Frank J. Sciulli
Columbia University
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Primary Section: 13, Physics Membership Type:
Member
(elected 2009)
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Research Interests
As an experimental particle physicist, my work has primarily encompassed 1) delineating rules for quantum number changes in weak decays of strange particles; 2) studies of neutrino interactions with nucleons; (3) measuring the constituencies of nucleons with high energy neutrino and electron probes; and (4) searching for anomalies in lepton-nucleon interactions. In the 1960?s, I performed two experiments demonstrating the validity of proposed selection rules governing strangeness, electric charge, and weak charge (isospin) changes in strange particle weak decays. (Some prior incorrect evidence of their violation had been reported.) These rules were later recognized as essential properties of the quarks hypothesized to be constituents of all hadrons. In 1969, I initiated one of the earliest Fermilab experiments to measure the high energy interactions of neutrinos; we subsequently made an early definitive demonstration of the existence of Neutral Currents in the weak interactions. These activities led to two decades of collaborations (CCFR) performing neutrino experiments; in the process, we corroborated predicted properties of electroweak interactions, empirically demonstrated properties of the quarks and gluons to be as predicted in the Standard Model, and measured quark constituent distributions of nucleons. I helped form the ZEUS collaboration (DESY Lab in Hamburg) in 1985, leading the nine U.S. institutions who built major components for the detector. Continuing as an active member of the ZEUS collaboration during data-taking and analyses, my group has materially contributed to major results including discoveries of unanticipated quarkgluon properties of protons and new precise measurements of quark and gluon distributions (structure functions), as well as leading searches for a variety of non-Standard Model phenomena.
