ATLAS Blog

From internship to authorship: one student’s unique journey in ATLAS

Katarina Anthony — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 13:41:09 +0000

From internship to authorship: one student’s unique journey in ATLAS

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Katarina Anthony Mon, 30/10/2023 - 14:41

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Lukas Kretschmann

ATLAS collaboration

control room

Lukas on shift in the ATLAS Control Room. (Image: J. Pham/CERN)

I am Lukas Kretschmann, 19 years old, and I have a profound passion for physics. I am currently a physics student at the University of Wuppertal in Germany, and am actively engaged in its experimental particle physics group. My fascination with this field began during my high school years when I first dived into the world of particle physics during an internship at the University of Wuppertal. This journey led me to initiate a personal research project, delving into ATLAS open data, under the guidance of an experienced physicist from the group.

A year before graduating from high school, my project supervisor asked me if I was interested in calculating cross-sections for their ATLAS physics analysis using the program I had utilised in my personal project. That was when I officially joined the ATLAS team of the University of Wuppertal, ready to contribute my enthusiasm and skills to their quest to unravel the secrets of the universe.

In addition to my research, I was actively involved in events organised by "Netzwerk Teilchenwelt" (NTW), an outstanding German organisation dedicated to fostering curiosity about fundamental science, with a particular emphasis on particle physics. The network offers an exceptional fellowship programme for young particle-physics enthusiasts, combining online events and in-person courses to foster a sense of collective learning. Interacting with like-minded students during these gatherings has always been a delight. Through my involvement with NTW, my knowledge in the field expanded significantly, but even more enriching were the many friendly faces I encountered along the way, some of whom have become my dearest friends. Thanks to NTW, I had the incredible opportunity to visit CERN for the first time, a pivotal experience in my scientific journey. Since 2022, I have been honoured to serve as a national speaker for the fellow programme, sharing this role with a student from Dresden University, which allows me to contribute to the growth and impact of the programme.

Upon joining ATLAS, I began attending Collaboration meetings, presenting my work, and actively participating in ATLAS outreach efforts. These experiences provided me with a wealth of knowledge, especially from those heavily involved in outreach activities, which fuelled my desire to give back to the community.

During my first year as a Bachelor's student, I developed a deep appreciation for the welcoming and supportive nature of the ATLAS team at the University of Wuppertal. Despite being a junior member, I felt integrated with the team. Our collaborative spirit extended beyond the lab, featuring various social activities, including monthly foosball tournaments and adventurous water-skiing outings. These enjoyable moments underscored the essence of research as not merely an office-bound endeavour but a vibrant tapestry of collaboration and camaraderie. I look forward to going to the office every morning not just because of the exciting work, but also for the friendly atmosphere. They offer a support system during challenging times and are a network of like-minded individuals, which make each day a fulfilling experience. I'm truly thankful for the warmth and support that our group provides, especially from our dedicated supervisor. The atmosphere is welcoming and supportive, as evidenced by their unwavering support for my unique early-career trajectory.

As part of my role within the group, I work on cross-section calculations for a single top-quark t-channel analysis, and the results are used as the recommended reference cross-sections of the LHC top-quark Working Group. One remarkable aspect of working in the ATLAS Collaboration is that, though I am not yet an official ATLAS author (i.e. one of the 3000 physicists who co-sign the research released by the Collaboration), my valuable work can earn me exceptional authorship for specific ATLAS publications.

It was a heartwarming atmosphere that underscored the sense of belonging to a larger team dedicated to the precise operation of the detector.

Soon after acquiring exceptional authorship for the t-channel paper, I embarked on my qualification task to become an official ATLAS author. This task is a technically demanding project supervised by an expert and requires a minimum commitment of six months. My project involved enhancing the configuration of one of the Monte Carlo generators. I submitted regular progress reports, which culminated in comprehensive documentation of the work and outlined avenues for further development. I am on the cusp of completing my ATLAS qualification task, and eagerly anticipating becoming the youngest author in the ATLAS Collaboration.

Like many members of the ATLAS Collaboration, I’ve been able to participate in the operation of the ATLAS detector and work in the ATLAS control room at CERN. But before the work could begin, I first had to complete a structured training regimen. I participated in a two-day training programme designed to provide a comprehensive understanding of the general aspects of detector operation. This was followed by specialised training for specific control room desks. Each subsystem of ATLAS has its designated desk within the control room, focusing on the watchful monitoring of the detectors. In my case, I followed a training course for the Inner Detector desk (ID).

Fielding calls while on shift at the Inner Detector desk in the ATLAS Control Room. (Image: J. Pham/CERN)

After completing this final course (online), I signed up for shifts and arranged my journey to CERN. Before taking responsibility for my shifts, I shadowed experienced colleagues and learned from their guidance. After a week of shadowing, I was ready to embark on my first shift at the ID desk. On my second-ever shift, an exciting moment unfolded as the LHC injected lead ions, marking the first stable-beam collisions of such ions in half a decade. The control room buzzed with activity, becoming increasingly crowded as the anticipation grew following the LHC's announcement of the forthcoming stable-beam collisions.

As they commenced the complex process of ramping up the beam energy, I could not help but feel a degree of stress, given that it was only my second shift. Through collective efforts and the guidance of many experts in the control room, we successfully readied the ID systems to record invaluable ion-collision data. The dedicated shift crew, including myself, worked diligently to keep the ID detector operational and gather as much data as possible.

The momentous occasion came when the beams finally collided, the room erupted in applause and cheers. We all gathered to see the first heavy-ion collision event display projected at the front of the control room. A joyous celebration followed, complete with champagne and snacks. It was a heartwarming atmosphere that underscored the sense of belonging to a larger team dedicated to the precise operation of the detector and the entire ATLAS Collaboration. We all shared the common goal of collecting enough data for in-depth analysis, a stark reminder of the colossal effort required in this scientific endeavour.

After my final shift, I held reserve shifts for emergencies and then prepared to travel back to Germany. I plan to return, possibly for shifts, during the LHC's 2024 operations. In the interim, I will continue my studies at the University of Wuppertal and contribute to our group's ongoing research. There are already follow-up analyses to the t-channel analysis I previously worked on, promising a host of interesting and challenging tasks to occupy me upon my return.

ATLAS Week: through the eyes of students

Edite Prado Felgueiras — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 09:00:34 +0000

ATLAS Week: through the eyes of students

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It's no secret that the success of ATLAS depends on the close collaboration of research teams located at member universities and laboratories worldwide. So, every year ATLAS members are invited to meet in person to discuss ongoing projects, exchange ideas for new physics analyses and discuss the future of particle physics.

Today marks the beginning of a new ATLAS Week at CERN. Among the hundreds of physicists and engineers who are attending, students will certainly be the most excited about the opportunity to present and discuss their work.

ATLAS students, Sarah and Bruna, were at the last ATLAS Week in Vancouver, Canada, and share what the experience was like:

Sarah Alshamaily, University of Victoria (CA)

Taking part in the ATLAS Week in Vancouver was an incredible and beneficial experience for a student like myself! I was exposed to the different research being conducted within the ATLAS Collaboration, from projects that I have worked on to projects that I have only heard of. Being exposed to the work within all of these areas has shown me how big a collaboration like ATLAS really is, and how the different moving parts all come together to contribute effectively to scientific discovery and achievement.

Moreover, because I was given the opportunity to present my research work, I built my public speaking and communication skills. I was able to interact with like-minded professionals, ranging from professors to graduate students. It was a great way for me to expand my current network.

Lastly, it was all together a very fun and packed event! Every attendee was given the chance to go on an excursion, as well as attend a cruise boat dinner. Partaking in these social events was very entertaining!

Bruna Pascual Dias, Universite de Montreal (CA)

I found this experience particularly motivating and insightful, as we were reminded once again of the importance and the broad range of activities that the ATLAS Collaboration performs. We also got the chance to meet incredible people and share the feeling that we are part of something bigger. To meet the people we work with on a daily basis, but that we only have interacted with virtually, was also particularly rewarding, as we get to know each other better and strengthen bonds.

For me, one highlight was the poster session. To be able to discuss my work with physicists from all different backgrounds allowed for interesting insights and suggestions that otherwise wouldn't be possible. Realising that people working in a completely different part of the detector are facing exactly the same challenges as you paves the way to finding better solutions together. And realising that your follow-up email will now be way more effective than one sent after a virtual meeting!

I could not help but feel once again the excitement of the first days of studying physics, when we had before us the whole universe to discover – well, we still have a lot to do, so let's keep exploring!

ATLAS students explain their posters

ATLAS students were invited to present their work during ATLAS Week in Vancouver.

ATLAS & CMS Physicists Recover Lost Higgs Boson

Katarina Anthony — Sat, 01 Apr 2023 09:30:43 +0000

ATLAS & CMS Physicists Recover Lost Higgs Boson

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ATLAS & CMS physicists

Higgs boson

ATLAS & CMS Joint Release — Scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN breathed a sigh of relief today, as the world-renowned Higgs boson returned to its showcase in the heart of the laboratory. The boson was discovered by the ATLAS and CMS experiments in 2012 after a decades-long search starting with its proposal by François Englert, Robert Brout and Peter Higgs in 1964. Since its discovery, the original particle and thousands like it have been studied intensively by scientists from both experiments. Yet, last Monday morning, when researchers returned to their offices, the pioneer had disappeared, only to mysteriously reappear today.

“This was very disturbing. We asked around, but nobody had seen it since last weekend,” exclaimed CMS researcher Freya Blekman. “Many of us have spent our careers searching for and measuring the Higgs boson. We’re so relieved to have it back!” Its week-long journey, though, remains a mystery. “We knew it couldn’t have been with our colleagues, simply because they never directly interact with the Higgs at all. It simply had to have been out with some of the other elementary particles.”

