Christopher T. Hill
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Christopher T. Hill (born June 19, 1951) is an American theoretical physicist at the
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics. Since 2007, Fermilab has been operat ...
who did undergraduate work in physics at
M.I.T. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the m ...
(B.S., M.S., 1972), and graduate work at
Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...
(Ph.D., 1977,
Murray Gell-Mann Murray Gell-Mann (; September 15, 1929 – May 24, 2019) was an American physicist who received the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles. He was the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Theoretical ...
). Hill's Ph.D. thesis, "Higgs Scalars and the Nonleptonic Weak Interactions" (1977) contains one of the first detailed discussions of the two-Higgs-doublet model and its impact upon weak interactions. Hill is an originator of the idea that the Higgs boson is composed of top and anti-top quarks. This emerged from the concept of the
top quark The top quark, sometimes also referred to as the truth quark, (symbol: t) is the most massive of all observed elementary particles. It derives its mass from its coupling to the Higgs Boson. This coupling y_ is very close to unity; in the Standard ...
infrared fixed point In physics, an infrared fixed point is a set of coupling constants, or other parameters, that evolve from initial values at very high energies (short distance) to fixed stable values, usually predictable, at low energies (large distance). This usu ...
, which predicted (1981) that the top quark would be very heavy, contrary to most popular ideas at the time. The fixed point prediction lies within 20% of the observed
top quark The top quark, sometimes also referred to as the truth quark, (symbol: t) is the most massive of all observed elementary particles. It derives its mass from its coupling to the Higgs Boson. This coupling y_ is very close to unity; in the Standard ...
mass (1995). This implies that the top quarks are strongly coupled at very short distances and can form a composite Higgs boson, and led to top quark condensates,
topcolor Topcolor is a model in theoretical physics, of dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking in which the top quark and anti-top quark form a composite Higgs boson by a new force arising from massive "top gluons". The solution to composite Higgs model ...
, and also
dimensional deconstruction In theoretical physics, dimensional deconstruction is a method to construct ''4''-dimensional theories that behave as higher-dimensional theories in a certain range of higher energies. The resulting theory is a gauge theory whose gauge group is a di ...
, which is a renormalizable, lattice description of extra dimensions of space. The composite Higgs binding mechanism may be gravitation, which improves the agreement of the fixed point with the top quark mass, and predicts that there exist many sequential, heavier Higgs bosons with large couplings to all quarks and leptons. This may explain the puzzle of the many small parameters in the standard model. Several new heavy Higgs bosons, such as the b-quark Higgs bound state, may be accessible to the LHC in the process pp \rightarrow H_b\rightarrow b\bar (b and anti-b quark). Hill coauthored (with Elizabeth H. Simmons) a comprehensive review of strong dynamical theories which has shaped many of the experimental searches for new physics at the
Tevatron The Tevatron was a circular particle accelerator (active until 2011) in the United States, at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (also known as ''Fermilab''), east of Batavia, Illinois, and is the second highest energy particle collider ...
and LHC. Heavy-light mesons contain a heavy quark and a light anti-quark, and display remarkable chiral dynamics (see
chiral symmetry breaking In particle physics, chiral symmetry breaking is the spontaneous symmetry breaking of a chiral symmetry – usually by a gauge theory such as quantum chromodynamics, the quantum field theory of the strong interaction. Yoichiro Nambu was awar ...
). Hill co-developed the theory which correctly predicted an abnormally long-lived resonance, the D_s^*(2317) and numerous decay modes which have been confirmed by experiment. He has also done extensive work on topological interactions and, with collaborators, obtained the full Wess-Zumino-Witten term for the Standard Model, including pseudoscalars, spin-1 vector mesons, and W^\pm + Z^0 . This revealed new anomalous interactions such as \nu + X \rightarrow \nu+ \gamma + X where X is a heavy nucleus. Hill is an originator of cosmological models 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 univ ...
and
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 a ...
based upon ultra-low mass bosons associated with neutrino masses and was first to propose that the cosmological constant is connected to the neutrino mass, as \Lambda\sim m_\nu^4 . He has also developed modern theories of the origin of ultra-high-energy nucleons and neutrinos from grand unification relics, such as cosmic strings. With Graham Ross he has focused more recently on spontaneously broken scale symmetry (or
Weyl symmetry :''See also Wigner–Weyl transform, for another definition of the Weyl transform.'' In theoretical physics, the Weyl transformation, named after Hermann Weyl, is a local rescaling of the metric tensor: :g_\rightarrow e^g_ which produces anoth ...
), where the scale of gravity ( Planck mass) and the inflationary phase of the ultra-early universe are generated together as part of a unified phenomenon dubbed "inertial symmetry breaking." Hill is Distinguished Scientist Emeritus at
Fermilab Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics. Since 2007, Fermilab has been opera ...
, former Head of the Theoretical Physics Department (2005 - 2012) and a Fellow of the American Physical Society (since 1989). (search on year=1989 and institution=Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) He has co-authored three popular books with Nobel laureate
Leon Lederman Leon, Léon (French) or León (Spanish) may refer to: Places Europe * León, Spain, capital city of the Province of León * Province of León, Spain * Kingdom of León, an independent state in the Iberian Peninsula from 910 to 1230 and again f ...
about physics and cosmology, and the commissioning of the Large Hadron Collider.


Books

* ''Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe,'' Christopher T. Hill and
Leon M. Lederman Leon Max Lederman (July 15, 1922 – October 3, 2018) was an American experimental physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988, along with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, for research on neutrinos. He also received the Wolf P ...
, Prometheus Books (200

* ''Quantum Physics for Poets,'' Christopher T. Hill and
Leon M. Lederman Leon Max Lederman (July 15, 1922 – October 3, 2018) was an American experimental physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988, along with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, for research on neutrinos. He also received the Wolf P ...
, Prometheus Books (201

* ''Beyond the God Particle,'' Christopher T. Hill and
Leon M. Lederman Leon Max Lederman (July 15, 1922 – October 3, 2018) was an American experimental physicist who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1988, along with Melvin Schwartz and Jack Steinberger, for research on neutrinos. He also received the Wolf P ...
, Prometheus Books (201

* Google Scholar Profile of Christopher T. Hil


References


External links


Fermilab Theoretical Physics Department
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hill, Christopher T. Living people 21st-century American physicists Particle physicists Fellows of the American Physical Society California Institute of Technology alumni 1951 births MIT Department of Physics alumni People associated with Fermilab