D0 Experiment

We collaborate in the D0 experiment located at the TEVATRON accelerator at Fermilab (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) in Batavia, Illinois, U.S.A. TEVATRON was providing proton-antiproton collisions at center of mass energy up to 1.96 TeV, making it the most powerful accelerator before LHC. The accelerator was shutdown in 2011 and the analyzes of collected data still continue. The top quark was discovered by the TEVATRON experiments CDF and D0 in so called Run1 at 1995. After that, extensive reconstruction of the accelerator and CDF and D0 experiments took place. Experiment D0 was equipped with new vertex detector for precise measurement of tracks close to the interaction point, new tracking detector – fiber tracker, superconducting magnet to determine particle charges, new forward detector for measurement of small angle scattering and new electronics capable to record higher data flux.

The new complex started operation – Run2 - on 1 March 2001. Since the final shutdown in September 2011, the D0 experiment collected 10.7fb^-1 of data. Among the most prominent Run2 results are: precise determination of top quark and intermediate boson W masses, observation of single top quark production or observation of B_s meson oscillations.

Collaborating teams from the Czech Republic (Institute of Physics AS CR, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of the Charles University and Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering of the Czech Technical University) are active notably in the study of jet production, precise top quark measurement and diffractive processes. We contributed in several service tasks as well, like serving shifts during data taking, data preparation, software upgrades, precise jet scale measurement or detector simulation.

Main contribution of the Department is in data processing. Electronics experiments like D0 need high amount of computer simulated data of detector functioning for their physics analysis. The Regional Computing Centre for Particle Physics located in the Institute of Physics delivers one third of its capacity to the D0 simulations, making Institute of Physics is thus one of the major external contributors. The D0 experiment is run by 90 collaborating laboratories, more than half from Europe, 510 physicists from 18 nations.

The web pages of the Czech collaborating team are located here.