Physics at Mount Holyoke

Howard Nicholson
Kennedy-Schelkunoff Professor of Physics

Office: Rm. 211 Kendade Hall
Phone: (413) 538-2234
E-mail: hnichols@mtholyoke.edu

Ph.D. Caltech 1971 (experimental high energy physics)
Ph.D. Thesis: Proton-antiproton annihilation into two charged meson final states between 0.7 and 2.4 GeV/c

Prof. Nicholson arrived at Mount Holyoke in 1971.

Current research:

Professor Nicholson works on a variety of projects with students depending on their interests.

For the past nine years I have been working with the BaBar collaboration at the Stanford Linear Accelerator. This collaboration consists of approximately 600 physicists and engineers. The primary purpose of the experiment is to study CP violation in B decays, but the experiment generates a lot of data, and charm mesons and tau mesons can also be studied. Currently I am looking for the tau neutrino mass limiting reaction tau decaying into charged kaon, K short and two pions which reconstruct to a mass close to the central value of the rho mass in the hope that we may be able to put more restrictive limits on the mass of the tau neutrino in direct decays.

Sample Publications:

The BABAR detector, BaBar Collaboration, Nuclear Instruments and Methods, Vol. A479, 1-116 (2002).

Observation of CP violation in the BO meson system, BaBar Collaboration, Physical Review Letters, Vol. 87, 091801 (2001).

Nuclear Transparency in Large Momentum Transfer Quasielastic Scattering, Physical Review Letters, Vol. 81, 5085 (1998). With 24 other authors of the Brookhaven EVA vollaboration.

Experimental Search for Neutrinoless Double-Beta Decay of 100Mo, Physical Review Letters, Vol. 71, 831-834 (1993). With M. Alston-Garnjost, B. L. Dougherty, R. W. Kenney, R. D. Tripp, J. M. Krivicich, C. S. Sutton, B. Dieterle, S. D. Foltz, J. Kang, C. P. Leavitt, R. A. Reeder, J. D. Baker, and A. J. Caffrey. .

Electron Backscattering from a Silicon Detector from 0.182 to 0.579 MeV, Nuclear Instruments and Methods, Vol. A248, 425-428 (1986). With A. Carrington and J. Krivicich.

Searchfor the S Meson, Physical Review Letters, Vol. 44, 1182-1185 (1980). With R. P. Hamilton, T. P. Pun, R. D. Tripp and D. M. Lazarus.

Antiproton-Proton Annihilation into Charged Pion and Kaon Pairs from 0.7 to 2.4 GeV Ie, Physical Review D, Vol. 7, 2572-2590 (1973). With B. C. Barish, J. Pine, A. V. Tollestrup, J. K. Yoh, C. Delorme, F. Lobkowicz, A. C. Melissinos, Y. Nagashima, A. S. Carroll and R. H. Phillips.