PPD's Marvin Johnson nominated Estrada for a project he led last year on DZero's Visible Light Photon Counter. Alan Bross and Paul Rubinov of Fermilab, Carlos Garcia of the University of Rochester, and Bruce Hoeneisen from the Universidad San Francisco de Quito in Ecuador contributed to the work.

As the Tevatron dramatically increased luminosity last year, physicists expected the operating, "bias" current in the VLPC to increase as a side-effect. Instead, they observed a 10 percent drop. Estrada and his collaborators developed a theoretical model to interpret this behavior, and their computer simulation showed their guess was correct: It's the very avalanches of electrons the VLPC is meant to detect - those that signal the passage of photons - that caused the current to drop.

"The current decreases because the avalanches start occupying a significant area of the tracker," Estrada said. During an avalanche, a small, but not negligible region of the VLPC becomes unable to conduct electricity for a few milliseconds. "It's like producing a hole in the VLPC."

Knowing the VLPC's response to luminosity increases is important to correctly interpret the data coming out of DZero, Estrada said.

Estrada is a Wilson fellow and has won the 2003 Alvin Tollestrup award for his analysis work on measuring the mass of the top quark.

Last season six teams participated in the league. At the end of the regular season, the T-Wrists led the rankings with 47 points, followed by Playing Havoc, 46 points. The April 2004 play-offs saw the matchup of these two teams in a hotly contested final. Playing Havoc won the championship by a score of 2:1.