et al. (CDF Collaboration), "Inclusive Search for New Physics with Like-Sign Dilepton Events in ppbar Collisions at √s = 1.96 TeV," Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 221803 (2007).

A. Abulencia et al. (CDF Collaboration), "Observation of WZ Production," Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 161801 (2007).

A. Abulencia et al. (CDF Collaboration), "Measurement of the L_b Lifetime in L_b →J/yL⁰ in ppbar Collisions at √s = 1.96 TeV," Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 122001 (2007).

B. Aharmim et al. (SNO Collaboration), "Measurement of the n_e and Total ⁸B Solar Neutrino Fluxes with the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory Phase I Data Set," Phys. Rev. C 75, 045502 (2007)

Q.R. Ahmad et al. (SNO Collaboration), "Direct evidence for Neutrino Flavor Transformation from Neutral-Current Interactions in the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory," Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 011301 (2002)

Q.R. Ahmad et al. (SNO Collaboration), "Measurement of the rate of n_e + d ® p + p + e^– Interactions Produced by ⁸B Solar Neutrinos at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory," Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 071301 (2001)

honors and awards

NCSA Faculty Fellow, University of Illinois, 2008–09
Arnold O. Beckman Research Award, University of Illinois, 2007