ATLAS Experiment (2009-present)
ATLAS is one of the main general-purpose experiments collecting data at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Chris Hawkes coordinates the Birmingham top and heavy flavour physics group.
BaBar Experiment (1998-2009)
BaBar was an experiment to study the difference between the properties of matter and antimatter (CP violation). It was based at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in California. A deeper comprehension of CP violation is a major goal of modern particle physics, in part because this is necessary to understand why the universe is dominated by matter, with hardly any antimatter remaining from the Big Bang. BaBar recorded the decays of about half a billion B particles, each accompanied by the decay of an anti-B particle. By measuring and contrasting the B and anti-B properties it was possible to investigate CP violation.
Chris Hawkes led the Birmingham BaBar Group, which in collaboration with other BaBar-UK groups studied charmless three-body B decays, an important class of rare B decays that was crucial to BaBar's overall programme of B physics. Analysis of the three-body final state (Dalitz-plot analysis), allowed a study of the B decay mechanisms at the amplitude level, leading to a probe of the quantum interference between different decay paths, which is sensitive to the CP violation involved. Results were published from several different charmless three-body B decay channels.
OPAL Experiment
OPAL was one of four experiments based at the Large Electron Positron (LEP) collider at CERN, which collected data from 1989-2000. OPAL studied a wide range of particle physics topics, but its main goal, and Chris Hawkes’ area of specialisation, was precise measurement of the properties of the electroweak gauge bosons, Z and W, which are responsible for mediating the weak interaction. These provide a highly significant and sensitive probe of higher-order electroweak corrections. He contributed in particular to measurements of the mass and decay width of the Z boson, both from analysis of OPAL data and also through the LEP Energy Group, who were responsible for calibrating the LEP beam energy, the limiting factor in determination of the Z mass. Chris Hawkes was OPAL's Physics Coordinator for a year in 1994-5.
- University of Birmingham, (1998-)
- PPARC Advanced Fellow, University of Cambridge, 1995-1998
- Fellow and Staff Physicist, CERN, Geneva, Switzerland, 1989-1995
- Research Fellow, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA, 1985-1989
- Postgraduate student, University of Oxford, 1982-1985