So, when the search began, scientists focused on the most probable culprits. “We searched through our collections of elementary particles, starting with the top quarks, then moving down the mass scale to the Z and W bosons and the b quarks,” says Blekman.

"I believe Dark Matter slipped right into the display case and snuck off for the week with the Higgs boson. In fact, some of us suspect this has been happening all the time."

Over the past ten years, researchers have discovered that the Higgs boson interacts more with heavier particles than lighter ones. “That’s what was predicted,” claims ATLAS physicist Steven Goldfarb. “The boson is an excitation of the scalar field that gives elementary particles their mass. When the Higgs escaped, we hoped it was just trying to reconnect with its heavy friends, but we didn’t find it with any of them.”

Goldfarb now thinks dark matter could have been the culprit. “Dark matter makes up 80-90% of the matter in the universe. We know it has mass, because of its gravitational attraction, but we’ve found no other means to detect it. I believe it slipped right into the display case and snuck off for the week with the Higgs boson. In fact, some of us suspect this has been happening all the time. But, how would we know?”

Theorists, excited by the idea, began drawing up Feynman diagrams, not only describing the interaction in detail, but proposing evidence that could support the theory. Investigators are hopeful that the large increase in collisions expected for the continuation of LHC Run 3, which starts this spring, could yield clues.

“We expect to see many more interactions of the Higgs boson in the current run,” claims Blekman. “That could include decays to muons and charm quarks, and perhaps dark matter. We’re excited by the possibilities, but keeping a close eye on our friend.”

As for the Higgs boson itself, it refused to comment.

Edit 2 April 2023: Happy April Fools!

Developing the ATLAS End-Cap Toroids: a personal history

Katarina Anthony — Wed, 26 Jan 2022 09:46:11 +0000

Developing the ATLAS End-Cap Toroids: a personal history

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Elwyn Baynham

magnet system

In this blog post, former ATLAS engineer Elwyn Baynham shares his experience as part of the team developing the ATLAS End-Cap Toroids. His story paints a personal picture of the history of these incredible magnets.

My journey began in 1970, when I joined the Superconductivity Group at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in the UK. At the time, the group was creating prototype accelerator dipole magnets aimed at a future superconducting accelerator. The Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) was seen as a possible candidate for these magnets, but ultimately CERN decided to use conventional copper magnets. Despite this disappointment, RAL’s development programme yielded two important pieces of technology that would play a major role in future applications of superconductivity: filamentary superconducting wires, which are the basis of almost every superconducting magnet, and Rutherford cables, the conductor used in all superconducting accelerator magnets including those at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

Figure 1: The DELPHI magnet crossing the Jura en-route to CERN in 1987. (Image: CERN)

By the 80s, particle colliders had evolved to require large magnetic fields around their interaction points and large superconducting solenoids were being developed for this application. My colleagues at RAL designed and built the superconducting solenoid for the DELPHI experiment at CERN’s Large Electron–Positron (LEP) collider. It arrived at CERN in 1987, measuring approximately 5m in diameter and 5m in length – the world’s largest superconducting solenoid magnet at the time. While small by modern standards, DELPHI’s magnet was already at the limit of what could be transported to CERN (see Figure 1).

Magnet systems for the LHC experiments were already being discussed by the early 90s. My involvement in this began in 1992, working with members of RAL’s particle physics department to understand what type of magnets would be required and also what sort of magnet technology would be feasible. This was an exciting time to get involved – before the ATLAS Collaboration was even officially formed and named.

Designing the magnets

By 1997, ATLAS’ huge toroidal magnet system was fully defined, with the RAL team taking responsibility for the design and manufacture of the End-Cap Toroids. There were many design challenges, not least the size. Although small compared with the Barrel Toroid, the End Caps were at least twice the size of any previous detector magnet: approximately ten metres in diameter and five metres in length. This meant that the magnets could not be transported as a complete assembly and the design had to factor in a final assembly at CERN. Although very different from the detector solenoids of LEP, two pieces of technology developed for those magnets were key to the ATLAS design: indirect cooling of the superconducting coils using a helium coolant circulated in pipes, and superconducting cables stabilised and protected by high-purity aluminium.

Figure 2: Schematic view of an End-Cap Toroid. (Image: CERN)

The End-Cap Toroids provide a magnetic field for muon detection at the two ends of the cylindrical detector, around the beam pipe. Each End Cap consists of eight superconducting pancake coils (see Figures 3 and 4) mounted as a single cold mass to form the toroidal structure. Its design was closely integrated with that of the Barrel Toroid, both in terms of detector performance and magnetic forces. To achieve the maximum magnetic field with which to bend the paths of muons, the End-Cap coils interleave with the Barrel Toroid coils in the radial direction, like gear wheels. This led to the grooved design of the End-Cap Cryostat structure, as shown in Figure 2.

When designing ATLAS’ superconducting magnet system, we had to carefully consider ways to protect the superconducting winding in the event of a magnet “quench”, where part of the winding overheats and brings the magnet from superconducting to the normal resistive state. This was an issue for the End Caps as well as the Barrel Toroid.

The magnetic energy stored in two End Caps is 400 Megajoules. If a normal resistive zone begins in any part of the winding, this stored energy must be dissipated rapidly, either externally or over the whole winding. If not, it could locally burn out the conductor at the quench origin. In the ATLAS toroids, Barrel and End Caps, this protection is achieved through heaters in each coil to dissipate the energy over every coil and thereby reduce the maximum temperature at the initial fault to an acceptable level.

Figure 3: Winding the coils of the end-cap toroid. (Image: CERN)

Figure 4: One of the end-cap toroid "pancake" coils. (Image: CERN)

Figure 5: Assembling the coils in CERN Building 191 (Image: CERN)

Figure 6: Integration of the vacuum vessel over the cold mass using a rail system. (Image: CERN)

Figure 7: The eight coils of the magnet system and their mechanical support structure, before insertion into the cryostat vessel. (Image: CERN)

Provisional assembly sequence for the End-Cap Toroid, made in 1996 by the RAL team.

Figure 8: Cryogenic insulation installed in the End-Cap Toroid. (Image: CERN)

Making the dream a reality

The next step was to manufacture these huge coils and vessels; this process began in 1999. The manufacturing was done mainly as in-kind contributions from member institutes of ATLAS. In particular, the cold mass and the vacuum vessel were manufactured under NIKHEF (the Netherlands), with the RAL team responsible for the initial specification and technical monitoring of the contracts. The overall process was managed by a CERN team led by Herman ten Kate. A similar arrangement was used for the thermal radiation shields, which were manufactured in Israel.

The transport of the vacuum vessels was a major factor in the design. In 2002, the vessels were transported in halves, partly by barge and finally by road. Just one half of the vessel was already at the extreme limit for road transport, as shown in Figure 10.

Figure 9: The End Cap Toroid Services; an umbilical system allows each End Cap to be moved from operating position to withdrawn and park positions. (Image: RAL)

The assembly of the components at CERN was carried out by the CERN team, and supported by a team of engineers and technicians from Dubna in the USSR. The assembly was carried out mainly in Buildings 180 and 191 at CERN (see Figure 12). The half vacuum vessels were assembled and vacuum tested after the final welding operations. Thermal shields and super-insulation were installed in the vacuum vessel. The cold mass parts were assembled and the internal cooling circuits installed.

The final operation was to integrate the cold mass with the vacuum vessel. This was a delicate operation with two structures ten metres in diameter and only 25 to 50 millimetres clearance. The cold mass was supported on a cantilever and the vessel shell moved over it on a rail system as shown in Figure 8. Before closure of the end plates, the service turret was connected. This turret couples all the services, coolant, electrical power and instrumentation/control sensors to the exterior.

The End-Cap Toroids are probably unique for such big magnets as they were required to be movable with the cold mass at cryogenic temperature. To allow access to the inner part of the detector, the End Caps must be withdrawn along the beam axis some five metres and then transferred sideways approximately ten metres as illustrated in Figure 9. This is achieved by an umbilical system of cryo-lines, electrical cables, vacuum and instrumentation cables mounted in a massive chain-like structure at the top of the ATLAS Barrel Toroid. The chain structure is flexible in the horizontal plane but very stiff in the vertical direction which allows it to span the large gaps, greater than 10 m, without support.

Figure 10: Half of one of the end-cap magnet vacuum vessels for ATLAS is lifted over the ski bridge in Les Rousses (Image: CERN)

Figure 11: Transport of half of an end-cap magnet through a local French village in the CERN areas. (Image: CERN)

Figure 12: Beginning of transport of an ATLAS End-cap Toroid from between CERN's Building 191 to Building 180 (Image: CERN)

Figure 13: Fully complete, an End-cap Toroid is transported from Building 191 to the ATLAS experiment surface building. (Image: CERN)

Figure 14: Entering the surface building over the ATLAS experiment. (Image: CERN)

Figure 15: An End-Cap Toroid is lifted over the shaft, ready to begin its decent. (Image: CERN)

Figure 16: Lowering the toroid down the shaft to the ATLAS experiment cavern. (Image: CERN)

Figure 17: Entering the cavern. (Image: CERN)

Transporting a giant

The completed End Caps were transported across the CERN site to the ATLAS surface building SX1. Figures 14 and 15 give an impression of the scale. Special tooling was required first to transfer the magnet into the surface building and to lower it partly down the shaft where the load was transferred to the crane for the final descent into the cavern.

Each End-Cap Toroid was commissioned separately in the cavern before the final powering of the complete ATLAS toroid magnet system. Final commissioning took place over three days, 16–18 August 2008. The full magnet system was operated with its design field to demonstrate its readiness for the experiment to enter its operational phase. Those commissioning tests were the culmination of some 14 years of work by engineering teams from a number of European laboratories in collaboration with the physicists of the ATLAS Collaboration and the CERN magnet team. For me, it was my last major project and time for retirement.

