Professor
University of Victoria
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
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Michel Lefebvre Professor |
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Department of Physics and Astronomy University of Victoria Victoria, British Columbia, Canada |
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Talks: Conferences Institutions Workshops Reviews Lectures ATLAS Meetings Group Meetings Outreach Publications: Refereed Other Clipboard |
Research ActivitiesHigh Energy Particle Physics is the study of the fundamental forces of nature which govern the interactions between radiation and the ultimate constituents of matter. This study is, arguably, the most fundamental amongst all the physical sciences and hence draws much interest. The distance scale at which an experiment is able to probe nature is related to the de Broglie wavelength h/p of the probing particle of momentum p, where the universal Planck constant h plays a pivotal role. Experiments of higher energy, and ironically of larger size, are then usually required to probe smaller scales of matter, and to recreate, momentarily, the conditions that prevailed close in time to the beginning of the Universe.My research interests and contributions focus on the experimental exploration of the laws of nature at the energy frontier. After many years of development and construction particle detectors, I now focus on assessing detector performance, the measurement of fundamental parameters, and the development of data analysis tools and techniques.
ATLASSince 1991 my main research activity consists in the design, construction and commissioning of the ATLAS detector. ATLAS is an international collaboration of scientists currently building a particle detector that will probe nature at the TeV energy scale, or, equivalently, at the 0.00000000000000000001 m scale. ATLAS currently studies proton-proton collisions at a center of mass energy of 7 TeV provided by the Large Hadron Collider, LHC, operational since November 2009 at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, CERN. The collisions are scheduled to reach 14 TeV center of mass energy in 2013.With the help of colleagues from Victoria and Montreal, I founded the ATLAS-Canada Collaboration in 1992. I acted as spokesperson of the collaboration until 1994. The ATLAS-Canada collaboration now comprises over 150 scientists from 11 institutions from across Canada. I was the Principal Investigator of the ATLAS group at Victoria from 1992 to 2003. I am currently Deputy Group Leader at UVic. I recently ended a three year term in the ATLAS Speakers Committee. I am currently involved in ATLAS data analyses. The ATLAS group at Victoria is very active in the analysis of the 7 TeV and 8 TeV data collected by the ATLAS detector. |