Physics Experiment Sheets (Nelson, Willard B.)

B Physics B Physics

A summary of the most recent and important measurements in b physics is presented. The production of beauty particles in Z decays, b quark couplings, lifetimes, B-B0 oscillations, semileptonic b decays and studies of the number of charm quarks produced in b decays are reviewed. Extraction of the Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix elements |Vtd|, |Vcb|, |Vub| and implication for |Vts| are di...

Willard Thompson

Complexity theory has a profound influence on the field of cryptology. The time complexity of breaking a cipher system must be significant enough to thwart any adversary from succeeding. However, with the emergence of quantum computers an adversary may have no difficulty in breaking known cipher systems. If quantum computers would exist today new mechanisms for security would need to be built. ...

Physics of the Alice Experiment

A short description of the ALICE detector at CERN is given. The experiment is aiming to study the properties of the quark-gluon plasma by means of a whole set of probes that can be subdivided into three classes: soft, heavy-flavour and high-pt probes. Each of the classes is illustrated by a few typical examples.

Willard Burr Soper

Transmuting a helices and b sheets

Protein architecture involves two main secondary structural classes: helices and sheets. Some natural proteins alter their fold in response to changes in solution conditions or as a consequence of mutation. Here, we discuss recent attempts to induce such conformational changes by design: specifically, the motivation and success of efforts to change one protein fold into a different one in respo...