Tom Roberts Associate Research Professor of Physics
	B.S.:	Purdue University, West Lafayette
	Ph.D.:	University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
	Office:	FermiLab WH13E
	Phone:	630.840.2424
	e-mail:	tom.roberts@iit.edu
	Roberts's Web page

Professional Interests

My primary research interest at IIT is the International Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE). This is an approved experiment at the Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory in the UK. It is intended to demonstrate the feasibility of using ionization cooling of muons to greatly increase the intensity of a neutrino factory or muon collider (both are potential new facilities for High Energy Physics). My primary interest is in simulating and evaluating the performance of the muon beamline.

I am the author of g4beamline, a program for the single-particle simulation of accelerator systems and beamlines. This is a flexible and user-friendly program in use by several research groups to simulate various aspects of muon ionization cooling and future facilities.

I am also interested in experimental tests of Special Relativity (SR). As SR has become the foundation of every one of our current fundamental theories of physics, it is essential that it be thoroughly tested. There are literally hundreds of successful tests of SR. But there are a handful of experiments that appear to be in conflict with SR; a careful analysis of them shows they do not really refute SR. The primary reason for this is the experiments are old and did not include a comprehensive error analysis, and their actual errorbars are large enough to include the prediction of SR.

Representative Publications

• T. J. Roberts, "Special Relativity, the Lumeniferous Aether, and Experiments. Or: The Importance of Errorbars". Colloquium presented April 27, 2006 at IIT.
  
  

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