User:Pnrj/Dante Amidei
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Dante (also known as "Dan") Amidei is a particle physicist and professor at the University of Michigan who works at the Collider Detector at Fermilab. He is best known for his work on the discovery of the top quark and its properties. As of 2013, he had written over 500 papers which have been cited over 1200 times.Microsoft Corporation (2013). "Microsoft Academic Search: Dante Amidei." http://www.journalogy.net/Author/8034876 He earned the Universities Research Association Visiting Scholar Award in 2008,Fermi National Laboratory (25 Jul 2012). "Universities Research Association: FNAL Visiting Scholars Program." http://www.fnal.gov/pub/forphysicists/fellowships/ura_visiting_scholars and the American Physical Society Fellowship in 2007.American Physical Society (2013). "APS Fellowship: Nominations 2007." http://www.aps.org/units/dpf/fellowship/index.cfm?year=2007
Early Career
Amidei attended Maine South High School, then earned his BS at MIT in 1978, and his PhD at Berkeley in 1984.University of Michigan (2013). "Faculty Profile: Dante Amidei." https://www.lsa.umich.edu/physics/directory/faculty/ci.amideidante_ci.detail He joined the faculty at the University of Michigan in 1990.
Silicon Vertex Detector and Top Quark Discovery
Amidei was closely involved in the development of methods to detect the top quark; he coordinated the design of a silicon vertex detectorFermi National Laboratory (7 Jan 2011). "CDF finds evidence for top quark production asymmetry." Fermilab Today. http://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/archive/archive_2011/today11-01-07.html that could distinguish particle tracks less than 10 micrometers apart. Staley, K.W. (2004). The Evidence for the Top Quark: Objectivity and Bias in Collaborative Experimentation. http://books.google.com/books?id=a69Dp9V0wBEC This detector performed the bottom quark tagging used in distinguishing the top quarks from other possible particles, and it was cited as the reason for his APS Fellowship.
Regarding the development of the silicon vertex detector, Amidei said that "it was the union of the custom chip development at Berkeley and the detector development at Pisa that made the thing possible." (quoted in , p.92) Amidei said that it was not easy to convince everyone at CDF to install the detector in the first place: "There was a small number of folks who felt that there was no measurement advantage to be gained by doing precision tracking of the kind that the vertex detector would allow… people did not see at first the utility of being able to measure or tag particle lifetimes." (quoted in , p.96)
Amidei has continued studying the properties of the top quark for over a decade, and discovered a surprising asymmetry in top quark production in matter-antimatter collisions, Cohen, R. (4 Apr 2011). "LHC Locking In on New Elementary Particle." Wired. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/04/lhc-new-particle/ on which he spoke at the 5th International Workshop on Top Quark Physics in 2012. "TOP 2012: 5th International Conference on Top Quark Physics." http://indico.cern.ch/conferenceOtherViews.py?view=standard&confId=180665
Other Work
Amidei was part of the ATLAS collaboration that searched for the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider, Pobojewski , S. (9 May 1994). "U researchers played key role in finding evidence of elusive top quark." The University Record. http://ur.umich.edu/9394/May09_94/5.htm a collaboration which ultimately was successful in finding the Higgs in 2013.O'Luanaigh, C. (14 Mar 2013). "New results indicate that new particle is a Higgs boson." CERN News. http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2013/03/new-results-indicate-new-particle-higgs-boson
Amidei is heavily involved in physics education, including Saturday Morning Physics, at the University of Michigan; he has given several public lectures on introductory physics, some of which are available as slidesAmidei, D. (20 Nov 2004). "The Future of Particle Physics." Saturday Morning Physics. http://lecb.physics.lsa.umich.edu/wl/carma/2004/fall-sat-morn-phys/20041120-umwlap001-01-amidei/realaudio/f001.htm and videosAmidei, D. (16 Oct 2009). "Fall, Mirrors, Anti Matter & the Left Handed World." Saturday Morning Physics. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mmpQeO2gqc online.
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