physics

Pierre Darriulat

Pierre Darriulat is a physics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Pierre Darriulat rather than just read about it. In short: Pierre Darriulat (born 17 February 1938) is a French experimental particle physicist. As staff member at CERN, he contributed in several prestigious experiments.

Key takeaways

Pierre Darriulat belongs to physics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Pierre Darriulat to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Pierre Darriulat from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Pierre Darriulat (born 17 February 1938) is a French experimental particle physicist. As staff member at CERN, he contributed in several prestigious experiments. He was the spokesperson of the UA2 collaboration from 1981 to 1986, during which time the UA2 collaboration, together with the UA1 collaboration, discovered the W and Z bosons in 1983.

Education Darriulat studied at École Polytechnique. He served his military service in the French Navy, and between 1962 and 1964 he spent two years at Berkeley, United States, before receiving a PhD from the University of Orsay in 1965 on research done at Berkeley.

Career and research Until the mid 1960s, Darriulat did his research on nuclear physics and took part in several experiments on scattering of deuterons and alpha particles. Darriulat was employed at Saclay Nuclear Research Centre, France. After a few years at CERN as visiting physicist and CERN fellow, Darriulat was offered a tenure position in 1971. For six years he was a member of the research group of Carlo Rubbia, that made essential contributions to the physics of CP violation in the neutral kaon sector. He then took part in experiments conducted at the Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR) — the world’s first hadron collider. Using his experience from the ISR, Darriulat and collaborators proposed the UA2 experiment in 1978 at the commissioned Proton-Antiproton Collider — a modification of the Super Proton Synchrotron. Darriulat acted as the spokesperson for the experiment from 1981 to 1986. In 1983 the UA2 collaboration, together with the UA1 collaboration, discovered the W and Z boson, an important milestone in modern particle physics, as it confirmed the electroweak theory. The discovery led to the 1984 Nobel Prize in Physics being awarded to Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer for their decisive contributions to the design and construction of the proton-antiproton collider. Prior to the discovery the UA2 collaboration made the first observation of emission of quarks and gluons in the form of hadronic jet – an important experimental support of the theory of quantum chromodynamics. From 1987 to 1994 Darriulat held the position as Research Director at CERN, during which time the Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP) began its operation. Subsequent, Darriulat turned to solid state physics, conducting research in the field of superconductivity on the property of niobium films. In 2000, Darriulat launched a research group in Vietnam, in which he is still active. The group does research in the field of astrophysics. They first did research on extreme energy cosmic rays in collaboration with the Pierre Auger Observatory. Subsequently, the group turned to millimeter/submillimeter radio astronomy, studying stellar physics and galaxies of the early Universe. The group is now the Department of AstroPhysics (DAP) of the Vietnam National Space Center, all part of the larger Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology. In 2011 Darriulat gave a talk The ISR Legacy at the international symposium on subnuclear physics held in Vatican City.

Awards and honors 1973 Prix Joliot-Curie 1986 Member of the French Academy of Sciences 1987 Grand Prix de l’Académie des Sciences: prix du Commissariat à l’énergie atomique 1985 Award from the French Academy of Sciences 1997 Nominated for the French Legion of Honour 2008 André Lagarrigue Award 2014 Vietnamese Friendship Medal 2016 Phan Chau Trinh Prize for education and culture Honorary degree from the University of Pavia

Most notable publications Darriulat, P. (2007). Réflexions sur la science contemporaine. Les Ulis: EDP Sciences Darriulat, P. and Chohan, V. (2017). The CERN Antiproton Programme: Imagination and Audacity Rewarded. In: Technology Meets Research. Hamburg: World Scientific, pp. 179-215 Darriulat P. and Di Lella, L. (2015). Revealing Partons in Hadrons> From the ISR til the SPS Collider. In: 60 years of CERN experiments and discoveries. World Scientific, pp. 313-341 UA2 Collaboration (1982), 'Observation of single isolated electrons of high transverse momentum in events with missing transverse energy at the CERN ppbar collider', Phys. Lett. B , vol. 122, no 5, pp. 476-485 UA2 Collaboration (1983), ‘Evidence for Z0 ---> e+ e- at the CERN anti-p p Collider’, Phys. Lett. B, vol. 129, no. 1-2, pp. 130-140 UA2 Collaboration, 1987, ‘Measurement of the Standard Model Parameters from a Study of W and Z Bosons’, Phys. Letter. B, vol. 186, pp. 440-451 UA2 Collaboration, 1982, ‘Observation of Very Large Transverse Momentum Jets at the CERN anti-p p Collider’, Phys. Lett. B, vol. 118, pp. 203-210 Darriulat, P. (2016), Looking at science and education in my second homeland, The Gioi, Viet Nam

References

External links The W and Z particles: a personal recollection (2004) Archived 2011-12-28 at the Wayback Machine Scientific publications of Pierre Darriulat on INSPIRE-HEP Current institution

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Pierre Darriulat

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Pierre Darriulat claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In physics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Pierre Darriulat before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Pierre Darriulat ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Pierre Darriulat

In research: Pierre Darriulat appears in physics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Pierre Darriulat in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Pierre Darriulat is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1938 births, French experimental physicists, French nuclear physicists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Pierre Darriulat outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Pierre Darriulat in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Pierre Darriulat means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Pierre Darriulat out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Pierre Darriulat in simple terms?

Pierre Darriulat (born 17 February 1938) is a French experimental particle physicist. As staff member at CERN, he contributed in several prestigious experiments.

Why does Pierre Darriulat matter?

Because it connects several physics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Pierre Darriulat?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Pierre Darriulat.