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Sources:
Mark Smith, 785-532-1644, e-mail smithmar@phys.ksu.edu;
Tim Bolton, 785-532-1644, e-mail tbolton@k-state.edu
News release prepared by: Kay Garrett, 785-532-3237, e-mail
anuenue@k-state.edu
Wednesday,
March 16, 2005
K-STATE
PHYSICS GRAD STUDENT INVITED TO MEETING OF NOBEL LAUREATES
MANHATTAN
-- Mark Smith, a Kansas State University doctoral student in high-energy
physics, has been selected to attend the 55th Lindau Meeting of
Nobel Laureates and Students June 26-July 1 in Lindau, Germany.
Smith,
Topeka, is one of 60 outstanding graduate students in the
United States selected by the Department of Energy, the National
Science Foundation and the Oak Ridge Associated Universities to
attend. His sponsor is the Department of Energy's Office of Science,
which will cover all costs of his attending the meeting.
The
winners of the Nobel Prize have met each year since 1951 in Lindau,
and in recent years, the three U.S. agencies have sponsored a group
of top young U.S. scientists to join the laureates for weeklong
discussions of sciences and medicine.
The
structure of the meeting is such that the Nobel Laureates present
lectures on a topic of their choice related to chemistry, physics
and medicine during morning sessions, and laureates and students
mix in the less formal small-group discussions during afternoon
and evening sessions.
Smith
is in his third year of high-energy physics graduate education.
"Attending this meeting is a wonderful honor for me,"
he said. "We'll hear Nobel Prize winners make presentations,
and we will be able to talk informally with them. It will be a week
of wide-ranging science discussions in an international group. It's
very exciting."
For
six weeks in summer 2005, Smith's research project will take data
at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago as part
of the large experiment called D Zero. Kansas State University is
a member of the consortium of 90 leading research-oriented universities,
the Universities Research Association Inc., that oversees Fermilab
as a national research facility.
Fermilab
houses the most powerful physics research tool in the world, the
Tevatron proton/antiproton particle accelerator. Within its four-mile
underground ring of the accelerator, subatomic particles are hurled
from opposite directions at nearly the speed of light. The collisions
reproduce the energy environment that was present at the beginning
of the universe. Researchers collect immense amounts of data from
collisions and examine the data for indications of new building
blocks of matter or new forces at work.
A
major physics problem that can be studied at Fermilab is symmetry
breaking. Smith's research is a symmetry-breaking study. He studies
the B meson particle, specifically, Bs meson.
K-State
high-energy physics professor Tim Bolton said the Bs meson is one
of only three or four systems known in nature that displays a rare
symmetry-breaking property known as "CP violation." Studying
Bs meson gives scientists a little laboratory in which consider
the matter-antimatter symmetry-breaking event that occurred after
the Big Bang.
The
Bs meson could hold a clue to understanding why we now live in a
universe made of matter instead of an antimatter universe. The antimatter
has disappeared, says Bolton. "It's gone, and it's been gone
for a long, long time."
At
Fermilab, Smith will help lead a large data collection team, an
international group of postdoctoral researchers, physicists and
other graduate students.
The
B meson studies are an aspect of a huge and enduring experiment
at Fermilab called the "D Zero experiment" – more
than 500 scientists from institutions on four continents participate
in this multi-hundred million dollar experiment. In 1995, D Zero
scientists found first evidence of the existence of the top quark,
a key particle.
In
April, Smith will present Heavy Quark Studies Using B+ - >J/Psi
K* at the American Physical Society's meeting in Tampa, Fla. "Being
selected to present at APS is a tribute to Mark's research,"
said Bolton. "It means that his colleagues on D Zero think
he's doing something very interesting."
Smith's
K-State major professor is Eckhard von Toerne, who will be doing
research at a laboratory in Bonn, Germany, in the summer. Smith
will tour the lab following the Lindau meeting.
Smith
is a graduate of Seaman High School. He is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran.
He earned an undergraduate degree in mathematics with honors from
Washburn University. His wife, Christina, is a K-State doctoral
student in statistics, also from Topeka.
Mark
Smith is the son of Darlene Smith and the later Walter Smith Jr.,
Topeka. Christina Smith is the daughter of Thomas and Doris
Hobbs, Topeka.
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