ALORA & BRITTAN ARRIVE IN CALIFORNIA!

Our month long separation is finally over!!!!!!!!

Waiting for them to arrive I calculated an interesting stat: Zara has visited exactly half of the states in the US before her first birthday. (Specifically AL, AZ, AR, CA, CO, GA, IL, KS, KY, LA, MD, MS, MO, NV, NM, NC, OH, OK, PA, SC, TN, TX, UT, VA and WV). Now that's some travelling, baby.

The LST modules in CEH as viewed from above.

Well, here comes another one of those technical blogs, so feel free to skip the text and just look at the pictures of cool toys if you get bored. As part of my BaBar work at SLAC I'm conducting tests on the Limited Streamer Tube (LST) modules in the old Collider Experimental Hall (CEH). In CEH is a huge concrete pit where the old Mark-II and SLD detectors still sit like giant sarcophagi which were once the center of human endeavors but now present interest only to historians and future archaeologists. Mark-II dates back to the 1970s when SLAC was running at the highest energies of any particle detector in the world and it was here that the charm and bottom quarks were discovered. The SLD dates from the eighties and nineties when SLAC's high energy program had already shifted toward pushing the statistical rather than energy envelope, that is collecting a large volume of data at energies somewhat lower than the largest accelerators in the world. BaBar represents a culmination of this trajectory as it runs at the same energy that the Mark-II ran at, but we're amassing hundreds of millions rather than just hundreds of events. BaBar is also housed in a new building.

In the CEH pit, however, there is still enough space available to set up and test the hundreds of LST modules. Basically, each LST module contains 8 PVC tubes with a wire running down the center of each. The atmosphere inside the tubes is a mixture of Argon, Isobutane and Carbon Dioxide. The interior of the tube is painted with a special

Inside an LST module.

black paint that allows us to set up a 5500 V difference between the wire and the interior surface of the tube. These tubes detect high energy particles passing through them by what is called the avalanche effect. A particle passes through the gas, ionizing a few atoms. Then the electric field draws the electrons thus released toward the wire. When an electron gets close to the wire, it gains enough energy to cause an "avalanche" of ionization that releases millions of electrons. These electrons reach the wire and form the signal we detect. Right now the LSTs are being bombarded by naturally occuring cosmic rays from above, and we are using these cosmics to take measurements of the number of particles the LSTs detect at various voltages around 5500 V. Basically, if a tube is set up properly, there should be a plateau around 5500 V so that if the voltage varies a little from this value we don't miss some particles or pick up fake signals. If all goes well we'll insert the modules into BaBar in August.

A singles rate plateau curve from measurements we took last week (100 s of cosmics per data point).
Notice the nice plateau around 5500 V.

Oh, the joys of big boy toys . . .

Boodle's new record: 3 steps, tonight trying to touch my computer as I moved it away from her.

Driving home from SLAC tonight I had an interesting and inevitable conversation with Maxwell:
Maxwell: Daddy, I wan go home.
Me: We're going back home to our new apartment.
Maxwell: No. I wan go back to my house.
Cara: The apartment is our home now, for a year while we live in California.
Maxwell: No Caluforna. I wan go back to my house.

It's kinda tough for the little guy to understand, but trips to the park help alot. As long as he knows we're going back to his house in Tennessee at some point he seems to be okay. I wonder how well he'll remember it though.

Oh, and now that we're in our apartment Cara has posted a blog she wrote earlier on her first impressions of California.

