Dr. Karl Ecklund

Photo of Assistant Professor Karl Ecklund  

Assistant Professor, Ph.D. Stanford University (1996)

Office: 335 Fronczak Hall, (716) 645-2017 ext. 197
Lab: 358 Fronczak Hall, (716) 645-2017 ext. xxx
Email: kecklund@buffalo.edu

Education
  Ph.D. -- Stanford University (1996)
A.B. -- Princeton University (1989)

Research Interests
 
  • High Energy Particle Physics
  • Flavor Physics (c and b quark decays at CLEO)
  • Collider Physics (CMS experiment at the LHC)
  As a high-energy physicist, I study the fundamental constituents of matter and their interactions. The theoretical framework of the Standard Model has proven successful in describing the spectrum of known particles and their electroweak and strong interactions. As an experimentalist, I seek to test the Standard Model and search for new phenomena that would indicate physics beyond the Standard Model. That search for new physics can be carried out at low-energy colliders through precision tests of the Standard Model or at the high-energy frontier where direct searches are possible. In particular, I am interested in three research programs of high-energy physics. Phrased as questions they are:
  • What is the origin of CP violation?
  • What is the origin of electroweak-symmetry breaking?
  • What new physics lies beyond the Standard Model?
In the past, I have explored the first of these questions by participating in the CLEO experiment, an electron-positron collider experiment at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, making precise measurements of weak b and c quark decays. While my CLEO participation continues through 2008,I am currently preparing for the great prospects for new discoveries in particle physics at the energy frontier when the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland begins operations in late 2007 and 2008. The LHC is designed to reach energies of 14 TeV, a factor of 7 beyond the current highest energy machine at Fermilab outside of Chicago. Since June 2005 I have been working on data acquisition and calibration software for the CMS pixel detector, which plays a crucial role in identifying long-lived b and tau jets at CMS. These third generation particles can be a signature of many new physics signals at LHC energies.

Selected Publications
  1. "Determination of the B-bar --> D* l nu Decay Width and |Vcb|," N. E. Adam et al., Phys. Rev. D 67, 032001 (2003).
  2. "Improved Measurement of |Vcb| Using B-bar --> D* l nu Decays," R.A. Briere et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 081803 (2002).
  3. "The CLEO III Drift Chamber," D. Peterson et al., Nucl. Inst. Meth. A 478, 142 (2002).
  4. "Search for diffractive dissociation of a long-lived H dibaryon," J. Belz et al., Phys. Rev. D R3487 (1996).