A new discovery in ALICE experiment
Researchers from ALICE international experiment at the Large Hadron Collider have determined the mass of free charmed quark. Thus, they confirmed the findings of the theory describing 1/4 of the world. The research resulted in publication in "Nature", and its authors include employees and doctoral students from the Warsaw University of Technology.
The charmed quark is an extremely small elementary particle that loves company. Already a fraction of a second since its birth (in this case, it is one hundred thousand billionth of a billionth of a second – 10^-23), it is trying to find a partner or partners.
We already know quite a lot about the properties of hadrons, or the compounds of quarks, however, we still lack data on how quarks behave when they are completely alone. Researchers from ALICE experiment decided to investigate this. They designed an experiment to determine the properties of the charmed quark in the short time it is looking for a partner. The publication on this subject was published in „Nature”.
Four Polish scientific institutions take part in ALICE experiment: Warsaw University of Technology, the National Centre for Nuclear Research, the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow. For almost two decades, employees, doctoral students and students from several WUT faculties have participated in the experiment. They deal with data analysis, development of key elements of the software and the ALICE collision visualization system.
The final analysis, which leads to a specific discovery – as in this case, is carried out by a small group of researchers. However, their work is the culmination of the efforts of many people involved in the research in ALICE, which is why the list of authors of the publication always lists, in alphabetical order, all people participating in the experiment. mCo-authors of publications in "Nature" from the Warsaw University of Technology: Kamil Deja, MSc., (Faculty of Electronics and Information Technology), Łukasz Graczykowski, PhD, (Faculty of Physics), Rihan Haque, PhD, (Faculty of Physics), Monika Jakubowska, PhD, (Faculty of Electrical Engineering), Małgorzata Janik, PhD, (Faculty of Physics), Przemysław Karczmarczyk, MSc., (Faculty of Physics), Associate Professor Eng. Adam Kisiel, PhD, (Faculty of Physics), Georgy Kornakov, PhD, (Faculty of Physics), Julian Myrcha, MSc., (Faculty of Electronics and Information Technology), Piotr Nowakowski, MSc., (Faculty of Electronics and Information Technology), Janusz Oleniacz, PhD, (Faculty of Physics), Prof. Przemysław Rokita, PhD, DSc, (Faculty of Electronics and Information Technology), Wioleta Rzęsa, MSc., (Faculty of Physics), Associate Professor Tomasz Trzciński, PhD, DSc., (Faculty of Electronics and Information Technology), Assistant Professor Hanna Zbroszczyk, PhD DSc Eng. (Faculty of Physics).