The Evil Runner

25 June 2006 This morning was very busy. At 8 AM I ran in the Presidio 5K in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge - but it was way too foggy to see most of it. I finished in 26:09, but I think most of that can be attributed to running in the cool morning fog over flat ground instead of the hilly courses I've hitherto run in southern humidity. Nevertheless, I did actually run the race from start to finish without stopping which is a first. Having finally suceeded in my goal of an under 30 minute 5K, I have set a new goal of under twenty minutes. This means running just over six minute miles which would put me back in the range I ran at in high school. I don't know that I can do much better than that, so I guess then I'll have to start running 10Ks. There are some really insane competitions you can enter here, like the 13 miles through the mountains that is being run tomorrow or a swim from Alcatraz to San Francisco and then run across the Golden Gate Bridge next month - but those are a bit out of my league. The point is, there is plenty of grow room for me to stay entertained for at least the next few years staying healthy. Uncle Bob made a good point when I visited him a couple weeks ago though. He got so into training that he was doing a 5 hour run up into the Sierra Nevada every day trying to better his time by a few seconds. As he put it, that was a little nuts. At some point the diminishing returns just don't justify further investment. Nevertheless, I've always found Bob's physical prowess and the things he's achieved with it over the years inspirational. While I'll probably never climb mountains, much less Everest, it is good for someone who's happiest with his nose in a book to be reminded to develop his physique as well.

After the race, we dashed downed to Sunnyvale to sign the lease on our new apartment. As with all rental property there are really nice features that stand out and really crappy details that they haven't invested any money in. The carpet is brand new, but the outlets aren't grounded. There are new counters but the oven and dishwasher are tiny. The pool and exterior are well maintained but the screens fall out with the slightest touch. Und so weiter... I think we will be quite happy here for a year.

Cara beams in her new kitchen

Check out time at the Motel 6 was noon, so after unloading the car at the apartment we had to race up there to avoid paying for an extra night. Cara has been doing some birthday shopping for our two July birthdays, so we had a second carload of stuph to get back at the hotel. After all that hurrying we were able to stop, relax in the pool outside our apartment, and meet some of our neighbors. Shreelaekhe, who is four and can spell her name, lives right by the pool and was very interested in what we were doing. She and Maxwell threw a ball around while she told us about how she was going to Target. Zara, in the absense of furniture, has decided she doesn't really need to hold onto anything to walk anyway. Still no more than one step at a time though...

This morning we got up early and headed down 17 toward Santa Cruz. It was a very foggy morning which blocked the scenic vistas we might have seen driving over the Mountains. Cara was very excited to drive across the famous San Andreas fault again, but a bit disappointed that the exact location wasn't marked along the freeway. Since we got to Santa Cruz at 8:30, we thought we'd head down to the boardwalk and check it out before it got too busy. Unfortunately, we were too late! The beach and boardwalk were already packed with people, so we stopped for some Slurpees and then got on Route 1. Here again the fog was thick and completely blocked our views of everything, including the road ahead. Año Nuevo was our first stop of the day, where the young male elephant seals are now beaching themselves to avoid the adult males who arrive in July. These fascinating creatures swimming, sleeping and battling eachother captivated us for a long time; that is, except for the youngest member of our party, who was more interested in trying to eat the burrs she found between the planks in the walkway.

Maxwell gazes at the 3000 lb juvenile elephant seals lounging and playing.

After dining on sandwiches à la Honda for lunch we headed further up the coast to Pescadero to do some tidepooling. Maxwell took a nap along the way to process all the information he had just learned about elephant seals. This was just as well, because low tide was still a few hours off. Unfortunately, as a docent at Año Nuevo informed us, the low tides this time of year aren't even below the mean sea level. Maxwell extended his nap when we got there while Zara and I explored the beach. Then we all went down to go tidepooling! The docent was right, however, because places I remember walking as a kid were never above water as the tide ebbed and then started coming back in. We did see quite a lot of marine fauna though, from crabs, to anenomae, to pelicans, to starfish, to snails, to urchins, etc., and the sun came out just long enough to burn us. After a few hours trapsing around those rocks we were beat!

Zara enjoys climbing the rocks whilst Mommy and Maxwell inspect tidepools in the background.

Zara enjoys getting purple lips splashing in the Motel 6 pool ... and warming up in the sun afterwards.

