This proposal seeks funding for a long-term research program in High Energy Physics (HEP) at Northeastern University. The program focuses on the Dzero experiment at Fermilab and on the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, which represents the new energy frontier in particle physics and a top priority within the US HEP program. The proposal requests support for the career development of Dr. Emanuela Barberis of the Department of Physics at Northeastern University. She is a member of the experimental High Energy Physics group at NU and her area of research is the study of the structure and interactions among elementary particles at particle accelerator facilities. She has been a member of the ZEUS collaboration at DESY, from 1992 to 1997, a member of the Dzero collaboration at Fermilab since 1996, and she has recently joined the CMS collaboration at CERN. Prof. Barberis has worked on top quark physics in Run 1 of the Tevatron collider, on the determination of the top quark mass and its dependency on the measurement of the jet energy scale, and on the modeling of radiative corrections in top quark production and decay. Since 2001, the Dzero detector has been recording data from Run 2, which is expected to extend to the end of the decade, with a set of detector upgrades entering in 2005 to improve the detector performance during higher luminosity running. With increasing luminosity and the increased center of mass of Run 2 (nearly 2 TeV), the goal is to perform detailed studies of the properties of the top quark with a data sample twenty times larger than Run 1. At the Tevatron, Prof. Barberis proposes methods to perform the most precise measurements of two fundamental properties of the top quark, its mass and charge. The ultimate aim of Prof. Barberis' research program is to study the connection between the top quark and the origin of particle masses, using the top quark as the laboratory where new physics is likely to appear first. Prof. Barberis proposes to continue to study the interactions of the top quark and a mass-generating Higgs field at the large center of mass energy of the LHC, 14 TeV, with the CMS detector. The CMS detector is scheduled to be commissioned in 2007. There, the plan is to determine the strength of the coupling between the Higgs field and the Standard Model top quark, and to test how the Standard Model can extend to explain the pattern of masses observed in nature in a more fundamental way, via models which predict the existence of an additional, heavier quark, and its interactions with the Higgs field. The signature for the production and decay of top quark(s) is the detection of high pT decay products. Among the possible final state decays, the cleanest ones contain high pT muons. Prof. Barberis is strongly committed to extend the scope of her research program to educate a broad range of students, e.g., undergraduate students through the NU co-operative programs, SPS, and summer school initiatives, and high school students through the Quarknet program.
