Dr Gareth Hughes
Emeritus Reader
Research Interests
I am a member of the ATLAS experiment at CERN, Geneva. My interests lie in the field of B-Physics. Prior to this I have worked on a series of experiments. Starting with my DPhil at Oxford University studying low energy Kp interagtions at the NIMROD accelerator of the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, then electroproduction on the 7 GeV synchrotron NINA at the Daresbury Laboratory, UK as part of a Lancaster-Manchester collaboration, through electron-positron annihilation experiments at centre of mass energies ranging up to 46 GeV (JADE at DESY, Hamburg) and most recently to 200 GeV (ALEPH at LEP, CERN). My main physics interest during the LEP period was the study of the tau lepton polarisation and decay. Whilst working on ALEPH I was involved with the building and commissioning of the Electromagnetic Calorimeter (ECAL) and had a continuing commitment to its monitoring and operation.
The ATLAS experiment is currently installed at the LHC ready for first beams. The LHC is CERN's large proton-proton collider. The Lancaster group were founder members of the collaboration and we collaborated with many other British and overseas groups in the construction of the Silicon tracker, the SCT. My personal contribution to the hardware involved the mechanical and optical testing of the ribbons of optical fibres which read out the data from the forward SCT detectors . In the immediate future I anticipate involvement in the preparations for physics, especially the simulation of B physics processes.
The RD50 collaboration at CERN is working on Radiation hard semiconductor devices for very high luminosity colliders. Along with other Lancaster colleagues I am a member of this collaboration. We are planning for high Luminosity running at the LHC and SLHC and the challenges which will come for the semiconductor tracker.
The ALEPH collaboration's data analysis is now drawing to a close. Remaining analyses from the LEP II period concentrate on various aspects of gamma-gamma physics.
Teaching Information
During the current academic year I, along with Dr Alex Chilingarov, teach the third year mini-project module (PHYS353), Nuclear & Particle Detectors. Teaching material for these modules is available via the Physics web site.