Aida El-Khadra

Aida Xenia El-Khadra
Alma mater	University of California, Los Angeles Free University of Berlin
Scientific career
Institutions	Brookhaven National Laboratory Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory Ohio State University University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
Thesis	Lattice calculation of meson form factors for semi-leptonic decays (1989)

Aida Xenia El-Khadra is a particle physicist who is a professor of high energy physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. She is the co-chair of the Muon g-2 Theory Initiative, which reported hints at new physics in the Standard Model in 2021. She is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Early life and education

El-Khadra was an undergraduate student at the Free University of Berlin, where she earned a master's degree in physics. She moved to the University of California, Los Angeles for her doctoral research, where she studied semi-leptonic decays.^[1][2] El-Khadra was a postdoctoral researcher at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, Fermilab, and the Ohio State University.^[3]

Research and Pathways

In 1995, El-Khadra joined the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, where she was promoted to professor in 2008. Her research makes use of quantum chromodynamics to understand processes in flavor physics.^[4] She spent 1998 as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study, where she developed and tested new lattice actions.^[5] El-Khadra directs the Fermilab Lattice collaboration and was named a distinguished scholar at Fermilab in 2016.^[6]

El-Khadra oversaw the theoretical aspects of the Muon g-2 experiments.^[7][8] The collaboration measured the magnetic moment of the muon with unparalleled precision.^[9] El-Khadra has been involved with several theoretical attempts to predict the anomalous magnetic moment based on the Standard Model.^[10][11] In 2021, the experimental component of the collaboration reported a magnetic moment that was considerably larger than the value predicted by the Standard Model.^[12] These finding hints^[13] at new particles or forces in the Standard Model.^[12][14]

Achievements

El-Khadra was elected fellow of the American Physical Society in 2011 "for contributions to lattice QCD and flavor physics including pioneering studies of heavy quarks on the lattice, semi-leptonic and leptonic heavy-light meson decays, the strong coupling constant, and quark masses".^[15] She was named to the 2021 class of fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.^[16] In 2022 she was awarded a Simons Fellowship.^[17]

Selected publications

• FLAG Working Group; S Aoki; Y Aoki; et al. (17 September 2014). "Review of lattice results concerning low-energy particle physics". European Physical Journal C. 74 (9): 2890. arXiv:1011.4408. doi:10.1140/EPJC/S10052-014-2890-7. ISSN 1434-6044. PMC 4410391. PMID 25972762. Wikidata Q42587418.
• El-Khadra AX; Hockney G; Andreas S Kronfeld; Mackenzie PB (1 August 1992). "Determination of the strong coupling constant from the charmonium spectrum". Physical Review Letters. 69 (5): 729–732. doi:10.1103/PHYSREVLETT.69.729. ISSN 0031-9007. PMID 10047018. Wikidata Q64936405.
• Claude W. Bernard; Aida X. El-Khadra; Amarjit Soni (1 February 1992). "Lattice study of semileptonic decays of charm mesons into vector mesons". Physical Review D. 45 (3): 869–874. Bibcode:1992PhRvD..45..869B. doi:10.1103/PHYSREVD.45.869. ISSN 1550-7998. PMID 10014446. Wikidata Q74419228.

References

1. El-Khadra, Aida Xenia (1989). Lattice calculation of meson form factors for semi-leptonic decays (Thesis). OCLC 21422448.
2. "Dr Aida X El-Khadra". AZoQuantum.com. Retrieved 2021-04-07.
3. "Aida X El-Khadra". grainger.illinois.edu. Retrieved 2021-04-07.
4. "Aida X El-Khadra, Illinois Physics". physics.illinois.edu. Retrieved 2021-04-07.
5. "Aida X El-Khadra". cas.illinois.edu. Retrieved 2021-04-07.
6. "Distinguished Scholars | Theoretical Physics Department". Retrieved 2021-04-07.
7. Castelvecchi, Davide (2021-03-30). "Long-awaited muon physics experiment nears moment of truth". Nature. 592 (7852): 17–18. Bibcode:2021Natur.592...17C. doi:10.1038/d41586-021-00833-2. PMID 33785919. S2CID 232430794.
8. Castelvecchi, Davide (2021-04-07). "Is the standard model broken? Physicists cheer major muon result". Nature. 592 (7854): 333–334. Bibcode:2021Natur.592..333C. doi:10.1038/d41586-021-00898-z. PMID 33837374. S2CID 233201472.
9. Foidl, Ines. "Higgs Centre Colloquium: Aida X. El-Khadra 'The Anomalous Magnetic Moment of the Muon'". Media Hopper Create. Retrieved 2021-04-07.
10. "Muon g-2 Result | Not Even Wrong". Retrieved 2021-04-07.
11. "New experiment hints that a particle breaks the known laws of physics". Science. 2021-04-07. Archived from the original on April 7, 2021. Retrieved 2021-04-07.
12. "Mounting hope for new physics". EurekAlert!. Retrieved 2021-04-07.
13. Communications, Grainger Engineering Office of Marketing and. "Aida X El-Khadra". physics.illinois.edu. Retrieved 2024-09-06.
14. Cho, Adrian (2021-01-27). "The cloak-and-dagger tale behind this year's most anticipated result in particle physics". Science | AAAS. Retrieved 2021-04-07.
15. "2011 APS Fellows". dpfnewsletter.org. Retrieved 2021-04-07.
16. "2021 Fellows". American Association for the Advancement of Science. Retrieved 2022-01-28.
17. "2022 Simons Fellows in Mathematics and Theoretical Physics Announced". Simons Foundation. 2022-02-18. Retrieved 2022-07-04.