G. J. Luste

Professor

Charm physics; Fermilab tagged photon spectrometry; Physics education.

Telephone: (416)978-7132
e-mail: luste@physicsdomain

Research | Papers  | Post-Docs  | Students

Brief CV

B.A., Mount Allison (1961); Ph.D., Johns Hopkins (1968). Research Associate, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (1968-71); Assistant Professor, University of Toronto (1971-75); Associate Professor, (1975-80); Associate Chair, Graduate Studies (1983-87). Chair, Physics/Astronomy/CITA Computing Consortium (1977-1990); Member, American Physical Society (1966-present); Chair, CAP Particle Physics Division (1984); President, Royal Canadian Institute (1982-83); Council Member, Institute of Particle Physics (1978-81).

Research interests

In briefest terms, particle physics (or high energy physics, as it is usually called) deals with the study of the ultimate constituents of matter and the forces between them. Experimentally this study requires giant accelerators in order to probe the smallest possible distances and to provide the large energies for the search and study of new states of matter.

Production of charm quark hadron states with photon beams and more recently with hadron beams at Fermilab provide the possibility of precision lifetime measurements of these states and the high statistics study of their properties via subsequent decays. New silicon strip vertex detector technology has made this possible. By means of these detectors the signal to noise ratio is greatly enhanced and thus the intrinsic higher luminosity of fixed target experiments is exploited. Until recently most of the charmed hadron information came only from the cleaner but lower luminosity electron-positron colliders.

Precision measurements of the life-times and decay modes of charm meson states enable one to try and separate out the relative importance of the various diagrams in the dynamics of the decay, such as the simple quark spectator diagrams, quark annihilation diagrams, W boson exchange diagrams and final state interactions.

In addition, charm quark production provides an opportunity to isolate the photon-gluon fusion QCD process and to test QCD itself. The Fermilab tagged photon beam experiments have been extremely productive in terms of new charm quark data and physics.

By its scale and intrinsic nature, experimental high energy physics research is extremely computer intensive. In designing experiments one requires large amounts of computer time to simulate the experiment and the apparatus, well in advance of any data taking. The subsequent on-line computer system is often state of the art, as is the data analysis itself. To illustrate, the recent charm hadroproduction experiment has generated 10,000 reels of data for analysis. To analyse and extract the science in such a mammoth data base pushes both hardware and software technology to the limit. As an offshoot to using computers in high energy physics, I have also become interested in the topic of research computing itself and have been active in a number of initiatives, such as implementing advanced parallel systems.

Recent Publications

``A recoil proton detector using cylindrical proportional chambers and scintillator counters'', G.F. Hartner et al., Nuclear Instruments and Methods 216, 410 (1983).

``Inelastic and elastic photoproduction of J/psi(3097)'', B.H. Denby et al., Phys. Rev. Letters 52, 795 (1984).

``Study of D⁰ - Dbar⁰ mixing'', J.C. Anjos et al., Phys. Rev. Letters 60, 1239 (1988).

``Measurement of D^±_s decays and Cabiboo-suppressed D^± decays'', J.C. Anjos et al., Phys. Rev. Letters 60, 897 (1988).

``Measurement of the D⁰, D⁺, and D^±_s lifetimes'', J.R. Raab et al., Phys. Rev. Letters D37, 2391 (1988).

``Measurement of the lambda⁺_c lifetime'', J.C. Anjos et al., Phys. Rev. Letters 60, 1379 (1988).

``Observation of excited charmed mesons'', J.C. Anjos et al., Phys. Rev. Letters 62, 1717 (1989).

``Measurement of D^±_s and D^± decays to nonstrange states'', J.C. Anjos et al., Phys. Rev. Letters 62, 125 (1989).