Dr. Randy Johnson
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A.B., Princeton University, 1969Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1975 |
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A.B., Princeton University, 1969Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1975 |
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Email Address:
Randy.Johnson@uc.edu
Telephone: 513-556-0528
Fax: 513-556-3425
Mailing address (also UPS address):
Physics Department, ML 11
Room 417, Geology/Physics Building
University of Cincinnati
Cincinnati, OH 45221
Research - NuTeV
A Cincinnati graduate student, Masoud Vakili, collaborated in setting up and running NuTeV. He wrote his thesis on data obtained on the earlier CCFR experiment. That thesis explored the possibility that neutrinos can scatter collectively off groups of nucleons and not just from single nucleons or quarks. A second graduate student, Narumon Suwonjandee, is analyzing the charged current events in the NuTeV data to determine the structure of the proton.
BooNE is a new neutrino experiment designed to verify or disprove the
recent Los Alamos result that found evidence for neutrino oscillations.
LSND (the Los Alamos experiment) found an excess of electron type neutrinos
in their detector. An explanation of this result is that the muon
neutrinos, which were the predominate type of neutrinos produced,
"oscillated" into electron neutrinos. Such a result necessarily imples
that the neutrinos have mass.
Research - BooNE
The BooNE experiment is designed to definitely prove or disprove the LSND result. If LSND is correct we should see an excess of hundreds of electron neutrinos. If LSND is wrong, we will disprove it at the 5 sigma level.
BooNE uses protons from the 8 GeV Booster at Fermilab. We will interact those protons in a beryllium target and produce pions. these pions will decay to muons and muon neutrinos is a 50 m decay pipe. 500 m of dirt will absorb all other particles except the penetrating neutrinos. We will detect a small fraction of the neutrinos in a 12 m diameter sphere of mineral oil. The type of resulting particles from the interaction will be determined by the pattern of Cerenkov light detected on the wall of the sphere.
Cincinnati has two main responsibilities in this project: 1) doing radiation calculations to assure the laboratory that we are safely handling the incoming proton beam; and 2) specifying and testing the mineral oil that will be used in the detector. Narumon Suwonjandee has been doing the radiation calculations with me in addition to her NuTeV analysis work and a UC undergraduate, Steve Tomassettii has been helping with the mineral oil specification.
Boone is presently under construction and is on schedule to take
data in December, 2001. More information can be found on the BooNE home
pages at
Fermilab or
Los Alamos.
Recent Publications
Evidence for Diffractive Charm Production in nu_mu Fe and nubar_mu Fe Scattering at the Tevatron, T Adams, et al. (to be published in Phys. Rev. D (2000))
Search for a 33.9 MeV/c^2 Neutral Particle in Pion Decay, J.A. Formaggio, et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 83, 4943 (1999).
Nuclear Structure Functions in the Large x Large Q^2 Kinematic Region in Neutrino Deep Inelastic Scattering, M. Vakili, et al., to be published in Phys. Rev. D (2000).
A Limit on Muon-Neutrino (Anti-Muon Neutrino)-->Tau Neutrino (Anit-Tau Neutrino) Oscillations from a Precision Measurement of Neutrino- Nucleon Neutral Current Interactions, K.S. McFarland, D. Naples, et al., Phys. Rev. Letts. 75, 3993 (1995).