John Harris

John Harris's picture
D. Allan Bromley Professor Emeritus
WL-W 311
203-432-6106
john.harris@yale.edu
Research Website
Research Areas: 
Nuclear Physics
Research Type: 
Experimentalist
Research: 
The research interests of Professor John Harris are focused on understanding high energy density Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) created in relativistic collisions of heavy nuclei. QCD calculations on a lattice predict that a transition from normal nuclear or hadronic matter to a deconfined phase of matter consisting of strongly interacting quarks and gluons, known as the Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), will occur at extremely high energy densities above approximately 2 GeV/fm3. This corresponds to a temperature of 2 x 1012 Kelvin. Such energy densities are predicted to have existed a few microseconds after the Big Bang, are created in collisions of heavy nuclei at ultrarelativistic energies and may exist in the cores of neutron stars. Formation and discovery of the QGP is the primary purpose of ultrarelativistic nucleus-nucleus experiments at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island in New York and at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. John Harris was involved in the original proposal to initiate a nucleus-nucleus experimental program at CERN to search for a possible QGP phase transition, and has been an active member in the planning, conceptual design, construction, data acquisition and physics of ultrarelativistic nucleus-nucleus experiments NA35 and NA49 at CERN, and the STAR (Solenoidal Tracker at RHIC) experiment at Brookhaven. He was the founding spokesperson for STAR from 1991 until 2002. He is currently involved in the ALICE experiment at the LHC at CERN and has served as the National Coordinator for the ALICE-USA Collaboration, Chair and Deputy Chair of the ALICE Collaboration Board and on other boards in ALICE (e.g. Physics Board). Research activities focus on the use of hard scattering processes to identify the properties of the QGP utilizing heavy ions and the design of a comprehensive experiment for the forthcoming Electron Ion Collider.
Education: 
Ph.D., SUNY Stony Brook, 1978
Honors & Awards: 

Member Yale Science Council (2006-present, Chair 2008-present)
Robert Hofstadter Endowed Lectures (Stanford, 2007)
Top 40 Distinguished Alumni (Stony Brook, 2002)
Deputy Chair ALICE Collaboration Board (2011-present)
National Coordinator ALICE-USA Collaboration (2006-2012)
Founding Spokesman RHIC-STAR Experiment (1991-2002)
Fellow of American Physical Society (1996)
Humboldt Senior Prize (Frankfurt, 1995)

Selected Publications: 

Authored and Edited Books

Discoveries at the Frontiers of Science: From Nuclear Astrophysics to Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions, Chapter 20, A Confluence of Ideas and Experiments—A Tribute to Professor Walter Greiner, John W. Harris, Springer Nature Publishing, Switzerland, eds. J. Kirsch et al. (2020), pp 285-301. DOI:10.1007/978-3-030-34234-0_20; ISBN 978-3-030-34233-3 ISBN 978-3-030-34234-0 (eBook)

The Large Hadron Collider: Harvest of Run 1, Chapter 9, Heavy-Ion Physics at the LHC, Ralf Averbeck, John W. Harris and Björn Schenke, Springer International Publishing, Switzerland, ed. Thomas Schörner-Sadenius (2015) pp 355-420. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-15001-7_9; Print ISBN 978-3-319-15000-0; Online ISBN 978-3-319-15001-7.

Quark Matter 2012, Proceedings of the XXIII International Conference on Ultrarelativistic Nucleus‒Nucleus Collisions, Washington D.C. USA, 13–18 August 2012, Ed. Thomas Ullrich, Bolek Wysłouch and John W. Harris, Elsevier, Amsterdam (2013).

Structure and Dynamics of Elementary Matter, Chapter 1, Creating Bulk QCD Matter at RHIC, Kluwer Academic Publishers, eds. W. Greiner et al. (2004) pp. 1–18. DOI 10.1007/978-1-4020- John W. Harris, 2705-5; ISBN 978-1-4020-2446-7 ISBN 978-1-4020-2705-5 (eBook).

Proceedings of the 18th Winter Workshop on Nuclear Dynamics, Ed. R. Bellwied, J. Harris, R. Bellwied and W. Bauer, EP Systema, Debrecen, Hungary (2002).

Handbook of Physics, W. Benenson, John W. Harris and H. Stocker, Springer – NY (2002).

Handbook of Mathematics and Computational Science, John W. Harris and H. Stocker, Springer, NY (1998).

Proceedings of the 10th Winter Workshop on Nuclear Dynamics, John W. Harris, A. Mignerey and W. Bauer, World Scientific, Singapore (1994).

Quark Matter ‘95. Proceedings, 11th International Conference on Ultrarelativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions, Monterey, CA, USA, January 9–13, 1995., Ed. Arthur M. Poskanzer, J.W. Harris, L.S. Schroeder, LBL, Elsevier, Amsterdam (1995).

Proceedings of the 9th Winter Workshop on Nuclear Dynamics, John W. Harris, B. Back and W. Bauer, World Scientific, Singapore (1993).

Publications with More than 2000 Citations

Experimental and Theoretical Challenges in the Search for the Quark-Gluon Plasma: The STAR Collaboration’s Critical Assessment , J. Adams et al, (STAR), Nuc. Phys. A 757, Vol. 1-2 (2005) 102.

The ALICE experiment at the CERN LHC, K. Aamodt et al. (ALICE), Journal of Instrumentation 3 (08), S08002.

Long-range Angular Correlations on the Near and Away Side in p–Pb Collisions at √sNN = 5.02 TeV, B. Abelev, et al. (ALICE), Phys. Lett. B 719 (1), 29.

Evidence from d+Au Measurements for Final-State Suppression of High PT Hadrons in Au+Au Collisions at RHIC, J. Adams et al. (STAR), Phys. Rev. Lett. 91 (2003) 072304.

31 Additional Publications with More than 500 Citations from over 500 Total Publications

For full citation list see:  https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=WvaolBUAAAAJ