Conor Henderson

Senior Postdoctoral Research Associate
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Research:
High-Energy Physics
Heavy-Ions

CV

Contact Conor

High Energy Physics

Since July 2005, I have been a postdoc with the MIT Laboratory for Nuclear Science.
I am a member of the CDF collaboration, an experiment at the Tevatron in Fermilab, Illinois. The Tevatron collides protons and antiprotons and is currently the highest-energy collider in the world.

Model-Independent Search for New Physics at the Tevatron

I work with Prof. Bruce Knuteson and graduate students Georgios Choudalakis and Si Xie on a comprehensive study of the CDF high-pT data and a model-independent search for new physics beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. Unlike conventional new-physics searches, which focus on a very specific signature of a particular proposed model, this novel approach is the first attempt to make a global analysis of the CDF high-pT data, searching for any significant discrepancy with the Standard Model prediction.

Public results from this model-independent search on 1fb-1 of CDF data

This analysis was featured as Fermilab Result of the Week, 7 June 2007.

We have written two papers on this analysis:

• "Model-Independent Global Search for New High-pT Physics at CDF", CDF Collaboration, arXiv:0712.2534, submitted to Physical Review Letters
• "Model-Independent and Quasi-Model-Independent Search for New Physics at CDF", CDF Collaboration, arXiv:0712.1311, submitted to Physical Review D

Further information can be found in my conference talks and seminars:

• Results of a Global Search for New Physics at CDF, HEP Seminar at Argonne National Lab, 5 December 2007.
• Global Search for New Physics at CDF, HEP Seminar at University of Pennsylvania, 13 November 2007, Philadelphia, PA.
• Results of a Global Search for New Physics at the Tevatron, HEP seminar at Duke University, 30 October 2007, Durham, NC.
• Results of a Global Search for New Physics at CDF, HEP Seminar at University of Wisconsin, 22 October 2007, Madison, WI.
• Sleuth: Results of a Quasi-Model-Independent Search for New Physics in 1 fb-1 at CDF, Parallel talk at PHENO 2007, 7 May 2007, Madison, WI.
• Vista and Sleuth: Searching for New Physics at the Tevatron, HEP Seminar at Penn State University, 15 November 2006, State College, PA.
• Vista: A New Method for an Inclusive Search of Tevatron RunII Data, Parallel talk at PHENO 2006, 15 May 2006, Madison, WI.

CDF EventBuilder and Level3 Trigger Hardware

Our group is responsible for the CDF EventBuilder and the Level 3 Trigger hardware, which are the final stages in the CDF Trigger and Data Acquisition System. The EventBuilder system creates a complete event by collecting data from all the sub-detectors. The Level 3 trigger hardware is a PC farm (400 machines, with a total processing power of 2.4 THz) that runs the software which makes the final trigger decision. I have been Sub-system Project Leader (SPL) for the EventBuilder and Level3 hardware since May 2006.

More information can be found at my dedicated EVB+L3 page.

Other CDF Responsibilities

I served on the internal review committee ('godparent') for the CDF analysis 'Search for new particles decaying to Z+jets', published in Phys Rev D.

I am a member of the CDF Speakers Committee, which coordinates conference talks within the collaboration.

I am also the primary system administrator for the MIT CDF computer cluster - 37 Linux machines used for offline analysis and general workstation purposes.