Building an ATLAS gingerbread wonderland

Katarina Anthony — Fri, 24 Dec 2021 09:19:09 +0000

Building an ATLAS gingerbread wonderland

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Katharine Leney

outreach

Every year the ATLAS Collaboration produces an end-of-year greetings card, and every year the outreach team are in competition with themselves, trying to out-perform last year’s effort. The cards are sent to ATLAS institutes and funding agencies and always showcase some ATLAS highlights from the year. When I received an email from the ATLAS outreach coordinators in October, asking if I would help them make an ATLAS-inspired gingerbread village for this year’s card, I couldn’t refuse an opportunity for another fun “Physics Cakes” project.

The brief from ATLAS management was that the card should feature the “New Small Wheel” muon detector (that was completed and lowered down into the cavern this year), plots from a selection of our most high-profile physics analysis results of the year, as well as the successful operation of the ATLAS detector during the LHC `beam splash' events.

The outreach team and I met to brainstorm some first ideas and came up with the concept of a series of themed workshops, each displaying one of its most noteworthy results on its roof. A gingerbread New Small Wheel sits on a sleigh in the centre of the village, en route to its new home in the experimental cavern underground. At this point the outreach team announced that we’d also need a backdrop to make sure that the scenes were recognisably CERN and ATLAS-related. My colleague Katarina Anthony asked me, “maybe this is crazy, but could you make Building 40 out of gingerbread?”

Building 40 is one of the most distinctive office buildings at CERN, and houses a large proportion of ATLAS and CMS physicists. The central part of the building has curved walls and a glass domed roof. It’s unique architecture makes it a great choice for a recognisable CERN landmark, but curved walls and domed roof are not the easiest structures to make out of cookies! As luck would have it, making Building 40 out of gingerbread had been at the back of my mind for some time as a potential baking project, so I already had a plan for how to do this technically, and this was a great excuse to finally make it happen.

The careful arrival of Building 40. (Image: K. Leney/ATLAS Collaboration)

As you might imagine, building a gingerbread structure on this magnitude requires a fair amount of planning. With a bit of help from photos and satellite images, the first step was to draw up plans to scale, figuring out what components were needed, and how these would all fit together. Once I was happy with the plans I made cardboard mockups that would also then form the templates for cutting out the gingerbread dough. The curved gingerbread walls of Building 40 were formed by draping the cookies, still on parchment paper and hot from the oven, over a cylinder of the right diameter. The domed roof is the only non-gingerbread part of the village and is made from rice crispies and melted marshmallows, and then covered in fondant. The walls are glued together with royal icing, which is also used to decorate everything

We enlisted the help of some other keen ATLAS bakers, Stefanie Morgenstern and Elise Le Boulicaut, to help decorate the gingerbread house workshops, and the plots on the roofs of the workshops are printed on edible paper. An event display showing the ATLAS detector all lit up as the LHC beam is steered onto a collimator upstream of the detector and the resulting spray of particles ‘splashes’ through it, graces the roof of the Beams Workshop. The other workshops showcase a handful of our highest profile physics results. My own favourite plot from this year is displayed on the roof of the “DiHiggs workshop” and shows a combination of the results of our searches for Higgs pair-production.

Building physics-themed gingerbread villages is certainly not something I would have imagined a few years ago that a career as a physicist would involve, but it’s definitely a lot of fun. The only thing that worries me now is how we’re going to top this next year!

(Image: K. Anthony/ATLAS Collaboration)

(Image: A. Singeot/CERN)

(Image: K. Anthony/ATLAS Collaboration)

Learn more about the results and milestones featured in the village:

Detectors for a new era of ATLAS physics, ATLAS News
ATLAS reports first observation of WWW production, Physics Briefing
Hunting for forbidden decays of the Z boson, Physics Briefing
Search for elusive “di-Higgs production” reaches new milestone, Physics Briefing
ATLAS finds further confirmation of evidence for four top quark process, Physics Briefing
The hunt for higgsinos reaches new limits, Physics Briefing
The coupling strengths of the Higgs boson, Summary plots
LHC 2021 Pilot Beam test, ATLAS Event displays

ATLAS without Frontiers

Katarina Anthony — Tue, 14 Dec 2021 10:26:24 +0000

ATLAS without Frontiers

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The ATLAS Collaboration within the Physics without Frontiers programme

Adam Abed Abud

ATLAS collaboration

Physics Without Frontiers

education

outreach

For several years, the ICTP Physics Without Frontiers (PWF) programme has been heavily involved with outreach activities to inspire, train and educate young and motivated physics students worldwide. So far, more than 7000 students across four continents have benefited from the activities organised by PWF. These activities include hands-on workshops, schools and courses at universities for local undergraduate and Masters students. The goal is to give the students access to research fields that they would not otherwise have access to, to help build the next generation of scientists.

What is interesting about PWF is that it is a volunteer-based network of scientists that gather together and organise the projects. We have people coming from all levels: from PhD students and postdoctoral researchers to lecturers – all sharing a common passion for outreach. It is therefore not surprising to see several members of the ATLAS Collaboration very active in this network.

PWF activities held at Salahaddin University (Iraq). (Image: A. Abed Abud/ATLAS Collaboration)

As part of the PWF activities, I recently volunteered to teach in a school in the northern region of Iraq (Kurdistan region). The school was hosted at Salahaddin University in the city of Erbil where more than 40 students attended the event in person and/or connected virtually. The focus of the school was to give an introduction as well as to highlight recent developments in particle physics and cosmology from experts in the field connecting from the US, Switzerland, Greece and Italy. Several members of the ATLAS Collaboration presented at the PWF event in Iraq, where topics included an introduction to particle physics, Dark Matter or my own talk on the data-acquisition system of the ATLAS experiment. Overall, the event was extremely successful as we managed to initiate wider discussions on many different topics. We also organised a virtual tour of the ATLAS detector, as well as a session for the International Masterclasses in particle physics. It was great to see so many students using real ATLAS data to get hands-on experience as a particle physicist.

When young people get the opportunity to train at leading science facilities – like CERN and ICTP – they can help spread scientific understanding when they return home to train their colleagues.

Improving access to science education through such programmes is not just good for students, it is good for science. Inclusion and diversity are at the heart of the ATLAS Collaboration. The success of our research is based on the creativity and passion of each international member.

This was a message also shared by “The Walk”, a travelling art event in support of refugees that visited CERN this autumn. The Walk is represented by Little Amal who is a 3.5-metre-tall puppet representing a young girl travelling over 8000 kilometres to promote hope for refugees. Little Amal is a symbol of all the displaced children who have fled war and persecution and need access to education to rebuild their lives.

Welcoming Little Amal to CERN. (Image: A. Abed Abud/ATLAS Collaboration)

When Little Amal arrived at CERN, she was welcomed by an enthusiastic crowd. I was there to meet her in person, under the PWF umbrella, and we talked about embracing diversity and inclusion as a symbol of strength. We also touched on the important message that science is a uniting force, a human endeavour to understand the Universe. When young people get the opportunity to train at leading science facilities – like CERN and ICTP – they can help spread scientific understanding when they return home to train their colleagues.

PWF is always working hard to train, inspire, motivate and support young and curious students worldwide. As a member of the ATLAS Collaboration, it was an enriching experience to take part in several PWF activities and promote the values of inclusion and diversity. I am looking forward to participating in more outreach activities in the future as this is also an important part of our job as scientists.

ATLAS pushes forward the search for a charged Higgs boson

Katarina Anthony — Mon, 20 Sep 2021 10:19:26 +0000

ATLAS pushes forward the search for a charged Higgs boson

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Most days we wake up and we still cannot believe we are going through a pandemic. It seems like a sci-fi series episode. But we are human beings and we have the amazing ability to adapt in order to survive, so that’s what we did. We learned to use face masks, to keep distance and to properly wash our hands at the rhythm of a 30 second song. We also learned how to work from home and collaborate with our coworkers virtually. As scientists, we also have had to adapt to a new mode of communication: virtual conferences and workshops. While we miss the enriching and lively atmosphere of an in-person conference, scientific discourse has continued through this platform, allowing for the dissemination of our work in these challenging times.

The Charged-Higgs@LHC workshop was among the recent meetings in particle physics and took place on August 30-31, 2021. The workshop has an interesting history as it is a biennial event which started in 2006 at Uppsala University and was held there till 2018; it went into ‘hibernation’ due to the pandemic. The workshop was revived this year by a group of African institutions who collaborated with Uppsala in the past. The hope and intent is to continue hosting the workshop biennially in Africa in order to encourage particle physics research in the continent.

This two-day event was dedicated to discussing both the theoretical developments in the field and the status of experimental results at the LHC. Both ATLAS and CMS presented overviews for their searches and highlighted current results for singly and doubly charged Higgs bosons in different production and decay modes.

Ever since the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson – a neutral particle – physicists have been asking a key question: could it be possible to find a charged version of this particle?

But what makes a charged Higgs boson so important that it has its own workshop? Since the 2012 discovery of the Higgs boson, which is a neutral particle, physicists have been asking a key question: could it be possible to find a charged version of this particle?

There are many theories that predict the existence of more than just one Higgs boson; they describe what is called an ‘extended Higgs sector’ with several Higgs bosons with different properties. These theories are very appealing to particle physicists because they offer explanations for observed phenomena, such as dark matter, that the Standard Model cannot explain. Additionally, particles have a property called spin and we find that spin-½ and spin-1 particles come in both charged and neutral states. However, so far we have not discovered a charged spin-0 elementary particle. For all these reasons, searching for a charged Higgs boson is very exciting and its discovery would bring us closer to a more complete understanding of Nature.

