This summer, TRIUMF welcomed the return of particle physics theorist Dr. Stephen Godfrey. A familiar face around TRIUMF, Dr. Godfrey arrived at the laboratory in early July to spend his sabbatical year with the TRIUMF Theory Group.
In 1984, after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, Dr. Godfrey first came to TRIUMF as a post doctoral fellow. Following up on some topics from his Ph.D. research, he worked on hadron spectroscopy, and it was during this time that he produced one of his most highly cited papers, "Properties of P-wave mesons with one heavy quark", published in the Physical Review Journal. He also started to work on collider phenomenology with John Ng, which he continues to work on and is relevant with the onset of the LHC era.
After his time at TRIUMF, he worked as a post-doc at Brookhaven National Laboratory and then as an Assistant Professor at the University of Guelph. In 1990, he secured a professorship at Carleton University in the Department of Physics, where he has taught and researched ever since. But his attraction to TRIUMF never quite wore off.
In 2002, Dr. Godfrey returned to the lab on a sabbatical. During this period experimenters started to discover new exotic mesons that were not understood by current models of hadron physics. "New puzzling states seemed to be discovered every day and many remain a mystery," commented Godfrey. "This was the start of what I would consider the most productive period of my career. It demonstrated that progress in our field depends on strong interactions between experiment and theory."
Between 2002 and 2003, he also spent time at the DESY laboratory in Germany and the Centre for the Subatomic Structure of Matter (CSSM) in Adelaide. He has also been a frequent contributor to TRIUMF seminars, lectures, and workshops over the past years, most recently in April, co-chairing, with Isabel Trigger, a workshop on Physics at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
Dr. Godfrey has returned to TRIUMF to work with the TRIUMF Theory Group and the ATLAS physics group (one experiment at the LHC project at CERN) to focus on his own research interest: particle-physics phenomenology. Particle-physics phenomenology sits at the interface of abstract theory and laboratory experiment. It deals with the application of theory to high-energy physics experiments and, inversely, attempts to take unexpected experimental results and uncover the underlying theories that could account for such results.
His focus within particle physics phenomenology ranges from hadron spectroscopy to physics beyond the Standard Model. This research is particularly timely and important now as the interaction between theoretical and experimental physics will be invaluable in understanding the LHC data as quickly as possible. Many theories of physics beyond the Standard Model predict the existence of extra bosons. Dr. Godfrey is studying how one could observe these objects at the LHC and how one could interpret the observations to determine the underlying theory - a research pursuit which will help answer some of the most basic questions about the nature of matter in the universe. His work in this area was recognized in 2006 with a Research Achievement Award from Carleton University.
When asked what drew him back to Canada's west coast and its national laboratory for particle and nuclear physics, Dr. Godfrey cited the theory group, including David Morrisey, a recently hired particle theorist, and the formation of the ATLAS physics group of experimentalists at TRIUMF. "Being able to surround myself with a group of colleagues who are all equally fascinated by and dedicated to studying LHC physics was an enticing environment for me," explained Godfrey. "Excitement for the LHC start-up is growing, new post-docs are arriving, and TRIUMF's efforts will strengthen Canada's position in LHC physics. I have enjoyed my time here so far and am looking forward to the coming months and the start-up of the LHC in the fall." For Godfrey, who enjoys the warmer climate and outdoor lifestyle, the prospect of returning to Vancouver was also an added bonus of the move west.
-- Meghan Magee, Communications Assistant