Frank Geurts

About

Frank Geurts is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Rice University in Houston, Texas. He earned his Ph.D. from Utrecht University in the Netherlands in 1998, working on light meson production in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions at the WA98 experiment at CERN's SPS accelerator. His research focuses on relativistic heavy-ion physics and high-energy nuclear physics. Geurts has extensive experience working on major experimental collaborations, including the STAR experiment at Brookhaven National Laboratory, where he has served as co-convener of the Light Flavor Spectra Physics Working group, Physics Analysis Coordinator, and deputy spokesperson. He has also contributed to the CMS Collaboration at CERN, co-leading the online software group for the Endcap Muon detector systems and managing the subsystem of the Endcap Timing Layer for the CMS MTD detector. Geurts was involved in the particle identification working group for the ATHENA detector proposal at the Electron-Ion Collider, which later merged into the ePIC collaboration. Since re-joining Rice University as a faculty member in 2008, he leads the Experimental Relativistic Heavy Group.

Research topics

• Physics
• Particle physics
• Nuclear physics
• Quantum mechanics
• Astrophysics
• Computer Science
• Optics
• Statistics
• Engineering
• Artificial Intelligence

Selected publications

• Extraction and validation of a new set of CMS pythia8 tunes from underlying-event measurements

  The European Physical Journal C · 2020 · 407 citations

  New sets of CMS underlying-event parameters ("tunes") are presented for the pythia8 event generator. These tunes use the NNPDF3.1 parton distribution functions (PDFs) at leading (LO), next-to-leading (NLO), or next-to-next-to-leading (NNLO) orders in perturbative quantum chromodynamics, and the strong coupling evolution at LO or NLO. Measurements of charged-particle multiplicity and transverse momentum densities at various hadron collision energies are fit simultaneously to determine the paramet…

  DOI

• A portrait of the Higgs boson by the CMS experiment ten years after the discovery

  Nature · 2022 · 320 citations

  In July 2012, the ATLAS and CMS collaborations at the CERN Large Hadron Collider announced the observation of a Higgs boson at a mass of around 125 gigaelectronvolts. Ten years later, and with the data corresponding to the production of a 30-times larger number of Higgs bosons, we have learnt much more about the properties of the Higgs boson. The CMS experiment has observed the Higgs boson in numerous fermionic and bosonic decay channels, established its spin-parity quantum numbers, determined i…

  DOI

• Precision luminosity measurement in proton–proton collisions at $$\sqrt{s} = 13\,\hbox {TeV}$$ in 2015 and 2016 at CMS

  The European Physical Journal C · 2021 · 293 citations

  in 2015 and 2016, with a relative precision of 1.6 and 1.2%, respectively. These are among the most precise luminosity measurements at bunched-beam hadron colliders.

  DOI

• Nonmonotonic Energy Dependence of Net-Proton Number Fluctuations

  Physical Review Letters · 2021 · 210 citations

  Nonmonotonic variation with collision energy (sqrt[s_{NN}]) of the moments of the net-baryon number distribution in heavy-ion collisions, related to the correlation length and the susceptibilities of the system, is suggested as a signature for the quantum chromodynamics critical point. We report the first evidence of a nonmonotonic variation in the kurtosis times variance of the net-proton number (proxy for net-baryon number) distribution as a function of sqrt[s_{NN}] with 3.1 σ significance for…

  DOI

• Search for the chiral magnetic effect with isobar collisions at <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mrow><mml:msqrt><mml:msub><mml:mi>s</mml:mi><mml:mrow><mml:mi>N</mml:mi><mml:mi>N</mml:mi></mml:mrow></mml:msub></mml:msqrt><mml:mo>=</mml:mo><mml:mn>200</mml:mn></mml:mrow></mml:math> GeV by the STAR Collaboration at the BNL Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider

  Physical review. C · 2022 · 206 citations

  The chiral magnetic effect (CME) is predicted to occur as a consequence of a local violation of P and CP symmetries of the strong interaction amidst a strong electromagnetic field generated in relativistic heavy-ion collisions. Experimental manifestation of the CME involves a separation of positively and negatively charged hadrons along the direction of the magnetic field. Previous measurements of the CME-sensitive charge-separation observables remain inconclusive because of large background con…

  DOI

Frequent coauthors

• M. Titov

  Institut de Recherche sur les Lois Fondamentales de l'Univers

  4829 shared

• G. Hamel de Monchenault

  Université Paris-Saclay

  4813 shared

• M. Lethuillier

  Institute of Nuclear Physics of Lyon

  4749 shared

• A. Rosowsky

  Institut de Recherche sur les Lois Fondamentales de l'Univers

  4466 shared

• S. Perriès

  Institute of Nuclear Physics of Lyon

  4235 shared

• F. Beaudette

  Laboratoire Leprince-Ringuet

  4222 shared

• J. Andreä

  Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien

  4222 shared

• C. Collard

  Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien

  4177 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Physics

  Universiteit Utrecht

  1998

Similar researchers at Rice University

• Karl Ecklundh-142
• José N. Onuchich-126
• Pengcheng Daih-95