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The Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) experimental collaboration studies high energy particle collisions at the Tevatron, the world’s highest energy particle accelerator currently in operation. The goal is to discover the identity and properties of the particles that make up the universe and to understand the forces and interactions between those particles.
CDF is an international collaboration of about 600 physicists (from about 30 American universities and National laboratories and about 30 groups from universities and national laboratories from Italy, Japan, UK, Canada, Germany, Spain, Russia, Finland, France, Taiwan, Korea, and Switzerland). The CDF detector itself weighs 5000 tons , is about 12 meters in all three dimensions. The goal of the experiment is to measure exceptional events out of the billions of collisions in order to:
- Look for evidence for phenomena beyond the Standard Model of particle physics
- Measure and study the production and decay of heavy particles such as the Top and Bottom Quarks, and the W and Z bosons
- Measure and study the production of high-energy particle jets and photons
- Study other phenomena such as diffraction
The Tevatron collides protons and antiprotons at a center-of-mass energy of about 2 TeV. The very high energy available for these collisions makes it possible to produce heavy particles such as the Top quark and the W and Z bosons, which weigh much more than a proton (or antiproton). These heavier particles are identified through their characteristic decays. The CDF apparatus records the trajectories and energies of electrons, photons and light hadrons. Neutrinos do not register in the apparatus leading to an apparent missing energy. Other hypothetical particles might leave a missing energy signature, and some searches for new phenomena are based on that.
There is another experiment similar to CDF called D0 located at another point on the Tevatron ring.