If you had to give the data analysis I do at BaBar a name, it would be Meson Spectroscopy. Reorganizing my thoughts on the subject today I prepared this guide to the literature on the subject which some might find interesting. Without Alora & Brittan around and no classes to teach it is rather difficult to find an outlet for my pedagogical urges. Tomorrow we are going to take Maxwell tidepooling though ...

22 June 2006 With all this moving I haven't been keeping up with my running. Feeling my girth reasserting itself today I decided to acquire a goal and signed up to run a 5K near the Presidio in downtown San Fran this Sunday. Tonight I ran to see if I still could after two weeks of SLACking - 2.5 miles in 26 minutes is not too far off from where I was. Actually we clocked it after dinner, which was when we saw this little guy. His attempts to hide in the sewer failed, but he hung around long enough to unbuckle Maxwell for a better look. Maxwell really liked his little raccoon noise, and watched with eyes as wide as saucers as the raccoon tried in vain to back himself into the sewer. Tonight Cara also fed Zara rasberries, to which she naturally responded by blowing ... rasberries.

Palo Alto Nightlife

Everybody say ooooooooooooo!

June 21st, 2006 - T'day Cara met some nice moms with little kids at De Anza Park which is right nexto our new apartment complex in Sunnyvale. Her badgering of the complex has also led them to work hard getting our apartment ready to live in - they now tell us we can move in June 25th. Cara is especially excited about this because she is very tired of living in a hotel! Zara has mastered most English vowel sounds, but her favorite is "oo" (like in boot). She also understands much of what we say, which means no more talking freely in front of the baby. Her attempts to engage in speech so far have focussed on the basics. When she wants my attention she says da da da da da da da da da and then beams with pride when I respond to her calls. Tonight when I gave her a pacy in the car Cara told her say thank you daddy, and Zara looked at me and said aa-oo. She is also getting very close to success in her quest to make the elephant noise with her lips like dad.

So what does a BaBarian do all day? Firstoff, I'm training to be the DIRC Commissioner, my main duty to get my name on the author list. (One's rating in the academic world is roughly given by # of papers divided by coauthors times citations.) When the B mesons produced in BaBar decay, they produce a myriad of different particles and the DIRC is there to help identify them; in particular charged pions and kaons which are very hard to separate at low energies. Below is a screenshot of a DIRC calibration I checked yesterday. Each dot represents one of the 10,742 PMTs which detect the Cherenkov light.

Secondly, I'm training for the LST installation during the next down. BaBar is currently running 24/7 but in August it will go down for a few months for updates and repairs while SLAC works on building its next big project, the LCLS. The LSTs will give BaBar better ability to detect muons, which travel rather far through ordinary matter. You are actually being bombarded by muons created by cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere right now! Thirdly, I'm working on an anlysis of the X(3872), one of the new "particles" discovered actually by the competing B meson factory in Japan. Fourthly, as a physics grad student I still have alot of reading to do! The very excellent SLAC library is just a few hundred yards away though. Fifthly, I get to take shifts running the detector. There are daily operations meetings which I also have to attend as DIRC Commissioner. Below is a screenshot of the main panel which accesses all the parts of the experiment. As you can see there is alot more than just the DIRC and the LSTs...

Sixthly, there is an opportunity for me to become involved in testing the next generation DIRC for the ILC which may be built in a decade. This is a big maybe because the Standard model appears to be well understood except for one missing particle (the Higgs boson) and gravity is entirely too weak to be probed by the ILC. Nevertheless speculations about reasons why there might be something interesting have hitherto kept the funding going, and physicists are cautious about saying they really understand things because Nature likes to surprise us. In 1900 Maxwell's equations explained electromagnetism and light, Newton's laws explained mechanics, and thermodynamics was well established. Five years later after the discoveries of Planck and Einstein everything had to be rewritten. Most high energy physicists hope that a similar paradigm shift will occur when the LHC comes online in a few years, but if we only find the Higgs it will be very hard to justify spending billions to build the ILC.

