Prof. Kotwal Publishes Paper in Physical Review Letters

Prof. Kotwal Publishes Paper in Physical Review Letters

Prof. Ashutosh Kotwal and collaborators published a paper in the March 21, 2010 issue of Physical Review Letters titled “Search for High Mass Resonances Decaying to Muon Pairs in √s=1.96  TeV pp̅ Collisions.”

In this paper, Prof. Kotwal and his colleagues analyzed the spectrum of energies of pairs of muons produced in proton-antiproton collisions at Fermilab's Tevatron accelerator, and recorded by the CDF experiment.

The analysis was designed to search for new gauge bosons, mediators of hypothetical new forces predicted by Grand Unified Theories (GUT). These GUT models provide an elegant way of understanding the different forces of nature as manifestations of a single underlying mechanism by which all particles interact. The analysis was conducted using the maximum amount of available data from CDF, as well as the most advanced multi-variate techniques ever used for this type of search. The paper presents the most sensitive search for neutral gauge bosons currently published. Further increases in sensitivity will be provided by the Large Hadron Collider, where Prof. Kotwal is leading a similar analysis on the ATLAS experiment.