A plot showing the di-muon mass spectrum that was used to search for evidence of a charged Higgs decaying to an A and W boson. The colours in the histogram represent the various simulated background events arising for the proton-proton collisions. The blue peak in the centre represents what the signal process would look like if it appeared in data. (Image: ATLAS Collaboration/CERN)

During the Charged-Higgs@LHC workshop, the ATLAS Collaboration showed some of their latest results on searches for these particles. Since these bosons are not stable particles, they decay into lighter particles that are then detected by the experiment. Different analyses target different decay modes that shape the final search. A special feature of the new results presented was that the searches focused on a charged Higgs boson with a lighter mass than the top quark (the heaviest-known elementary particle). These light charged Higgs bosons are predicted to be the dominant production mode at the LHC in some beyond Standard Model theories and thus very well motivated to hunt for.

One important result presented was the search for a charged Higgs boson coming from a top quark and decaying into a charm and a bottom quark, H⁺→ cb. It’s a complex search because the final state is characterised by the presence of many physical objects, including leptons and many particle jets, and a lot of processes from the Standard Model show the same topology. So, in order to separate the potential signal from the background, we developed an elaborate analysis strategy that included machine learning techniques. This is the first time that ATLAS has looked into this particular decay mode, and promising results were shown during the workshop.

Theoretical talks at the workshop covered an overview of the phenomenological motivations for extensions of the Higgs sector. There was a particular emphasis on the need to explore production and decay modes in which the H⁺ appears simultaneously with a neutral Higgs boson. These bosonic production and decay modes have not been studied extensively at the LHC and can offer a new discovery channel for a charged Higgs boson.

In light of these theoretical developments, ATLAS presented its first results on the search for a charged Higgs boson decaying to a W and A boson, H⁺→ WA. The A boson is another hypothesised Higgs boson which is neutral like the Standard Model Higgs boson, but much lighter. This search is a rare example of an analysis involving two different Higgs bosons!

This search was conducted by looking for the decay of the A boson to a pair of muons. Muonic decays of the A boson have the advantage of featuring a distinct narrow peak which would appear above the background and allow us to discover it. The figure shows the di-muon mass spectrum that was studied in this analysis to search for the A particle decaying from the H^±. It shows that the data and the background predictions of the Standard Model are in agreement; thus evidence of a charged Higgs decay was not found in this channel with the current dataset. While we did not discover something new, we can still derive important conclusions from this analysis. For example, we were able to calculate upper limits on what are called the ‘branching ratios’ for this signal model i.e. an upper bound on the fraction of events that could decay in this mode in top-quark pair events. This information allows us to rule out certain theoretical scenarios involving charged Higgs bosons.

In summary, this meeting served as an excellent opportunity to share the exciting developments in both theory and experiment within the field. The ATLAS results obtained for the H^± → cb and H^± → WA are both intriguing and give us motivation to keep looking for a light charged Higgs boson. The virtual nature of the workshop certainly limited the opportunity to have those spontaneous and lively discussions during coffee breaks and group dinners that we all look forward to. However, we still feel extremely grateful that we can continue to contribute to this science during a time where so many have been forced to abandon their careers of choice.

Building community in virtual events

Katarina Anthony — Tue, 20 Apr 2021 09:35:24 +0000

Building community in virtual events

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ATLAS Early Career Scientists Board

ATLAS collaboration

Since 2017, the ATLAS Early Career Scientist Board (ECSB) and Analysis Software Tutorial organisers have been teaming up to run a week-long introductory event for new ATLAS members. Induction Day welcomes new members to the collaboration by giving them an overview of the plethora of activities that take place within the ATLAS Collaboration. This is followed by the Analysis Software Tutorial – a five-day event that brings together new members to learn the necessary tools to start a physics analysis in ATLAS.

Traditionally these events were held in-person at CERN, and were often the first time that members would go to CERN and see the actual ATLAS experiment! However, for the many new members living far from the French-Swiss border where CERN sits – an ocean away, for example – traveling was not always a viable option. By the time they could attend one of these events, they were no longer really "new" members. With the move to virtual welcome events, we lose the in-person interaction, but we trade that off for breaking down the travel barrier and truly having an event for new members!

With the move to virtual welcome events, we lose the in-person interaction, but we trade that off for breaking down the travel barrier and truly having an event for new members!

The third fully-virtual edition of Induction Day, held on 19 February 2021, began with an engaging introductory talk by ATLAS Deputy Spokesperson, Manuella Vincter. She brought us back in time to the summer of 1992, when the Letter of Intent for ATLAS was officially submitted to the LHCC (the committee who, among other things, decides what experiments will run at the Large Hadron Collider). We learned that in that year, the proposals for two other LHC experiments – EAGLE and ASCOT – were merged to create the proposal for ATLAS. This makes ATLAS older than many of our Induction Day participants who are now analysing its data!

Following Manuella’s talk, the coordinators of various activities in ATLAS answered questions from participants. All of the major ATLAS activities were covered: detector and Point-1 operations; trigger and data acquisition; physics and performance; software and computing; data preparation; safety; diversity and inclusion; and outreach. When joining such a large collaboration with an established experiment, it’s difficult not to get lost in all of the technical documentation when searching for simple answers. This Q&A session offered a unique experience for new members of the collaboration to ask their questions directly to the experts!

After the Q&A session, ECSB members Ben Davis-Purcell and Sébastien Rettie talked about how to do a PhD in ATLAS and how to do an ATLAS analysis, respectively. These talks aimed to help new members climb the steep learning curve by equipping them with tips and tricks, and providing them with useful resources.

ATLAS Deputy-Spokesperson Dr. Manuella Vincter wows the audience, enthusiastically sharing her deep knowledge of CERN and the ATLAS Experiment. (Image: ATLAS Collaboration)

Ben Davis-Purcell of the ATLAS Early Career Scientist Board shares his experiences of being new to ATLAS (as he is unknowingly video-bombed by new ATLAS member Tom Mclachlan in the audience). (Image: ATLAS Collaboration)

In pre-pandemic times, the most memorable part of Induction Day for many was the connections they made with colleagues over coffee breaks and welcome drinks. Hosting this event virtually has presented a challenge for the ECSB: how could we still build this sense of community among new members? We therefore added a new social activity to the schedule: ATLAS trivia! Induction Day attendees were split into teams where they were tested on their knowledge of the ATLAS experiment, their ability to find important information on ATLAS webpages, and their creativity in answering questions like: “What is your favourite Standard Model particle and why?” We hope that the new friendships formed during this activity remain, and are renewed with a classic in-person CERN restaurant gathering, once that time comes.

The virtual Induction Day was followed by the virtual Analysis Software Tutorial, considered essential training for any new member. With the same spirit of the Induction Day, nearly 100 new ATLAS members joined experts who shared knowledge, advice and guidance through the hands-on exercises. Each day, participants watched pre-recorded lessons, discussed questions in a dedicated Q&A session, and finally worked through prepared exercises with help from mentors. The tutorial covered a broad range of subjects including setting up a proper computing environment, accessing ATLAS datasets, using the worldwide LHC computing grid, creating algorithms, and using common statistics tools.

The Induction Day and Software Tutorial events also give new members a sense of ATLAS’ global and distributed community. Even before the move to online-only activities, ATLAS members have helped one another with software through multiple forums and asynchronous channels. These continued exercises and tutorials remain excellent ways to be welcomed into the collaboration. We look forward to the day when these activities can move back to an in-person setting, while also incorporating what we have learned from this virtual era to maintain the aspects that increase global inclusivity.

Planning an event during a pandemic

Katarina Anthony — Fri, 19 Feb 2021 07:39:14 +0000

Planning an event during a pandemic

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ATLAS Collaboration Early Career Scientist events in the second half of 2020

ATLAS Early Career Scientists Board

ATLAS collaboration

Participants of the ATLAS Early Career Scientist Board's Virtual Meet & Eat event, 16 November to 4 December 2020. (Image: ATLAS Early Career Scientist Board)

2020 was an incredibly difficult year, with “difficult” being an understatement. People were forced to adapt almost every aspect of their lives, and for better or worse, many of these adaptations are not going anywhere anytime soon. All we can do is continue to get by to the best of our ability, helping and supporting each other as much as we can.

As work goes on, we try to learn from these adaptations. This includes learning to accept the comfort of attending meetings in pyjamas, while also discovering the best course of action for the scenario of “Oh no! I have 1 minute until a meeting where I’d like to have my video on! Do I shower and put real clothes on or just throw on a hat and the first blanket that I can find?” In fact, due to the nature of our international collaboration, many of our colleagues had already adapted to the reality of virtual meetings years ago, having to connect to meetings based in European time zones from the west coast of North and South America or Eastern Asia and Oceania (to name a couple examples).

At the ATLAS Early Career Scientist Board (ECSB), we have also had to adapt in order to best represent and assist the early career scientists in our collaboration. We’ve learnt much along the way, and are continuing to improve. One of the biggest changes was moving all of our events in the second half of 2020 to be entirely virtual. While we would ideally all be together in person for such events, there have been some benefits to going virtual. The most positive aspect of this new virtual world is that we have increased attendance and inclusivity across all of our events, allowing us to more easily connect with our collaborators from all over the globe, and teaching us to be more empathetic towards our time zone-separated colleagues. Moving events to the virtual world has also allowed us to invite panelists from anywhere in the world for our Soft-Skills Workshops, host interactive breakout-room trivia during our new ATLAS member Induction Days, and take beautiful screenshots during our Meet & Eat events.

Highlights from the Soft-Skills Workshop and Meet & Eat events are shared below, and there will be a subsequent blog focusing on Induction Days. Hopefully the photos from the most recent Meet & Eat will make you smile as much as they did for us. And don’t worry, as far as we can tell, no one had to resort to the last-minute hat-and-blanket trick (for these photos at least).

