Burton Richter, Storage Rings,
and the J/psi Particle
Resources with Additional
Information · Honors · Interviews
Credit: P.A. Moore, SLAC
National Accelerator Laboratory
"After receiving his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT] in 1952 and 1956, respectively, [Burton Richter] accepted a post-doctoral position at Stanford University's High Energy Physics Laboratory. There he was seized with the idea to test the accepted theory of Quantum Electrodynamics by several methods. One of these approaches was the use of electron-electron storage rings at Stanford. That interest in storage rings persisted after he joined the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) Faculty. After heading one of SLAC's research groups, he gathered a team promoting the construction of the … SPEAR, … [a high energy, high intensity] electron-positron storage ring."1
SPEAR was built with "the support of the … U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. [Richter's] team used the machine to discover a subatomic particle in 1974 which they called psi particle. A team led by Samuel Ting [and using the facilities] at Brookhaven National Laboratory made the same discovery independently and called it the J particle."2 Richter and Ting were awarded the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery, now "called the J/psi, that helped verify the existence of the charmed quark and bolstered the theoretical picture - called the Standard Model - that explains nature's fundamental particles and how they interact."2
"After serving two years as [SLAC's] Technical Director, [Richter] became Director … from 1984 through 1999. During his tenure, SLAC prospered and broadened its interests into photon science by incorporating the synchrotron laboratory into its structure."1
"[Richter] is now director emeritus of SLAC, Paul Pigott Professor in the Physical Sciences Emeritus at Stanford University, and senior fellow at the university's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. … [He] has devoted increasing time to issues related to energy and sustainable development."2
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Resources with Additional Information
Additional information about Burton Richter, storage rings, and the J/psi particle is available in electronic documents and on the Web.
Documents:
An Experiment on the Limits of Quantum Electro-dynamics, DOE Technical Report, June 1959
Design Considerations for High Energy Electron -- Positron Storage Rings, DOE Technical Report, November 1966
Inclusive Yields of pi+, pi-, K+, and K- from H2 Photoproduced at 18 GeV at Forward Angles, DOE Technical Report, 1971
Discovery of a Narrow Resonance in e+e- Annihilation, Physical Review Letters 33, December 1974
Total Hadron Cross Section, New Particles, and Muon Electron Events in e+e- Annihilation at SPEAR, DOE Technical Report, January 1976
From the psi to charm: The experiments of 1975 and 1976 (Nobel Lecture), Reviews of Modern Physics 49, April 1977
Forty-five Years of e+e- Annihilation Physics: 1956 to 2001, DOE Technical Report, August 1984
Charting the Course for Elementary Particle Physics, DOE Technical Report, February 2007
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