U.T. Dallas High Energy Physics Group Receives $600K Funding

For immediate release News Contact: Steve McGregor, UTD, (972) 883-2293, smcgreg@utdallas.edu

UT Dallas’ High Energy Physics Group
Receives $600,000 in DOE Research Funding

Three-Year Renewal Grant to Fund Study of Matter, Anti-Matter

 

RICHARDSON, Texas (May 25, 2001) – The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has renewed research funding for the High Energy Physics Group at The University of Texas at Dallas with a $600,000 award for the period 2001-2004.

It is the fourth three-year award DOE has granted the group, with funding increasing each period.

The grant will enable two UTD faculty members – Joseph M. Izen, professor of physics, and Xinchou Lou, associate professor of physics – to study the differences between the behavior of particles known technically as “Bmesons” and their anti-matter counterparts, one of the top priorities in DOE’s particle physics research program. The BaBar experiment, as it is called, is taking place in California, utilizing an experimental facility at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center at Stanford University which smashes together electrons and their anti-matter, positrons.

“We are delighted that DOE has recognized the importance of the work being done at UT Dallas by Drs. Izen and Lou by renewing their research funding,” said Dr. Da Hsuan Feng, vice president for research and graduate education and professor of physics at UTD. “This is fundamental investigation which could bring us to a deeper understanding of the makeup of the universe.”

“There are two ways to understand the gross structure of the universe,” said Izen, the UTD principal investigator on the DOE project. “One is to look into the sky as astronomers do. The other way is to look at the behavior of individual particles, particularly at high energy, to give us clues about the fundamental nature of matter and the laws that govern it.

“In what seems like a dichotomy, by studying matter on the smallest of scales – subatomic particles – we can advance research on the largest of scales – the cosmos.”

While the actual experiment carried out by Izen, Lou and collaborators from around the world requires use of the particle accelerator at the Stanford facility, many tasks – such as physics analysis with data sets measured in hundreds to thousands of gigabytes and computer-based simulations – will be done at UTD. The Internet2, the U.S. academic high performance network, is vital to this work. To help meet the high performance computing, storage and networking needs of the research team, UTD’s High Energy Physics Group is constructing a local 32 CPU Linux “computer farm” on the UTD campus, based on relatively inexpensive PCs connected to a multi-gigabit-per-second common backbone.

The array of computers is several times more powerful than any other computer system at UTD – including the university’s 18-CPU mainframe computer. In addition, the architecture of the system allows rapid expansion in processing power and storage capacity to meet increased demands.