I'm sure I'm forgetting some stuph, but hopefully that gives you an idea of what BaBarians do. Looking back I think some of the links are not accessible outside of SLAC, but hopefully there's enough to satisfy the really curious folks.

Braving 40 mph winds to visit the Point Reyes Lighthouse.

17 June 2006 This weekend we are staying at Kate & Howie's lovely Victorian Chateau in Berkeley. Even though Berkeley is only an hour away from Palo Alto it might as well be on the other side of the world. Last time I came was in February when the University was in session, so the place was chock full o' people and their litter. Now during the summertime it is much cleaner and I was truly surprised at the number of families with kids running around. Howie & Kate's place and indeed the whole town seems as if it were made for them to fit into, with avenues of coffee shops and bars amongst signs proclaiming that this is a "Nuclear Free Zone". They live on the first floor of a house which was converted into an apartment building.

The house dates from the early twentieth century (built in 1903) so it has some very nice features like glass-doored bookshelves built into the wall, but is also a bit rundown in places like the kitchen where the vinyl is nailed to the floor along the edges. The oven is even an old Norge, which the buttcrack-showing plumber Dan Akroyd played on SNL in the 70's was wont to remark "you don't see these around much anymore". They have created a perfect Victorian parlor though, complete with piano. Last night we sat there for a long time watching Zara the Terror seek out dangerous things and records to break while Howie and I strummed sleepily on guitars. Howie Cockrill, recently JD, has the bar exam in a month but was nice enough to take an evening's break from studying last night to hang out. Today he is back with his nose to the grindstone, as we lazily prepare to go for a swim.

Almost as good as out of the sandbox at home!

Tonight after work I drove Cara, who was freaking out a little, down to Sunnyvale where our apartment will be. We're going to live in a very big complex, and our apartment will be near a very nice playground. The girls school, which is less than a mile away, was under construction but also has nice playgrounds. About a mile in the other direction is the 7-Eleven which we will soon be frequenting for Slurpees. A stop at Trader Joe's clinched it; Cara will definitely be happy in California. Zara is also very happy now that she no longer has to sit in the car all day, but Maxwell, although generally upbeat about "Caluforna", has been a bit extra fussy. Anyone who would like to get a good idea of what my day is like at SLAC can watch an old episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. Seriously.

We've been very busy today; here are some pics:

Maxwell and Zara play with Kristen & friends on the Incline Beach while their nutty dad takes a dip in Lake Tahoe.

Today marks sort of the end to our Road Trip to Dinosaur National Monument with Maxwell & Zara. I say sort of because although we are sleeping in a nice bed tonight, it is not one of our own. We're staying at Auntie Dell's tonight before heading down to Palo Alto tomorrow.

... all packed up.

Today was our last day with Molly. Apartments in California aren't real pet friendly, so the Shepherds (Cara's friend Kara) will be keeping Molly for the year. When we dropped Molly off today she became the tenth dog of their house. No, they aren't insane; just three weeks ago they had a single dog named Pippen. Then Kara started feeding a stray that followed Lee home one day. They were unable to locate the dog's owner and started calling her India. Turns out India wasn't just really fat either - she was pregnant. This past weekend she gave birth to seven fat healthy pups. 1 -> 10 dogs in under a month! Molly has stayed there before and loves playing with the kids. She and Pippen were too busy sniffing around Spencer's room to even say goodbye to us today when we dropped her off. I'm sure she'll enjoy her yearlong vacation as well.

