The J/psi as a Tool for Particle Physics
Rob Harr
Wayne State University
Abstract
When discovered in 1974, the J/psi revolutionized the field of
particle physics. In current experiments, the J/psi is finding use as
a tool to explore the frontiers of our knowledge. The HERA-B
experiment at DESY in Hamburg, Germany is designed to exploit
properties of the J/psi to cull them out of the sea of common
interactions, in particular its decay to muon pairs. We built a
sophisticated muon detector to sense these decays and provide a
trigger for the overall experiment. During 2000 the experiment took
its first physics data including a substantial sample of J/psi's. I
will discuss the analyses now being done with this data.