Patricia Burchat (born 1958) is the Gabilan Professor of Physics at Stanford University who researches

experimental particle physics Particle physics or high energy physics is the study of fundamental particles and forces that constitute matter and radiation. The fundamental particles in the universe are classified in the Standard Model as fermions (matter particles) and b ...

and

cosmology Cosmology () is a branch of physics and metaphysics dealing with the nature of the universe. The term ''cosmology'' was first used in English in 1656 in Thomas Blount's ''Glossographia'', and in 1731 taken up in Latin by German philosophe ...

. She is interested in mapping

dark matter Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe. Dark matter is called "dark" because it does not appear to interact with the electromagnetic field, which means it does not ab ...

in the universe, and understanding the nature of

dark energy In physical cosmology and astronomy, dark energy is an unknown form of energy that affects the universe on the largest scales. The first observational evidence for its existence came from measurements of supernovas, which showed that the unive ...

. She was named a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2001, and a

Guggenheim Fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

in 2005. In 2013 she became a fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsi ...

Early life and education

Born in 1958, Burchat grew up in

Barry's Bay Barry's Bay is a community in the township of Madawaska Valley, Ontario, Canada, located two hours west of Ottawa on the shores of Kamaniskeg Lake, with a 2016 population of 1,259. History The Algonquin people named the area Kuaenash Ne-ishi ...

, Ontario, Canada, and attended

Madawaska Valley District High School Madawaska Valley District High School (MVDHS) is a public high school situated in the village of Barry's Bay, Ontario. It is managed by Renfrew County District School Board. The school was opened in 1967, and has been operating as the public high ...

. In 1981 she graduated with a B.S. in applied science and engineering from the University of Toronto, and earned a Ph.D. in physics at Stanford University in 1986.

Career

Burchat held a postdoctoral fellowship at the

University of California, Santa Cruz The University of California, Santa Cruz (UC Santa Cruz or UCSC) is a public land-grant research university in Santa Cruz, California. It is one of the ten campuses in the University of California system. Located on Monterey Bay, on the edge ...

from 1986 to 1988, after which she joined the faculty until 1995. She has been a member of the Stanford Physics faculty since 1995, and served as the chair of the department from 2007 to 2010.

Research

Burchat has been a member of multiple particle physics experiments, including the MarkII experiment at the

SLAC SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a United States Department of Energy National Laboratory operated by Stanford University under the programmatic direction of the U.S. Departme ...

Linear Collider A linear particle accelerator (often shortened to linac) is a type of particle accelerator that accelerates charged subatomic particles or ions to a high speed by subjecting them to a series of oscillating electric potentials along a linear bea ...

and the E791 experiment at

Fermilab Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy United States Department of Energy National Labs, national laboratory specializing in high-energy parti ...

. She was a founding member of the

BaBar experiment The BaBar experiment, or simply BaBar, is an international collaboration of more than 500 physicists and engineers studying the subatomic world at energies of approximately ten times the rest mass of a proton (~10 GeV). Its design was motivat ...

at SLAC which explored fundamental particle interactions, especially the

weak interaction In nuclear physics and particle physics, the weak interaction, which is also often called the weak force or weak nuclear force, is one of the four known fundamental interactions, with the others being electromagnetism, the strong interact ...

. In these experiments she researched Z bosons as the carriers of the

, heavy neutral

lepton In particle physics, a lepton is an elementary particle of half-integer spin (spin (physics), spin ) that does not undergo strong interactions. Two main classes of leptons exist: electric charge, charged leptons (also known as the electron-li ...

semileptonic decay In particle physics the semileptonic decay of a hadron is a decay caused by the weak force in which one lepton In particle physics, a lepton is an elementary particle of half-integer spin ( spin ) that does not undergo strong interaction ...

of charm

meson In particle physics, a meson ( or ) is a type of hadronic subatomic particle composed of an equal number of quarks and antiquarks, usually one of each, bound together by the strong interaction. Because mesons are composed of quark subparticle ...

s, charm mixing, CP violations in

B meson In particle physics, B mesons are mesons composed of a bottom antiquark and either an up (), down (), strange () or charm quark (). The combination of a bottom antiquark and a top quark is not thought to be possible because of the top quark's s ...

decays, and differences in the way

matter In classical physics and general chemistry, matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume. All everyday objects that can be touched are ultimately composed of atoms, which are made up of interacting subatomic par ...

and

antimatter In modern physics, antimatter is defined as matter composed of the antiparticles (or "partners") of the corresponding particles in "ordinary" matter. Antimatter occurs in natural processes like cosmic ray collisions and some types of radio ...

evolved in time. Burchat has also been interested in investigating the cosmological evolution of the Universe. She joined the international community developing the

Large Synoptic Survey Telescope The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, previously referred to as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), is an astronomical observatory currently under construction in Chile. Its main task will be carrying out a synoptic astronomical survey, the Le ...

, aiming to study gravitational bending of light by

and the evolution of

. Her 2008 TED talk, "Shedding light on dark matter", explores these two components making up about 96 percent of the universe..

References

External links

Official website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Burchat, Patricia 1958 births 21st-century American physicists Living people Particle physicists University of Toronto alumni Canadian women physicists People from Renfrew County Canadian physicists Fellows of the American Physical Society Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Stanford University School of Humanities and Sciences alumni Stanford University Department of Physics faculty

Early life and education

Career

Research

See also

References

External links