Distinguished professor to illuminate particle collider discoveries’ effect on universe


Foundation Distinguished Professor of Physics & Astronomy Christophe Royon, right, stands with his KU research team.LAWRENCE — Breaking subatomic particles with complex equipment can tell humans about additional dimensions in our universe. The practice can also lead to development of new technologies for medical and engineering applications.

Christophe Royon, University of Kansas Foundation Distinguished Professor of Physics & Astronomy, will deliver his Distinguished Professor Inaugural Lecture, “The Large Hadron Collider: From the Proton Structure to Extra-Dimensions in the Universe,” at 5:30 p.m. April 30 in the Summerfield Room of the Adams Alumni Center. The public is invited.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), located at CERN close to Geneva at the border between France and Switzerland, is presently the highest energy collider in the world and has the ability to probe the proton structure with unprecedented precision. Royon will provide a brief introduction to the machine, its capabilities and celebrated results. His presentation will focus on some very strange and unexpected events in which protons remain intact after their interactions.

“This outcome presents an opportunity to probe the existence of extra-dimensions in the universe as well as other exciting phenomena,” Royon said. “At the end of the talk, we will describe briefly the new timing detectors that are being built and tested here at the University of Kansas that can be used for fundamental physics experiments as well as medical and other engineering applications.”

After obtaining his doctorate in physics from the University of Paris in 1994, Royon joined the Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique in France as an associate researcher and then as a director for research. He worked successively on many experiments and accelerators in the world — H1 at DESY, Hamburg. Germany; D0 (DZero) at Fermilab in Chicago and ATLAS/CMS/TOTEN at CERN at Geneva — where he led many research groups such as the muon, calorimeter, jet energy scale and quantum chromodynamics. He was also the spokesman of the ATLAS Forward Physics Project and is currently responsible for the Forward Physics activities at the Large Hadron Collider.

He joined KU as a Foundation Distinguished Professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy in January 2016.

 

Mon, 04/16/2018

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Jill Hummels

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