Zhangbu Xu

Kent State High-Energy Nuclear Experimental Group Members: 

Declan Keane (retired Professor), 
Zhangbu Xu (Professor)

Sooraj Radhakrishnan (Research Scientist) 
Ashik IKbal Sheihk (Research Scientist) 
Chun Yuen (Tommy) Tsang (postdoc)

Emmy Duckworth (student, graduated 08/2025) 
Maci Kesler (student) 
Albandry Alshammri (student)
Daniel Samuel (student)
Shilpa (student) 
Marceline Thornton (student)

Research Interests: 

Study the properties of Quark-Gluon Plasma (QGP), a new form of matter believed to have existed during the first few microseconds after the Big Bang, using the STAR detector at the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) and the LHCb detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Europe. The group utilizes flow, (strangeness and charmed) hadron spectra, and thermal e⁺e⁻ pair radiation to investigate QGP properties and the phase diagram of strongly interacting Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) matter.

Search and study properties of exotic antinuclei and hypernuclei

Discover and study the Breit-Wheeler process (two photon colliding to generate matter-antimatter)

Study the gluon junction as a possible tracer of baryon number

Image nuclei using spin-interference diffractive vector meson production in Ultra-peripheral nucleus-nucleus collisions (UPC) and Electron-Ion collisions (EIC)

Research on silicon based AC coupled Low Gain Avalanche Detector (AC-LGAD) technology for the ePIC time-of-Flight detector at the future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) at BNL.

Collaboration member of STAR at BNL, ePIC at BNL, LHCb at CERN.

INSPIRE PUBLICATION List

Teaching: 
66201/76201: Introduction to Particle Physics
45403/55403: Data Analyses and Computational Physics Techniques