Dr. Jake Bennett from the  Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Mississippi will present: "Searching for New Particles with the Belle II Detector".

At its heart, experimental physics is concerned with explaining the world around us through the careful acquisition and study of information. My particular field, experimental elementary particle physics, is focused on understanding the universe at its most basic level by studying the fundamental building blocks of matter. These subatomic particles interact with each other in complex and sometimes very strange ways that make a qualitative description of them rather challenging. Scientific collaborations made up of physicists and engineers from all over the world are dedicated to building massive detectors with which to study subatomic particles and their interactions. One of the most anticipated of these projects is the Belle II experiment, which started taking data last year at the KEK national accelerator facility in Tsukuba, Japan. Belle II is designed to record massive amounts of data to allow physicists to study highly suppressed reactions that may give clues to new particles and interactions beyond the Standard Model of particle physics. I will introduce some of the basic concepts of particle physics, including how we gather information, and discuss a few of its more exotic aspects.

Cost: Free!

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