Tibor J. Herczeg
Professor, Emeritus
B.S. 1948 Budapest
D.Sc. 1959 Bonn
The so-called close or interacting binary stars (with
periods usually from 1-2 hours to 1-2 days) are important since by
monitoring their slow changes we may gain insight into the structure and
evolution of stellar systems. Close binaries have been studied at the OU
Observatory for nearly sixty years, concentrating on their orbital periods
which can be determined with an accuracy of 1 part in 
.
For such
studies the OU Observatory has about 20,000 archival plates at its
disposal, but recent research is mainly carried out by using the facilities
of national (Kitt
Peak) or international (CTIO in Chile) stattes. Close binaries and
eruptive variable stars (e.g. novae) are also studied in the UV and X-ray
regions from orbiting observatories. Present work is concentrated on
binaries with a compact component (e.g. neutron stars, black holes).
A rather different avenue of my research is drected toward historical studies in astronomy and astrophysics, using the exceptionally good library of the History of Science Collection at OU.
T. Herczeg, ``The Habitability of the Moon, a Historical Survey,'' Proc. of the Third Astrobiology Conference, Hawaii, Aug. 1999.
T. Herczeg and M. Maloney, ``On the X-ray Nova V404 Cygni'', AAVSO Spring Meeting, Boulder Colorado (1998).
T. Herczeg, ``On the Masses of Binary Systems with Compact Components'', 3rd Pacific Rim Conference, Chiang Mai, Thialand (1995).
George R. Kalbfleisch
Professor, Emeritus (1999)
Ph.D. 1961 Berkeley
B.S. 1952 Loyola
My research is in the area of experimental high-energy particle physics, particularly the study of the systematics of new particles. My past experience has involved the use of both bubble chamber and electronic counter techniques and the development of superconducting accelerator magnets at several of the national accelerator laboratories. I was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society for my discoveries of the first hyperonic beta decay, of the ninth psuedoscalar meson, the first direct observation of the electron- neutrino in muon decay and direct measurements of the velocities of neutrinos. I have been associated with Fermilab experiments E-653 and D0, and CLEO at Cornell.
Recent researches were the study of the systematics of particles possessing the properties of ``charm and beauty'', heavy neutrinos, and research and development of solid state microstrip detectors.
Current ``in-house'' research is a ``A New Search for Low Mass Magnetic Monopoles'' using samples from Fermilab's antiproton-proton collider. The experiment is Fermilab E-882, but is being carried out here in Oklahoma. A new detector and it's cryostat using superconducting detection loops at liquid helium temperature, read out with superconducting SQUIDs, has been in operation since 1997. Tests with simulated hardware show that single trapped monopoles can be detected with good signal to noise. A fuller account can be found on my web page (http://www.nhn.ou.edu/ grk> under ``Warsaw papers'' in the Monopole E-882 Search listing. Aluminum samples from D0 detector components were measured during summer 1999 and early winter 2000 and the forward calorimeter lead samples from CDF were measured this past summer 2000 and are in the process of being analyzed for their possible monopole content.
A paper on the DØ measurements has been submitted for publication. No monopoles were found. Cross-section limits (typically less than a picobarn) some one hundred times smaller than found in previous Fermilab searches were obtained, corresponding to mass limits greater than some 300 GeV or higher depending on the magnetic charge value assumed.
G. R. Kalbfleisch, K. A. Milton, M. G. Strauss, L. Gamberg, E. H. Smith, and W. Luo, ``Improved Experimental Limits on the Production of Magnetic Monopoles,'' OKHEP-00-04, hep-ex/0005005.
L. Gamberg, G. R. Kalbfleisch and K. A. Milton, ``Difficulties with Photonic Searches for Magnetic Monopoles,'' Foundations of Physics 30, 543 (2000).
B. Abbott, et al,``Search for heavy pointlike Dirac monopoles, '' Phys. Rev. Letters, 81, 524 (1998).
B. Abbott, et al,``A Measurement of the W Boson Mass at the Fermilab pbar-p Collider,'' Phys. Rev. Lett. 80, 3008 (1998).