This award provides funds to support this NEU group to continue their participation in the Compact Muon Spectrometer (CMS) experiment that will begin operation in late 2008 at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland. This group has played a leading role in managing the construction and commissioning of the CMS detector and in having worked directly on the muon chamber alignment hardware and the development of radiation-hard readout electronics for the calorimeters.
The group plans to study relatively model-independent searches for new physics as deviations from expected behavior based on Standard Model predictions. They also plan to maintain their responsibilities for the calorimeter readout and for software and computing.
The broader impacts of their studies include using technologies developed or inspired by their CMS work for applications ranging from biophysics to quantum optics and maintaining a vigorous outreach program with regular appearances in the media including newspapers, science magazines, radio and television.
