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Dr. Rubin

Howard A. Rubin

Professor of Physics

Associate Chair for Physics

B.S.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ph.D.: University of Maryland
Office: 182A Life Sciences Building
Phone: 312.567.3395       Fax:  312.567.3289
e-mail: howard.rubin@iit.edu

Professional Interests

My research focuses on studies of hyperon decays and neutrino oscillations. I am currently participating in Fermilab Experiments HyperCP and MINOS, and the European reactor neutrino experiment Double Chooz. My major work in these experimental collaborations has been in the areas of code development and management, and large-scale data processing on dedicated CPU farms on the Fermigrid component of the Open Science Grid.

The IIT HyperCP group is studying the rare decays of Ω (Omega) and Ξ (Xi or ‘Cascade’) hyperons. MINOS began taking data in the Far Detector at the Soudan mine in northern Minnesota in 2003 and at the Near Detector on the Fermilab campus in 2005. It is designed to make a precision measurement of the mass difference among members of the neutrino family. A first measurement from the experiment is presented in publication 1 below.

The Double Chooz experiment is designed to make a measurement of the angle θ13, an important parameter in the Standard Model of particle physics in the neutrino sector, that is more precise than the current value (from the original Chooz experiment) by a factor of 10. The experiment is scheduled to begin taking data at the first of two detectors at the Chooz nuclear reactor in France in 2007, with the second detector active by the end of 2008.

Representative Publications

  • First observations of separated atmospheric νμ and anti-νμ events in the MINOS detector, Phys. Rev. D73:072002 (2006).

  • Measurement of the asymmetry in the decay anti-Ω+ → anti-Λ K+ → anti-p π+ K+, Phys. Rev. Lett. 96:242001 (2006).

  • Model independent measurement of S-wave K- π+ systems using D+ → K π π decays from Fermilab E791, Phys. Rev. D73:032004 (2006).

  • Search for the lepton-number-violating decay Ξ- → p μ- μ-, Phys. Rev. Lett. 94:181801 (2005).

  • Observation of parity violation in the Ω- → Λ K- decay, Phys. Lett. B617:11-17 (2005).


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