Natalia Kuznetsova

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High Energy Physics as a Career
Natalia Kuznetsova Fermi
National Accelerator Laboratory

• I am a postdoctoral fellow in High Energy Physics
  at Fermilab
• I am originally from Minsk, Belarus.
• I got my B.A. in physics from Kenyon College, a
  small liberal arts school in central Ohio
• In August 2001, I got my Ph. D. in high energy
  physics from the University of California, Santa
  Barbara
• I came to Fermilab in September 2001.

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What do I do?

• I am a member of CDF collaboration
• CDF Collider Detector at Fermilab

Asia
Total 11 countries 55 institutions 525
physicists
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CDF Detector

• We use the CDF detector to observe the results of
  very high energy proton-antiproton collisions
• Because E mc2, the higher the energy of your
  colliding particles, the more "stuff" comes out
  of the collision.

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What's inside a detector?

• Different sub-detectors in a single particle
  detector are used for detecting and analyzing
  different types of particles

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Results of proton-antiproton collision
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What's a typical day like?

• It's hard to describe a typical day -- what you
  get to do varies greatly, and there is a great
  deal of freedom to do whatever you want.
• Typically, you are involved in three things
• Maintaining some particular subsystem of the
  detector (hardware)
• Writing code for analyzing the data (software)
• And you get to learn LOTS of different computer
  languages!
• Actually performing data analysis -- coming up
  with new ideas, etc..
• Most people in HEP work long hours, but they do
  so by choice

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Some things you might do on a typical day
Taking care of electronics
Taking detector shifts
Writing software
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What is it like?

• Because our experiments are so huge, it takes a
  lot of people to get things going
• So you get to interact with lots of people --
  physicists and engineers
• This has both good and bad sides

Future ATLAS Collaboration at CERN nearly 2,000
people!
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Careers and salaries

• If you would like to stay in academia and do
  basic research, the typical career progression
  is
• grad student -gt postdoc -gt assistant professor
  -gt full professor
• The level of responsibility and the amount of
  competition increases at each step

Occupation
Salary range
20k
(Doctoral) Grad. student
35-50k
Postdoc/Assistant professor
90k -gt
Full professor
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Qualifications

• To be a high energy physicist doing basic
  research, you need
• Academically a Ph.D.
• Personally
• LOVE PHYSICS!! You are in this for the love and
  fun of the science, not money.
• Be self-motivating, capable of learning new
  things on your ownr and fast, capable of
  collaborating with lots of other people, somewhat
  competitive, always curious

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What else can you do with HEP training?

• Because you get to do so many different things,
  you are well-prepared for non-academic careers
• For example, your background in computer
  programming or designing electronics can be very
  valuable while applying for industry jobs
• But the more important thing is, most people who
  have received HEP training can THINK.

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What former UCSB grad students are up to
Year Student Current (or last known)
Position 1999 D. Lange postdoc,
Livermore 1999 A. Sonnenschein postdoc,
Princeton 1998 T. Nelson postdoc,
Fermilab 1996 A. Ryd Fairchild Fellow,
Caltech 1996 C. Qiao Project Leader, Engelhard
Sensor Technologies, Goleta 1995 M. Gray Wall
Street 1994 D. Borden Wall Street 1994 D.
Sperka computer consultant, Madison 1993 J.
Duboscq research physicist, Ohio St.
U. 1993 J. Huber research physicist, LBNL
(medical imaging) 1992 D. Schmidt staff, LANL
(medical imaging) 1990 R. Stephens
assistant professor, U.T.
Arlington 1990 D. Grumm AXAF project,
Smithsonian Astrophysical Laboratory 1988 T.
Barker associate professor, U.
Colorado 1988 T. Browder associate professor,
U. Hawaii
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What can you do to become a HEP physicist?

• Apply to college with a good physics program.
• Participate in a summer research program for
  undergraduates
• Come to Fermilab for a field trip
• Send me an e-mail with questions
  (nataliak_at_fnal.gov)

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SLAC Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

• SLAC is located near the beautiful Stanford
  University campus, at Menlo Park in California
  (20 min. to the ocean).
• The research performed at SLAC has been
  recognized with three Nobel Prizes in physics!
• http//www.slac.stanford.edu is the first U.S.
  Web site!

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SLAC site
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The BaBar detector
BaBar looks at much lower Energy collisions than
CDF
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The detector for BaBar I helped build

• Many particles decay very close to where they
  were produced.
• Thats why at the heart of many detectors is a
  device needed for finding just where this
  happened.

The vertex point
The silicon vertex detector used in the BaBar
experiment at SLAC
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A typical BaBar event