Professor
Professor Aida El-Khadra received her PhD. in 1989 from the University of California, Los Angeles, after receiving her diplom from Freie Universitaet, Berlin, Germany. She held postdoctoral research appointments at Brookhaven National Laboratory, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and the Ohio State Univerity before joining the Illinois faculty in 1995. El-Khadra is a fellow of the American Physical Society, a recipient of the Department of Energy's Outstanding Junior Investigator Award, and a Sloan foundation fellow. In addition to a number of other research and teaching awards she has also been named a Fermilab Distinguished Scholar. Service highlights include membership on the APS Division of Particles and Fields (DPF) executive committee (an elected position), APS fellowship committees, chair of the USQCD Scientific Program Committee and member of the USQCD Executive Committee, co-chair of the Muon g-2 Theory Initiative, as well as organizing and advisory committees for international workshops and conferences.
Prof. El-Khadra's area of research is theoretical particle physics. Her research focuses on the application of lattice Quantum Chromodynamics (also called the strong interactions) to phenomenologically interesting processes in flavor physics, which are relevant to the experimental effort at the so-called intensity frontier. She is a leader of one of the most successful collaborations working in Lattice Field Theory in the world, the Fermilab Lattice collaboration. Select highlights include the first quantitative determination of the the strong coupling from lattice QCD, a new formulation of heavy quarks on the lattice that is the foundation of many important, phenomenologically relevant lattice calculations, for example, predictions of the D and Ds meson decay constants, predictions of the shape of the semileptonic D-meson form factors, and lattice calculations of semileptonic B-meson form factors that yield the most precise determinations of the associated CKM matrix elements, Vcb and Vub to date. Other recent highlights are the most precise calculations of (a) the semileptonic Kaon form factor which improves upon our knowledge of the CKM matrix element Vus, (b) the complete set of semileptonic form factors for B-meson decays to pions, and kaons, yielding new interesting constraints on models of new physics, (c) the complete set of the neutral B and Bs meson mixing matrix elements, yielding the best-to-date constraints on Vtd, Vts, and their ratio, and (d) the first precise calculation of the strong isospin breaking corrections to the hadronic vacuum polarization contribution to the muon 's anomalous magnetic moment.
| Semester | Course | Outstanding |
|---|---|---|
| Fall 2018 | PHYS 213 |
The goal of the experiment, Fermilab Muon g-2, is to better understand the properties of muons, which are essentially heavier versions of electrons, and use them to probe the limitations of the Standard Model of particle physics. Specifically, physicists want to know about the muons’ “magnetic moment”—that is, how much do they rotate on their axes in a powerful magnetic field— as they race around the magnet?
Theorists thought these digital laboratories were still a year or two away from becoming competitive with the collider experiments in approximating the effects quarks have on other particles. But in February a European collaboration shocked the community with a preprint claiming to nail a magnetic property of a particle called the muon to within 1% of its true value, using novel noise reduction techniques. “You might think of it as throwing down the gauntlet,” said Aida El-Khadra, a high-energy theorist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Aida El-Khadra, a professor of physics specializing in high-energy theory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is one of four scientists nationwide recently appointed Fermilab Distinguished Scholars.
Fermilab Distinguished Scholars are rotating multi-year appointments for U.S. particle theorists in the Fermilab Theoretical Physics Department. The Fermilab Director appoints Scholars for a term of two years, with the possibility of a one-year extension by mutual agreement. Fermilab Distinguished Scholars are expected to spend at least one month total per year in residence at Fermilab. During the term of their appointment, Scholars have a Fermilab affiliation and the same research opportunities and support infrastructure as Fermilab scientists. Scholars are encouraged to propose and/or participate in thematic programs organized with members of Fermilab's Theoretical Physics and Astrophysics Departments.
A team of theoretical high-energy physicists in the Fermilab Lattice and MILC Collaborations has published a new high-precision calculation that could significantly advance the indirect search for physics beyond the Standard Model (SM). The calculation applies to a particularly rare decay of the B meson (a subatomic particle), which is sometimes also called a “penguin decay” process.