Moving events to the virtual world has also allowed us to invite panelists from anywhere in the world.

LHC Soft-Skills Workshops

We teamed up with the early career scientist fora of the ALICE, CMS and LHCb experiments to continue our series of LHC Soft-Skills Workshops. In June 2020, the workshop covered CV writing for academia and industry. It featured a presentation from Muriel Colson and Rocio Alot Barajas, two experienced recruiters from CERN, followed by a panel discussion and Q&A session with Freya Blekman from the CMS experiment, James Allibon from SGS (a business services company), and Albert Puig Navarro from ProtonMail.

“What are the key differences between writing a CV for academia and for industry?” “What is the most relevant information which should be included in a shortened version of your CV?” “How can you communicate appointment roles to those outside of your LHC experiment?” In response to these questions, here is some of the advice that stood out:

avoid clichés ("I always dreamt of becoming a scientist..."),
don't hide your mistakes – own them and use what you learned from them to your advantage,
make sure that every piece of information on your CV adds value (if it doesn't - leave it out!)

After the event we invited participants to swap CVs and apply what they had learnt from the event in a CV peer review.

For our next Soft-Skills Workshop in November, we covered scientific communication. The event kicked off with a presentation from Steve Goldfarb, chair of the International Particle Physics Outreach Group (IPPOG), and Sarah Charley, US-CERN communications officer and writer from Symmetry Magazine. We then had a panel discussion with science communication experts: Andre David, Clara Nellist, Despina Hatzifotiadou and Harry Cliff, from the LHC experiment's outreach teams, and Connie Potter, Conference, Events and Special Guest Organiser at CERN. We owe the success of this event to the phenomenal presenters and panelists – they spoke about science communication in a clear and captivating way which kept the audience engaged throughout the entire event.

One piece of advice which resonated with us is that science communication takes practice, just like any other skill. Everyone is going to make mistakes and fail sometimes (even the experts could recall some cringe-worthy moments), so mistakes are simply important lessons that often lead to more learning (and sometimes a good laugh) for everyone involved!

Meet & Eat

The most recent (virtual) iteration of the now-traditional ATLAS ECSB Meet & Eat event took place from 16 November to 4 December. 37 pairs of junior and senior ATLAS scientists from all around the globe met for an informal chat over a meal or beverage to share their experiences, knowledge and different perspectives about being particle physicists, and also to simply have fun hanging out! The Meet & Eat events have always been received warmly by our community. During these trying times, the Meet & Eat events also play a special role in breaking the routine of only meeting colleagues for work-related calls.

We received many screenshots showing happy faces, and we sincerely thank everyone who made this event a success! Seeing all the ATLAS researchers chatting and smiling really put a smile on our faces – and we hope that the photos have a similar effect on you! The slow return to normalcy is on the horizon, leaving us hoping that the next ECSB blog post will include pictures of us hanging out together like we used to (you know, eating lunch across the table from friends instead of across the computer screen). We wish you the best possible start to 2021, as we look forward to times when we can hang out with our friends and colleagues in person again.

Teaching university students with real ATLAS data

Katarina Anthony — Wed, 27 Jan 2021 09:18:54 +0000

Teaching university students with real ATLAS data

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Meirin Oan Evans

open data

In February 2020, the ATLAS Collaboration released the first 13 TeV data of any LHC experiment. This was especially exciting for me, as I’d been preparing the 13 TeV ATLAS Open Data samples since the start of my Master’s, two and a half years before. This publication enables students from all around the world to learn skills in particle physics, data analysis, programming and machine learning. As a PhD student myself at the University of Sussex, I was really looking forward to seeing others use these data to learn these skills.

As PhD students, many of us work on our research and also teach, so working on ATLAS Open Data has been a fantastic opportunity for me to connect my research with my teaching. I’d like to tell you about some examples of what we’ve been doing at the University of Sussex to help students feel closer to research.

Meirin Oan Evans gives a presentation at the Institute of Physics on using ATLAS Open Data to bridge the skills gap in physics education. Using real data makes exercises more exciting. (Image: Veronica Benson/SEPnet)

First year, first semester

Using Open Data in teaching can start right from the beginning of a student’s university career. In the first year introductory course “Physics in Practice” run by Fabrizio Salvatore, students are learning data-analysis techniques and programming skills, while critically assessing experimental data and communicating experimental results.

Students add code snippets to a Jupyter notebook throughout the module, ending the course with a plot of the Higgs boson mass, very similar to the plot used to discover the Higgs boson! With the plot and goodness-of-fit-criteria to hand, students are asked to explain whether the fit to data is good then extract a value for the Higgs mass and discuss whether their result is compatible with the value obtained by the ATLAS Collaboration. It was really nice to see this course go well last academic year, and thus be able to add new ideas for the coming year!

Dissertations in Open Data

One of my absolute favourite parts of my work has been co-supervising BSc projects along with Lily Asquith using ATLAS Open Data. Bachelor’s student Josh McKeown tested new physics objects like large-radius jets for an upcoming release of ATLAS Open Data, while student Stan Biryukov prepared Jupyter notebooks for analyses of Higgs boson and Graviton decays. Josh’s dissertation and Stan’s dissertation can be found on the CERN Document Server. I was very proud that Josh went on to a Master’s in Data Science and that Stan won the award for best University of Sussex BSc dissertation in his year!

Meirin leads a hackathon on “How to rediscover the Higgs boson” at the Conference for Astronomy and Physics Students”. Using real data in teaching helps students feel closer to research. (Image: Peter Dunstan/Swansea University Physics)

Remote teaching? Open Data to the rescue!

With the current restrictions in place on the number of students that can enter university labs, using experimental data that have already been collected is a necessity. ATLAS Open Data to the rescue! Students can carry out interesting analyses with real proton-collision data, from their own computers. For the new academic year, Iacopo Vivarelli and Simon Peeters have prepared the use of ATLAS Open Data in the Advanced Physics Lab for third year students. Taking inspiration from a similar lab course at the University of Manchester, students can measure how often various types of bosons are produced in the collisions, but are otherwise left to explore and discover, which is exactly what we do as scientists!

That whirlwind tour covers only a few examples of using Open Data to teach our students skills in particle physics, data analysis and programming. Other examples include:

Antonella De Santo’s module “Advanced Particle Physics”
Clark Griffith’s module “Particle Physics”

The University of Sussex’s involvement with ATLAS Open Data goes beyond these examples though. Kate Shaw, Thomas Stevenson and I are part of the ATLAS Open Data team pushing the integration of research-led-learning into teaching – not only at the University of Sussex, but worldwide. We also have many ideas on how to mould ATLAS Open Data into more courses at the University of Sussex in future, and I can’t wait.

It’s really important that physicists share their teaching ideas with each other. By sharing experiences, we can better train our students in the transferable skills in programming, machine learning and more. Together we are training the scientists of the future.

ATLAS Open Data is being used at universities across the world – this really is a global endeavour! Check out this webpage and this document if you’re interested in what other universities are doing, or explore these conference presentations:

“The journey to a fully educational HEP dataset” at ICHEP 2020
“LHC Open Data for the world to see" at LHCP 2020
“Using open data resources effectively” at CHEP 2019
"The development of simple but real HEP data analysis examples" at CHEP 2019
“Using open data resources effectively” at EPS 2019
“ATLAS Open Data project” at ICHEP 2018

Another point worth emphasising is that you don’t need to be at university to use ATLAS Open Data! It is totally open to everyone, and a really great way to get into particle physics if you are studying at home or don’t have access to particle physics courses.

Exploring the “coolest” mock-up

Steven Goldfarb — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 14:28:00 +0000

Exploring the “coolest” mock-up

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The ATLAS mock-up of the central detector (left) sitting next to the B0 magnet, the 1/3rd length prototype of the experiment’s superconducting magnet. (Image: S. Bennett/CERN)

It was in 2014, just a few months after my transition from ALICE to ATLAS, that I saw the mock-up for the first time: a full-scale wooden reproduction of the central portion of the ATLAS experiment, measuring some 8 metres high and wide.

I was with my office mate Jan Godlewski that day, who would retire some months later. Like me, he was a mechanical engineer, as well as being the Cooling Coordinator of ATLAS. With his usual smile he started to tell me that, in 2001, he was in charge of the construction of such handicraft objects, along with 3 other collaborators. The goal at the time was to verify detector geometries, checking for available gaps where hundreds of power and read-out cables could be installed. These mock-ups were also employed to test the pipes used in the evaporative cooling system of the central detectors, in preparation for the actual installation in the experimental cavern which happened in 2007.

There I was, in the middle of yet another fascinating story that Jan was describing like an adventure – one of the many you might hear at CERN if you talk with physicists and engineers. Enthralled by the accuracy of some details, I would never have imagined that a couple of years later the mock-up would become my second office at CERN. 15 years after its first installation, we pulled it out of the drawer because a new mission awaited it.

But why, after all this time, was a wooden mock-up once again essential? Are the 3D models that faithfully reproduce the available spaces not enough? Partially yes, but not completely.

These new detectors will have crazy performance – their electronics will have to be kept at -40°C in order for them to survive the high radiation environment.

A view of the ATLAS mock-up’s current set-up as the testing location for a new CO2 cooling system. (Image: J. Noite/ATLAS Collaboration)

In 2016, the mock-up became operational once again. Installed in one of the CERN workshops, it is surrounded by truss structures – as if on the stage of a rock concert – and equipped with pipes connected to a new cooling system. It is helping us test CO₂ evaporative cooling technology, which at CERN will make up the main cooling systems of future ATLAS and CMS trackers. These new detectors will have crazy performance, and their electronics will have to be kept at -40°C in order for them to survive the high radiation environment.

