Manfred Paulini

Professor, Physics

Education

Research

My research interests touch the interface between particle physics and cosmology. As an experimental high energy physicist, I study questions connecting particle physics phenomena to the fade of the universe. One of those questions concerns the fact that our visible universe appears to exhibit a dominance of matter over antimatter. Assuming the universe started in the Big Bang with the same amount of particles and anti-particles, the disappearance of the antimatter in the universe is still an unsolved mystery. Another question concerns the nature of dark matter that makes up about one quarter of the content of the universe.

As a member of the CDF experiment located at Fermilab near Chicago, Illinois, I study particle-antiparticle oscillations and the violation of the symmetries of nature under the combined action of charge conjugation C and space inversion or parity P. Although the violation of CP invariance was first discovered in the system of neutral K mesons in 1964, the origin of CP violation is still not completely understood. However, CP violation is of great interest as it is expected to play an important role in understanding the predominance of matter over antimatter in the universe.

Decays of neutral B mesons are an ideal system to study CP violating effects as well as transitions of particles into their anti-particles and back. Examples of my research include: I was involved in an initial study of the CP violation parameter sin(2β) in B⁰ meson decays using CDF data; my group made significant contributions to the discovery of particle-antiparticle oscillation in decays of B_s⁰ mesons at CDF and currently we work on a measurement of the CP violating phase β_s in B_s⁰ → J/ψ φ decays. The first measurement of bounds on the CP violation parameter sin(2βs) indicated an intriguing discrepancy with predictions of the Standard Model of particles physics indicating hints to new physics phenomena, while a recent update of the analysis with more statistics show a better agreement with the Standard Model prediction. 

As a member of the CMC experiment operating at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, I study the nature of dark matter. The products from the collision of protons at the LHC may include dark matter particles that compose about 25% of the mass-energy in the universe. There are actually compelling arguments that the energies reached at the LHC are in the regime of producing dark matter particles. A favoured candidate for the dark matter particles is the neutralino, the lightest and most stable of a whole set of new supersymmetric partners to each of the known particles of the Standard Model. My group is involved in the search for signatures of dark matter in the CMS data through the production of supersymmetric particles. My dark matter research is in association with the Bruce and Astrid McWilliams Center for Cosmology at CMU.

Selected Publications

• S. Chatrchyan et al., Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC, Physics Letters B 716, 30 (2012)
• S. Chatrchyan et al., Search for B_s⁰ → μ⁺μ⁻ and B⁰ → μ⁺μ⁻ decays, Journal of High Energy Physics 4, 033 (2012)
• T. Aaltonen et al., Measurement of the CP-violating phase β_s^J/ψϕ in B_s⁰→J/ψ ϕ decays with the CDF II detector, Physical Review D 85, 072002 (2012)
• F. Azfar et al., Formulae for the analysis of the flavor-tagged decay B_s⁰ → J/ψ ϕ, Journal of High Energy Physics 11, 158 (2010)
• T. Aaltonen et al., First Flavor-Tagged Determination of Bounds on Mixing-Induced CP Violation in B_s⁰→J/ψϕ Decays, Physical Review Letters 100, 161802 (2008)
• T. Aaltonen et al., Measurement of ratios of fragmentation fractions for bottom hadrons in pp̅ collisions at √s̅=1.96  TeV, Physical Review D 77, 072003 (2008)
• A. Abulencia et al., Measurement of the B_s⁰-B̅_s⁰ Oscillation Frequency, Physical Review Letters 97, 062003 (2006)
• T. Affolder et al., Measurement of sin 2β from B→J/ψ K_S⁰ with the CDF detector, Physical Review D 61, 072005 (2000)
• F. Abe et al., Measurement of B⁰-B⁰ flavor oscillations using jet-charge and lepton flavor tagging in pp̅ collisions at √s̅=1.8 TeV, Physical Review D 60, 072003 (1999)
• F. Abe et al., Measurement of the B_S⁰ meson lifetime using semileptonic decays, Physical Review D 59, 032004 (1999)
• Manfred Paulini, B lifetimes, mixing and CP violation at CDF, International Journal of Modern Physics A 14, 2791 (1999)
• F. Abe et al., Observation of Top Quark Production in p̅p Collisions with the Collider Detector at Fermilab, Physical Review Letters 74, 2626 (1995)
• H. Albrecht et al., Search for rare B meson decays into D_s⁺ mesons, Zeitschrift für Physik C Particles and Fields 60, 11 (1993)
• H. Albrecht et al., Production of D_S⁺ mesons in B decays and determination of f_DS, Zeitschrift für Physik C Particles and Fields 54, 1 (1992)
• H. Albrecht et al., Study of antideuteron production in e⁺ e⁻ annihilation at 10 GeV centre-of-mass energy, Physics Letters B 236, 102 (1990)