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    I currently work on the on the ATLAS experiment (A Toroidal LHC ApparatuS) at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), where I have worked for the past several years, although on 3 distinct projects:

• The CAST experiment

• The Tile Calorimeter Sub-detector Collaboration on ATLAS

• The Pixel Sub-detector Collaboration on ATLAS

    I have recently moved to California where I am beginning the long and perhaps arduous journey towards a PhD in particle physics with ATLAS at Stanford University and SLAC. ATLAS will measure the products of collisions produced in the LHC and hopefully uncover unknown features of the physical world.  The LHC and ATLAS are expected to begin operation in 2007.

    Before that, I worked on the CAST experiment, also at CERN, searching for signals from a possible new particle called the AXION. This particle could be copiously produced in our Sun and then converted into regular photons here on earth and then detected.  I was heavily involved in the testing of the crystals to be used in the calorimeter and the development of software to perform pulse shape discrimination on the data. I helped Joaquin Vieira design and build the detector (including the muon veto) and the final assembly and testing.  After installation, I went to CERN to run it, performing various tests and calibrations of the hardware and software, analysis of the data and (tried to) guaranteed detector stability, developed data transfer and backup software, and general collaboration duties.

    Below, you will find some links to some more information about my professional life, the above mentioned experiments, and some things I think are generally useful as a physicist.

• CV

• ATLAS

• CAST

• Talks

• Publications

• Resources

CV

• My CV in .pdf or .ps

ATLAS

• The ATLAS Detector 

• A short Movie (WATCH IT!!!) of the ATLAS detector on the home page. Gives you an idea of the size.

CAST

• The CAST Collaboration  

• The CAST Magnet             

• Talks:

• Publications:

  • Beltran et al. "Search for solar axions: The CAST experiment at CERN" (url) Proceedings of the 40th Rencontres de Moriond on Electroweak Interactions and Unified Theories, 2005

  • Zioutas et al.  "First Results from the CERN Axion Solar Telescope (CAST)" Physics Review Letters or arXiv (url's)

  • Andriamonje et al. "First Results from the CERN Axion Solar Telescope (CAST)'' Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on the Identification of Dark Matter, 2004

   

• Other Related Publications:

  • Collar, et. al. A Search for Solar Axions at CERN (pdf)

  • Sikivie The Pool-Table Analogy to Axion Physics (pdf)

USEFUL RESOURCES

• The National Academy of Sciences report on the future of elementary particle physics (pdf)

• Statistical Analysis (from the PDG) (pdf)

• Experimental Low-Radioactivity Background Techniques (by Heusser) (pdf)

• A really nice LaTeX Introduction and reference (pdf)

• Of course: ROOT

• Uranium and Thorium decay chains, with energy binned alpha's, gamma's and beta's

• Simple but useful introduction to shell scripting (specifically, BASH)

• Numerical recipes in FORTRAN and C

• Experimental nuclear reaction data (tells you everything you want to know about almost any nuclear reaction you can think of)

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