Research Professor of Physics and COSM Director

B.Sc., University of Glasgow, UK
Ph.D., University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK (1964)

Room 211, Armstrong-Slater Building
Phone: 757.728.6497
Fax: 757.728.6946
URL: http://www.cosm.hamptonu.edu
Email: kenneth.mcfarlane_AT_hamptonu.edu

Research Interests:

 The particle physics group at Hampton University works at the energy frontier in particle physics with the ATLAS experiment at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) (http://www.cern.ch and http://atlas.ch).  The LHC will begin to operate in 2008, with an unprecedented energy of 14 TeV (seven times higher than that at any existing laboratory).  Together, the LHC and ATLAS will open a new window to exciting discoveries about the nature of space, time, and matter. Possibilities include discovery of extra dimensions, creation of mini-black holes (not dangerous, as they are expected to disintegrate almost instantaneously), and new particles predicted by the idea of super-symmetry.  To analyze the data produced by this most complex apparatus, we will use state-of-the-art computing techniques, including multiple CPU clusters of computers and grid computing.

Selected Publications:

• Status of design and construction of the transition radiation tracker (TRT) for the ATLAS experiment at the LHC.  T. Akesson et al., Nucl. Instrum. Meth. A522, 131 (2004)
• ATLAS transition radiation tracker test-beam results.  T. Akesson et al., Nucl. Instrum. Meth. A522, 50 (2004).
• X-ray scanner for ATLAS barrel TRT modules.  By Taeksu Shin, O.K. Baker, K.W. McFarlane, and Vassilios I. Vassilakopoulos. Proc. 24th International Conf. on Physics in Collision (PIC 2004).
• Recent aging studies for the ATLAS transition radiation tracker.  M. Capeans et al., IEEE Trans.Nucl.Sci.51:960-967 (2004)
• An X-ray scanner for wire chambers, By the ATLAS TRT Collaboration: T. Akesson et al., Nucl.Instrum.Meth.A507:622-635 (2003)
• Strange quark contributions to parity-violating asymmetries in the forward G0 electron-proton scattering experiment. D.S. Armstrong et al.,  Phys.Rev.Lett.95:092001 (2005)
• Improved Upper Limit on the Branching Ratio K^0_L -> muon + electron. K. Arisaka et al.,  Physical Review Letters 70, 1049 (1993).
• New searches for the C-non-invariant decay pi-zero -> 3 gamma and the rare decay pi-zero -> 4 gamma, J. McDonough et al.,  Phys. Rev.  D38, 2121-2128 (1988)