Louisiana State University Physics & Astronomy

Paul N. Kirk
Professor of Physics

Ph.D., 1969 - Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Experimental Intermediate Energy Nuclear Physics
and Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions

Office: 226 Nicholson
Telephone: 6240-Office
E-mail: kirk@phys.lsu.edu

RESEARCH INTERESTS

The study of collisions between relativistic heavy ions is a useful tool for studying nuclear matter because of the large temperatures, pressures, and energy densities that can be realized in such collisions. Some phenomena, such as the study of anomalous states of nuclear matter and the frequently discussed transition between normal nuclear matter and quark matter, can be most easily detected in such collisions.

Our principal affiliation is with the moun subgroup of the PHENIX Collaboration. The subgroup is designing apparatus for the purpose of detecting the decay of vector mesons into a pair of muons. The distinction between muons of interest and muons produced in, say, the decay of pions is not simple, requiring elaborate simulations of both the apparatus and all physical processes that produce muons in the final state.

We are also concluding our participation in the Di-Lepton Spectrometer Collaboration (DLS) at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and in the AMY Collaboration at the Japanese Laboratory for High Energy Physics. The DLS Collaboration measured cross sections for the production of electron-positron pairs in nucleon-nucleus collisions and in nucleus-nucleus collisions at the Bevalac. The purpose of the AMY Collaboration was the study of electron-positron annihilation at high energies.

CURRENT AND SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

S.K. Sahu et al., "A High-Q2 Measurement of the Photon Structure Function ," Phys. Lett. B 346, 208 (1995).
Y.K. Li et al., "A Determination of in e+e- annihilation at root-s=57.3 GeV," Phys. Lett. B 355, 394 (1995).
S.K. Choi et al., "A Measurement of Bose-Einstein Correlations in e+e- annihilation at TRISTAN," Phys. Lett. B 355, 406 (1995).
S. Kanda et al., "Study of two Particle Azimuthal Correlation in e+e- annihilation at root-s=58GeV," Phys. Rev. D 52, 4872 (1995).

Updated: Tue, 19-Sep-2006 11:26 AM