In order to build such increasingly powerful detectors, operating in extreme working conditions, we have to develop new solutions. Thus the ATLAS Collaboration, together with contributions from CMS, launched an R&D project called Baby-DEMO. The project, which I am in charge of, is carried out by a team of engineers and technicians working to provide the ATLAS with the most suitable and greener cooling technology. Transitioning to CO₂ evaporative cooling will allow us to reduce the usage of Freon and other greenhouse refrigeration gases in our experiments.

The mock-up is the ideal tool for performing an in-depth study of the cooling system, because we can check our limits and try to overcome them. It is also being used to verify various other functionalities of new detectors, and is available to teams developing detector prototypes or working on the integration of the new cables. Proving that, just as it was twenty years ago, reality is still the best 3D model available.

Now I, just like Jan, have a story to tell!

Other Languages: Italian

Exploring the “coolest” mock-up

Steven Goldfarb — Thu, 10 Sep 2020 14:28:00 +0000

Exploring the “coolest” mock-up

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The ATLAS mock-up of the central detector (left) sitting next to the B0 magnet, the 1/3rd length prototype of the experiment’s superconducting magnet. (Image: S. Bennett/CERN)

But why, after all this time, was a wooden mock-up once again essential? Are the 3D models that faithfully reproduce the available spaces not enough? Partially yes, but not completely.

These new detectors will have crazy performance – their electronics will have to be kept at -40°C in order for them to survive the high radiation environment.

A view of the ATLAS mock-up’s current set-up as the testing location for a new CO2 cooling system. (Image: J. Noite/ATLAS Collaboration)

Now I, just like Jan, have a story to tell!

Other Languages: Italian

Connecting during COVID-19: Updates from the (physically but not socially distanced) Early Career Scientist Board

Steven Goldfarb — Wed, 01 Jul 2020 11:16:00 +0000

Connecting during COVID-19: Updates from the (physically but not socially distanced) Early Career Scientist Board

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Sukanya Sinha

ATLAS collaboration

Participants of the first fully-virtual ATLAS Meet & Eat event!

The times we are living in bring new challenges for all. As a community, we need to stay in contact, remain motivated and learn from each other's experiences. The work-from-home situation is one to which everyone has to adjust, balancing personal and professional lives, while accepting the effect of the ongoing pandemic on society. Despite these challenges, the ATLAS Early Career Scientist Board (ECSB) developed a series of events to boost the morale of the ECS community and to help people connect, even when they are sitting miles away from each other. I joined the ATLAS ECSB in March 2020, and to be honest, it has felt great to be a part of something that makes a difference in people’s lives – even if it’s just to laugh together.

Following the success of the informal Meet & Eat events, we held a special virtual edition of the Meet & Eat event during the weeks of 13 to 24 April 2020. As in previous editions (read Luigi’s blog about the winter events), we paired PhD students and junior postdoctoral fellows with more senior postdoctoral fellows and faculty in the collaboration so they can have a chat. But this time the pairs were asked to meet up over video messengers instead of the usual face-to-face lunch meetings at CERN.

Over the two weeks, 32 junior–senior pairs met up to share their experiences with each other or just to have a friendly chat with someone they wouldn’t have met otherwise. Humans are social beings by design – a fact that was further proven by the positive feedback for the Virtual Meet & Eat event we received, along with suggestions to improve the upcoming versions.

Alongside the ATLAS Meet & Eat event, the Young Scientists Fora at the LHC (early career scientist boards from ATLAS, CMS, ALICE & LHCb) joined forces to organise a series of networking/soft skills workshops, with each event focusing on different career development skills.

Given the current COVID-19 situation, the first soft-skills workshop of the year was on the topic of working from home. On 15 April 2020, over 200 participants connected via a video messenger to share experiences and tips for getting the most out of the present working-from-home situation. The event started with a short introduction, followed by a roundtable session with speakers invited from different groups and projects, including Women in Technology, the #PhysicistsAtHome social campaign and the LHCb/ALICE Starterkit initiative. They shared their tips for being productive while working from home, and how they are balancing their personal and professional lives during these difficult times. Presentations were followed by fruitful discussion among speakers and participants. The event was well received by the LHC community in general and motivated the effort to brainstorm ideas for future networking events.

“I really enjoyed hearing everyone's advice for working from home during the networking event. My favorite piece of advice was to try to end your work for the day on a 'high note', so that it is easier to get started the next day!” – Emily Anne Thompson

“If possible, choose a place to work at home, and do nothing there but work. This could be a certain table or corner of a room.” – Rebecca Gonzalez Suarez

Since joining ECSB, I have had the chance to see the collaboration from an altogether different perspective. It is a booming community of brilliant minds, where social interactions are a necessary part of the research. The recent ECSB events have not only helped people develop necessary skills for career advancement, they have also helped people connect with one another despite the distance. Organising them was truly worth the effort! I personally enjoyed participating in both, and learnt a lot about how to deal with all the associated issues that one might be facing during such extraordinary times. One thing is for sure, no matter the circumstances, we will get through them together!

You want me to present a poster…. remotely?

Steven Goldfarb — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 16:46:00 +0000

You want me to present a poster…. remotely?

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Members of the ATLAS Collaboration

LHCP 2020

LHCP

A typical conference poster session experience compared to the socially-distanced experience. (Images: ICHEP 2018 (left) and C. Montgomery/Unsplash (right))

The Large Hadron Collider Physics conference held its first virtual edition last month. While attending virtual talks is commonplace in particle physics, for the first time attendees also participated in virtual poster sessions.

Though an academic affair, poster sessions are also an opportunity to network and socialise with colleagues. Typically, a large hall will be filled with rows of poster stands, their authors standing anxiously beside them, anticipating whatever question may be posed by a passer-by. Finger food and drinks are usually served. Sometimes these encounters lead to in-depth discussions about a new result but, more often than not, they just serve as ice-breakers for would-be colleagues, or a kind of “physics buffet” for conference attendees to sample subjects outside their specialization. Could such an experience be recreated in an online conference?

For LHCP2020, participants were instead asked to provide 3-minute video presentations of their poster. They then participated in an open Zoom connection, where colleagues could connect and ask questions about their work. Members of the ATLAS Collaboration share their experience taking part, as well as their overall impressions of the conference.

Ana Luísa Carvalho, LIP

"Attending LHCP was a great opportunity, but of course it went a bit differently than what I originally envisioned. I had imagined myself in Paris but ended up attending from my desk. Nonetheless, I think everything worked wonderfully well and it was a truly remarkable achievement to hold such a huge conference entirely online. Weirdly enough, there were some upsides to it. Attending from home means that the distractions associated with being in a room filled with people are gone, allowing you to focus solely on the talks.

For the poster presentation, I was able to comfortably wait in my Zoom meeting room instead of having to awkwardly stand next to my poster waiting for someone to approach me. We were also encouraged to record a small video explaining the poster, which is a great way of publicising our work and making it widely accessible even after the conference is over. Hopefully this crazy experience will lead to more conferences being held partially remotely, making them accessible to a wider audience."

Meirin Oan Evans, University of Sussex

"This was my first virtual conference, and in particular the first virtual poster session! I did find that fewer people beamed into my poster ‘Zoom room’ than the number of people that would usually stop for a quick chat about my poster during an in-person poster session. That reminded me how important it is to have a catchy title!

However, I found that the chats I did have were higher quality than the average chat during an in-person poster session. Virtually, it was even easier to follow-up with an interested poster inspector. All that had to be done was type an email address into the Zoom chat and an exchange could be started!"

"Hopefully this crazy experience will lead to more conferences being held partially remotely, making them accessible to a wider audience."

Silvia Franchino, Heidelberg University

"Though I could attend only a few talks of the conference, I did present a poster during the virtual session. The idea of the video presentation was nice, as was the idea of having all posters loaded in Indico. However, I found the two hours allocated to answer questions to be a bit of lost time, since nobody did actually connect to ask questions."

Ana Peixoto, LIP

"LHCP2020 was not only my first LHCP, but also my first online conference. The more compact programme (in order to include people from all over the world) allowed me to follow the subjects that I am more interested in in more detail. Perhaps, with a more spread out timetable, I would have also been able to listen to other not so familiar topics. My contribution to the conference was done through a poster, which was where the difference between an online and in-person poster session was more noticeable.

The 3-minute video explanation and the meeting room for each poster were good supplements with a reasonable participation, even if not as extensive as previous LHCP conferences (and that is understandable!). Personally, I found the outcome positive, with the traditional programme discussing a wide range of particle-physics topics and several key results being presented for the first time. In summary, I was very happy to participate and learn through this important conference taking into account that, had it not been organised online, the probability of my attendance would have been highly reduced."

Serving up new winter recipes with the ATLAS Early Career Scientist Board

Steven Goldfarb — Fri, 28 Feb 2020 17:03:00 +0000

Serving up new winter recipes with the ATLAS Early Career Scientist Board

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Luigi Marchese

ATLAS collaboration

Photos and comments from the 2019 ATLAS Meet-And-Eat participants. (Image: ATLAS Collaboration/CERN)

In 2019, I joined the ATLAS Early Career Scientist Board (ECSB): a special advisory group dedicated to assisting the ATLAS Collaboration in building an environment where the full scientific potential of scientists at the start of their career can be realised. The board organises several activities for the ATLAS community (you may have seen all of our summer activities described in this blog). I was actively involved in the winter activities. They were all fantastic experiences to improve social relationships in a 5000-people collaboration.

