Panofsky Prize Awarded for AGS Experiment 787

Doug Bryman, Laurie Littenberg, and Stew Smith have been awarded the American Physical Society's W.K.H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics for 2011 for their work on AGS Experiment 787. This prize is awarded annually to "recognize and encourage outstanding achievements in Experimental Particle Physics." The nomination for the prize reads in part:

"Bryman, Littenberg, and Smith were the driving force behind E787 and co-spokespersons for most of the duration of the experiment. They developed the instrumentation and analytical techniques to exploit the very intense kaon beams available starting in the 1980s to successfully observe this very rare decay. This groundbreaking experiment paved the way for a variety of followup K+→π+&#957&#957 proposals and experiments that continue to this day. The successful first observation of K+→π+&#957&#957 built on the experience of earlier efforts with a large acceptance, high resolution spectrometer with a hermetic 4π photon veto and waveform digitization to track the π→μ→ e decay chain. Smith was responsible for systems that provided high resolution measurement of the π+ energy and range, for a key part of the beam particle identification, the trigger, and the most important part of the hermetic photon veto. Bryman was responsible for the high resolution measurement of the π+ momentum, most of the beam tracking and beam particle identification, and key parts of the electronics, DAQ, and photon veto. Littenberg was responsible for the overall spectrometer, the π→μ→ e identification, and important parts of the trigger, electronics, DAQ, and photon veto. They led the development of E787's blind analysis critical to the measurement of this decay. Many of these techniques pioneered by E787 have been adopted by numerous other experiments."

Doug Bryman is the J.B. Warren Professor in the Physics Department of the University of British Columbia, Laurie Littenberg is a senior physicist at BNL, and Stew Smith is the Class of 1909 Professor of Physics and Dean of Research at Princeton University.

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