This award supports research by a senior faculty member, an Assistant Professor, and an Assistant Research Professor at Boston University. They study fundamental properties of elementary particles, especially those connected with the electroweak sector of the standard model. Major activities are with the L3 group who operate at the electron-positron collider, LEP, at CERN. Some particular goals are discovery of Higgs and SUSY particles or at least extensions of their currently established mass limits, measurement of the partial width of Z decay to b-quark pairs, and test of standard model predictions at energies above W-pair production threshold. In preparation for the future SSC-dominated era, they participate in design studies for the GEM detector. Data from GEM (and SDC) will begin to clarify the electroweak symmetry breaking mechanism, either with the discovery of the Higgs or some as yet unknown phenomena outside the Standard Model.