ATLAS Meet-And-Eat event, 2019 recipe. (Image: ATLAS Collaboration/CERN)

Winter in Geneva can be tough. However, for the third year in a row, the ECSB cooked up one of its most famous recipes: Meet-And-Eat (link internal). From 11 November to 13 December 2019, junior and senior ATLAS members had a chance to have one-on-one lunch meetings at the CERN cafeteria or over video chat. PhD students and junior Post-Doctoral researchers (PostDocs) were randomly matched to a senior ATLAS member, giving them an opportunity to meet with someone with a vast experience to be shared. This event was the perfect time to share doubts on their future in the field and to receive career advice from someone who has gone through the same path. There were so many interesting anecdotes senior ATLAS academics also enjoyed sharing with the next generation. Additionally, ATLAS members had the opportunity to get to know colleagues and students who are not part of their working groups.

This winter recipe included a “fork” of topics (see "recipe" on right), in case conversation ever got stuck. I myself registered for past events and received useful advice for future applications… as well as a free dessert!

In order to be more inclusive, the 2019 recipe came also with a Skype variation. A total of 32 senior PostDocs and academics and 58 students and junior PostDocs participated in the 2019 Meet And Eat. Judging from the food critic, both the recipe and its variation were well received.

ATLAS networking events, 2019 recipe. (Image: ATLAS Collaboration/CERN)

Last November, the ECSB also launched a new winter recipe: a series of networking events. At each event, international experts would focus on a specific topic in career development, and host a question and answer session. Topics covered include CV organisation, grant writing, importance of networking, negotiations for a new job, interview preparation, science communication, etc.

On 6 November 2019, 56 ATLAS members received useful suggestions on how to write a good grant proposal by Pablo Tello, Section Head of the EU Support Group (Development of EU Projects & Initiatives, CERN). The material for this first event is available here. A round table was also organised with three ATLAS members who were awarded with or were in the decision panel for research grants: Kerstin Tackman, David Strom and Sinead Farrington. Remote participation was possible. The event was highly appreciated by young ATLAS members.

Mouth watering? If you found some interesting ingredients in the ECSB winter recipes, follow us on our webpage (link internal) or Facebook page for the 2020 summer recipes. Stay tuned, since the 2020 Meet-And-Eat and the next networking event could include a delicious dessert!

After one year, I can say joining the ECSB has been one of the best decisions I have made as a member of ATLAS. It has changed my understanding of the collaboration. ATLAS is not only an industry for scientific papers. It’s a community of more than 5000 people where social interactions are key to successfully publishing all the physics results.

Sharing the Excitement of ATLAS

Steven Goldfarb — Sun, 22 Dec 2019 10:07:00 +0000

Sharing the Excitement of ATLAS

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An end of the year visit to LHC's largest particle detector

Kiley Kennedy asking ATLAS to smile. (Image: S. Goldfarb / ATLAS Experiment, CERN)

This past week, I grabbed a last-minute opportunity to wander about and take in the beauty of my favourite particle physics detector. Located 100 meters under the French/Swiss border near Geneva, ATLAS is always a marvel to see and to explore. Although I have hosted hundreds of visits by its side, I never tire of the view and inevitably pull out my phone or camera to photograph it, yet again.

On this occasion, I was joined by my colleague, Kiley Kennedy, a Ph.D. student at Columbia University in New York. She and I were on hand to host an interview by the Lithuanian television station DELFI Lietuva. The hostess, Goda Raibytė, visited CERN several years ago, and has stayed in contact ever since. Kiley and I took turns answering questions about the progress the experiment has made over the past few years, the upgrades we are currently undertaking during our long shutdown, and what we hope to discover when the next run starts in May, 2021.

Note: Here is Kiley and Steve's interview with Goda Raibytė on Lithuania's DELFI Lietuva (published 22 Jan 2020). English audio follows the introduction.

Public engagement teaches Kiley to consolidate an understanding of her research, to see where it fits in the big picture and to hone her skills at communicating that message clearly.

As a seasoned veteran, I enjoy answering these questions, yet I still find it a challenge. Kiley and I had a responsibility to make sure our answers were clear to a lay audience. Even more important, was to convey the message that science, fundamental research and international collaboration are not only worth the investment, but essential to humanity. I think we managed. At the very least, the audience was treated to an exceptional view of the detector and Kiley’s remarkable enthusiasm for her research.

Video of ATLAS Side A Endcap scanning from feet of support structure up 100m to the top of the access shaft. (Video: S. Goldfarb / ATLAS Experiment, CERN)

As a student, Kiley’s focus is set clearly on her contributions to the Liquid Argon Calorimeter, the detector subsystem her group maintains, and the analysis of data for her thesis. Although helping me with the underground interview could be seen as “taking a break” from her responsibilities, it is actually one of the more important components of her training. Public engagement teaches Kiley to consolidate an understanding of her research, to see where it fits in the big picture and to hone her skills at communicating that message clearly. I hope she will feature these skills proudly on her CV and that future employers will appreciate these values when considering her for a position.

This has not always been the case. Even as experiments have grown in size and geographical spread, scientists within those collaborations have had to work hard, not only to develop the tools and methods to support outreach, but also to convince their peers of its value. Today, I am very proud to work in a laboratory and on a collaboration that value these efforts and provide support for this vital work. Over time, our colleagues are recognizing education and public engagement to be not only a social obligation, but a strategic pillar of our field, raising awareness and support, and increasing global appreciation of science in society.

Scientific process, evidence-based decision-making and international collaboration are more vital now than ever before. If you have any doubts, just read the news.

In fact, as of today, six major particle physics experiments, CERN, and 26 countries provide support in the form of membership of the International Particle Physics Outreach Group (IPPOG). And that list is growing. With pending signatures of the High-Altitude Water Cherenkov Gamma-Ray Observatory (HAWC) in Mexico and the Helmholtz Centre for Heavy Ion Research (GSI) in Germany, IPPOG is spreading not only geographically, but also in scope, including astroparticle and nuclear physics alongside high-energy particle physics.

Why does this excite me? Well, O.K. – full disclosure – I will begin my second term as chair of IPPOG in January. But, more importantly, this collaboration is building networks, programs and activities that reach a broad spectrum of audiences around the world. Is particle physics that critical to our planet? It’s hard to say, but the methods we use certainly are. Scientific process, evidence-based decision-making and international collaboration are more vital now than ever before. If you have any doubts, just read the news.

Or don’t. I suggest your time would be better spent thumbing through the photos that Kiley and I took during our underground visit. We both ran around the detector like little kids, snapping pictures everywhere. It’s awesome to have a job that always inspires. Enjoy and Happy Holidays!

LHC beamline at entrance to ATLAS side C

Kiley Kennedy photographing LHC beamline

Kiley Kennedy posing next to LHC beamline

Kiley Kennedy getting ready to drive to CMS

The international collaboration of LHC magnet construction

Gas tubes

Cables

A peek under the ATLAS Experiment

Bolts

Electronics on the ATLAS Experiment

ATLAS Side A and access shaft

Muon Spectrometer drift tubes

Cold and cold running water

New ATLAS members, welcome on board

Steven Goldfarb — Wed, 18 Sep 2019 11:17:00 +0000

New ATLAS members, welcome on board

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Dimitrii Krasnopevtsev

ATLAS collaboration

Group photo of the ATLAS Induction Day participants, 3 June 2019. (Image: E. Oreshkina/ATLAS Collaboration)

This summer was rich with events regularly organised by the ATLAS Early Career Scientists Board (ECSB): Induction Day, Career Q&A and the Ice Cream event. The ECSB is a special advisory group dedicated to assisting the ATLAS Collaboration in building an environment where the full scientific potential of young scientists can be realised. It consists of seven early career scientists, representing various career levels, nationalities, genders and home institutions. I have been in the thick of things as a new member of the ECSB and had a lot of new experiences. Each event was full of fantastic people and brought to its participants tonnes of useful information.

Speakers at the Career Q&A Event, 6 June 2019. From left to right: Xingguo Li (ECSB member), Teresa Dova (Argentina), Lydia Fayard (France), Antonella de Santo (UK), Klaus Monig (Germany), Richard Hawkings (CERN) and Stephane Willocq (US, not pictured). (Image: E. Oreshkina/ATLAS Collaboration)

The first of our summer events was Induction Day, held on 3 June. During each Induction Day, the leaders of the collaboration introduce various elements of the experiment and answer questions from new members, mostly Masters and PhD students. The meeting was opened by the ATLAS spokesperson Karl Jakobs, who gave an overview of the ATLAS experiment and its role in the LHC. Then, the discussion about the major ingredients of the experiment began. There were presentations about detector operations, the trigger system, data quality and acquisition, computing, and finally about physics analyses in ATLAS. Newcomers were also introduced to safety rules and the CERN Code of Conduct, not forgetting to give credit to the importance of science outreach in the collaboration. ECSB members shared their experiences in talks about “how to do a PhD in ATLAS” and “how to do an ATLAS analysis”. There was an additional invited talk which walked the students through the analysis of Top quark production. Discussions continued during the welcome drink.

The second Career Q&A event was organised on 6 June, following the results of a general survey of ATLAS members. Among the many interesting opinions gathered, this survey showed a discrepancy between the way that people at different career levels rank the skill priorities for the same position differently. This issue and others related to career were discussed by 50 young ATLAS members and invited experienced scientists from around the world who recruit annually for their universities.

Participants at the Ice Cream event, 21 August 2019. (Image: E. Oreshkina/ATLAS Collaboration)

The summer ended with free ice cream and discussions around neutrino physics on 21 August. Around 100 early-career scientists were able to take a break from their current projects, to broaden their scientific horizons and learn more about what is going on in related fields. The Ice Cream event was organised, for the third time, in collaboration with young forums from all four large LHC experiments (ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb), and was opened this year by the CERN Director for Research and Computing, Eckhard Elsen. Previous editions covered such topics as future colliders, dark matter and dark energy. For me, this was perhaps the most memorable event, as I received the honorable role of presenting the speakers, which I had never done before at such a large event. It is hard to imagine where I would have gained such experience had I not decided to join the ATLAS ECSB a year ago.