Today is our first sans jumelles. They left early this morning with Nanny and Poppy and we shant see them again til a month from now in California. Zara is celebrating by refusing to take a nap today (the past few days Alora & Brittan have danced Zara to sleep with their CD player). I know I miss them, but I am also a bit envious having never gotten to go play with my grandparents for a month over the summer. They will have fun in Alpharetta and Hilton Head and riding on an airplane out to San Francisco. It never ceases to amaze me how much life is like a symphony - repetitions on a theme incorporating new elements in each movement or generation. We are taking our Honda on a road trip to Dinosaur with two diapered babies - true in 1999 and 2006, this is a repetition on a short time scale between phases of our family. I am moving to take a great work opportunity in California where my sister lives with her husband of middle-eastern decent - true for me in 2006 and two decades earlier for my father, this is repetition on an intergenerational time scale. My family is migrating westward to seek a better life - true in 1850 and 2006, although we are crossing a continent and not an ocean like Ole and his family. All echos of a theme periodically appearing in the seemingly chaotic symphony of life. Mes jumelles sont mais une partie très importante du symphonie de notre famille.

Today I find myself ohne meine Zwillinge - those children who have accompanied me throughout my adult life. With Maxwell and Zara I feel like something of a grown-up, because my life as an adult predates them. Of course, I don't believe in grown-ups because I've never really met one. To be grown up implies a finality that exists only in terms of height, as we all continue to learn and develop throughout our lives. Nevertheless I've somehow always felt more equal to my two firstborn, whose childhood (as least according to liquor stores) overlapped with my own. Zara is wilder than Alora, and Maxwell is more conservative than Brittan, and they have four parents ... or at least two of the most helpful older siblings ever. Brittan & Alora's absence has already increased our parenting workload. Kinder sind der wichtigste Teil meines Lebens.

Today is a day different from others - Jeg er ikke med to barn. The symphony of life plays on even as individual instruments fade in and out; now the strings are playing as the trumpets are idle; here come the drums and cymbals; now the piano is featured; et cetera ... Our family is still building towards a cresendo while others are fading in denouement. Jeg elsker alle min barn. ¿Que es mi vida sin mi gemelos? Muy malo. Pero soy feliz también porque ellas son feliz y juegan con sus abuelos. No necesitan a sus padres porque son muy independiente ... como sus padres. Los quiero. FAMILIA BONA EST ET WOGSLAND IMPERAT

Right now Maxwell is chasing Molly around the house with a bungie cord saying "Cow, I trying to nurse you!" Molly doesn't particularly enjoy being poked in the belly with a bungie cord...

How Maxwell still has energy to be such a nutter is beyond me. Today Aunt Nancy & Uncle Ken took him and his three sisters for a picnic and hiking around Lookout Mountain. They tromped around while I took Cara on her first whitewater rafting trip down the Ocoee River. We went with a GA Tech alumni group and had a very good guide from High Country Adventures. Cara loved it and was not fatally wounded as her mother feared she would be on those class IV rapids. Needless to say we would prefer a nice quiet evening rather than Maxwell & Zara's current state of insanity. At least the two big ones are asleep.

Playing computer games is more fun without furniture.

Cara's obsessive tendencies come in handy when spackling...

Maxwell is developing into quite an interesting character. Yesterday we were in the van eating lunch when Alora failed to open up a ketchup packet enough causing ketchup to shoot all over her. Maxwell, who sits next to her, remarked "now I know that ketchup can pee".

As with many two-year-olds, Maxwell is rather fixated on dinosaurs. Most of his imaginary games involve him as sharptooth chasing his sisters or him being chased by an imaginary sharptooth. Zara thinks that he is the funniest person on the face of the earth, and is often laughing so hysterically that she can hardly crawl away from "sharptooth". Alora and Brittan have gotten a little tired of the game though, because sharptooth likes to bite his larger prey. About two weeks ago I told Maxwell that we'd be stopping at Dinosaur National Monument on the way out to California. Everyday he now asks if today is that fabled day when he will "go see dinosaur". He is trying to learn as much as he can about the place before he goes: "I pet sharptooth?", "Sharptooth not real?", "Sharptooth not eat me?", "I see real dinosaur?" Maxwell is trying to apply the known dichotamy of real and imaginary to the actual one of alive and extinct and becoming rather confused. How can dinosaurs be real and yet unpettable? Seeing the bones in situ and touching extracted ones will no doubt help to resolve this.

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