Once again, I found out how an active position opens up new opportunities, provides you with new knowledge and helps you to grow. If you are a member of the ATLAS collaboration, I strongly encourage you to take part in the next ECSB event. The knowledge shared at these events could save you plenty of time and might even change your career. All events are broadcast online, so there are no more excuses if you cannot be at CERN in person. The next edition of the Induction Day (link internal) will take place on 21 October and we are waiting for all new members to facilitate their integration into the ATLAS family.

Ten days of Trigger and Data Acquisition at ISOTDAQ

Steven Goldfarb — Fri, 26 Apr 2019 17:54:00 +0000

Ten days of Trigger and Data Acquisition at ISOTDAQ

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Adam Abed Abud

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Hands-on laboratory session: controlling a robotic arm. (Image: ISOTDAQ 2019)

This April marked the 10th anniversary of the International School of Trigger and Data Acquisition (ISOTDAQ). It was a fantastic event that united researchers in physics, computing and engineering, ranging from undergraduate students to post-doctoral scientists. The goal of the school was to teach the "arts and crafts" of triggering and data-acquisition for high-energy physics experiments through a series of lectures and hands-on laboratory exercises.

The trigger and data-acquisition system is a critical component of any nuclear and particle physics experiment. The scope of the trigger is to select only the interesting collision events among the billions produced in an experiment. Meanwhile, the data-acquisition system is responsible for collecting the data produced by the detectors, aggregating the events and storing for further analysis. This has to be done (almost) in real time!

This edition of ISOTDAQ was held in the Physics and Electrical Engineering Buildings at Royal Holloway, University of London. The university campus was one of the best I have ever seen. It is located just outside the city of London, in a green and modern area. It was amazing to walk there in the morning, passing through a small park with plenty of squirrels, or to discover one of the many routes to get from one building to another. This year, the school attracted 55 students from all over the world! The atmosphere was always relaxed and friendly, suitable for learning the very technical topics presented.

Data-acquisition is a really interesting subject because it is an amalgam of many different fields. It combines a lot computer science, electronics and physics. In other words: it is the best career path for tech nerds. The emphasis of the school was to understand the main building blocks of a general data-acquisition system, ranging from detector readout and software programming to intelligent triggering solutions.

The life of a scientist can be really tough at times. But through conferences and schools like ISOTDAQ, one can enjoy some of the advantages of doing research.

Main building at the Royal Holloway campus, University of London. (Image by A. Abed Abud/ATLAS Collaboration)

A lot of focus was given to the most recent technological solutions, both in the lectures as well as the laboratory exercises. It was a perfect mix of theory and practice. During the hands-on sessions, we set up discriminators, scintillators and analogue-to-digital converters. This helped get us familiar with the basic elements of a typical high-energy physics experiment. Other interesting laboratory exercises included measuring the acceleration of gravity with an Arduino board and learning how to control a robotic arm with the Labview software.

As in every conference, there were also plenty of opportunities to socialize. The coffee breaks presented great occasions to talk to experts in the field and, most importantly, it was the best way to get out of the freezing cold lecture hall! Between one cookie and another this was a great time to network, make new friends or simply enjoy British tea. After a day of sessions, we had the chance to visit local restaurants and pubs - where I discovered some amazing beers I had never heard of. The main social dinner for the conference (or should I call it “Royal Dinner”) was held in the Picture Gallery of the university. It definitely felt like being at Hogwarts, in a room full of historical paintings and interesting art.

The life of a scientist can be really tough at times. But through conferences and schools like ISOTDAQ, one can enjoy some of the advantages of doing research: travelling, meeting new people, talking to experts and learning new skills. Through these experiences, we are able to advance our understanding of the complicated field of data-acquisition. It was definitely a rewarding experience and I’m looking forward to my next adventure as an ATLAS scientist!

Boosting high-energy physics education around the world with ATLAS Open Data

Steven Goldfarb — Thu, 26 Jul 2018 13:37:00 +0000

Boosting high-energy physics education around the world with ATLAS Open Data

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Arturo Sánchez Pineda

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Arturo at an ATLAS Open Data-centred educational event in Venezuela. (Image: ATLAS Collaboration/CERN)

Since the beginning of ATLAS, collaboration members have devoted hours, days, weeks and months teaching High Energy Physics (HEP) to anyone willing to listen. But sometimes those willing to listen do not have the means, especially when oceans and continents separate them from our experiment in Geneva. How can we overcome these geographical distances to allow anyone interested in HEP to learn?

I work on the ATLAS Open Data project, which has created a means for anyone, anywhere to learn about and work with HEP data. This project delivers data recorded by the ATLAS experiment, together with useful simulated data. Along with these datasets, we released several educational resources, documentation and support, plus analysis software that relies on other very well-known Open Source projects like ROOT at CERN.

The fact that the ATLAS Open Data project’s data samples and resources are Open Access allows for their reuse – and enhancement – by non-members. A group of professors and students in Venezuela have taken advantage of this opportunity to create a formal learning environment with ATLAS Open Data resources.

Two case studies: studying HEP in Venezuela

Several Venezuelan universities now use the ATLAS Open Data resources to teach and to develop HEP university theses. This is happening at both the undergraduate and graduate levels.

Iskya Garcia. (Image: ATLAS Collaboration/CERN)

Iskya Garcia, a graduate student of Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV), had experience working with large collaborations and datasets before working with ATLAS Open Data. During her undergraduate years at UCV, Iskya wrote a thesis based on data from the Latin American Giant Observatory (LAGO) collaboration at the Pierre Auger Observatory located in Argentina. When she started her master’s program at UCV under my supervision, Iskya used data from the ATLAS Open Data repository, which was collected in 2012.

“The main subject was the development of cut-and-count analyses for the search of dark matter candidates using reconstructed jets of particles,” Iskya explained. “These are produced due to the presence of quarks and gluons after the proton-proton collisions at the LHC.”

Iskya simulated other dark matter candidates using open sources HEP software like Pythia and Delphes. Before her thesis defense, Iskya moved to Argentina to develop her professional activities. But thanks to the wonders of modern communication, Iskya was able to present her thesis from Argentina, while the jury qualifier was in Caracas and her supervisor in Geneva.

Maria Di Domenico. (Image: ATLAS Collaboration/CERN)

Another student at UCV, Maria Di Domenico, did her undergraduate thesis in physics using the ATLAS Open Data resources. "In my thesis, I studied and produced a set of analyses with the end of reconstructing the invariant masses of the W, Z and Higgs bosons,” Maria said. “My work was performed using a cloud computing platform called SWAN, developed and localised at CERN, and based on Jupyter notebooks (Open Source web-based technology) and ROOT. The final product: a set of self-explained notebooks showing the physics and the programming elements needed for this kind of “cut-and-count” reconstruction. These notebooks will be used as educational resources for university-level HEP teaching and outreach in the ATLAS Open Data portal.”

Maria has since graduated from UCV and is now a CMS PhD candidate living in Pisa, Italy. Unlike Iskya, Maria, her supervisor, and her jury were all present at UCV for her thesis defence in October 2017.

These two beautiful stories of collaboration and passion remind us of the importance of sharing knowledge and resources worldwide. We continue following this path of openness, already working with new students from around the world.

We cannot conclude this story without sharing their final products: both Maria’s and Iskya's thesis documents are available in the CERN Document Server, another Open Access publication platform hosted at CERN.

International conferences: interesting physics & instant excitement

Steven Goldfarb — Tue, 10 Jul 2018 04:10:00 +0000

International conferences: interesting physics & instant excitement

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Gyeongbokgung Palace, Seoul. (Image: M. O. Evans/ATLAS Collaboration)

What a start it's been to my first conference! I was lucky enough to join the 39th International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP), the biggest conference in High Energy Physics. About 1000 physicists are currently gathered in Seoul, presenting results from all across the field. Getting to visit South Korea plus hearing about cutting-edge physics sounded like a 5-star recipe to me!

Since there's so much physics to get through, the first few days of ICHEP are split into "parallel sessions", each focusing on different areas. On Friday and Saturday there were "Education & Outreach" sessions. These sessions were close to my heart as I got to present the "ATLAS Open Data Project", something I've been working on since the start of my Master's degree. Other outreach talks described Virtual Reality, live videos, social media, masterclasses, online courses, summer schools, festivals, shows…

I've also attended several sessions on loads of cool physics, including top quarks and SUSY (she still seems to be hiding in the dark). I’m not sure I understood all of the content, but hey, we're all learning. It was also really nice to see sessions on “Technology Applications and Industrial Opportunities” and “Diversity and Inclusion” included alongside physics talks. In the poster session, it was amazing being able to approach the authors to ask questions face to face.

Coffee breaks are a great chance to chat to anyone and everyone, which is worth doing since whoever you speak to is an expert in their respective field!

Talks invoke many a thoughtful conversation over hot beverages. (Unfortunately, no hot chocolate is available for those of us who still like to pretend they're children.) Coffee breaks are a great chance to chat to anyone and everyone, which is worth doing since whoever you speak to is an expert in their respective field! The organisers also did a really great job introducing us to local culture during these breaks, providing traditional teas and sweets, and showcasing traditional South Korean calligraphy, caricatures and dancing.

Evenings provide a perfect opportunity to go out and explore the conference host city. Right outside the conference venue there’s a lively area containing South Korean restaurants and bars. This setting made it easy to carry interesting physics discussions into the night over food and drink. You really need to try South Korean food if you’re ever over here (spoiler: it’s delicious).

Everything has been non-stop since the conference started, but it's been worth it and I wouldn't ask to have it any other way. Roll on the rest of the conference!