LHCPHENONET · Advanced Particle Phenomenology in the LHC era

Advanced Particle Phenomenology in the LHC era

With the challenges of the machine operation driving the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the Initial Training Network LHCPHENONET 'Advanced Particle Phenomenology in the LHC Era' (http://www.lhcphenonet.eu/) has been designed to provide optimal training conditions in particle physics for early-stage researchers in a multidisciplinary environment. The LHCPHENONET network unites young theoretical physicists from around Europe. Most of its team members have made significant contributions to the theory of the fundamental interactions binding the quarks and holding atomic nuclei together. Through the LHCPHENONET project, 42 young researchers had the opportunity to pursue their research in one of 11 leading research institutions and 3 partners from the industrial environment. They were supported by approximately 160 physicists from 28 European universities and research institutes, the University of Buenos Aires and CERN. The LHCPHENONET network, formed in January 2011 with the support of the European Commission until December 2014, was poised to meet the new challenges presented by the LHC experiment. The proposed ITN timeline matched the foreseen LHC running schedule to allow the exploitation and interpretation of early data. A number of fellows were also seconded to the industry partners for periods of 2-3 months, giving them the opportunitiy to have a new experience in a professional environement and a valuable perspective about a possible future career development in the private sector. A special start was made in July 2012 with CERN's official announcement that there was evidence of the long-sought Higgs boson particle. The network teams have been involved in basically all important theory improvements for the main Higgs boson production and decay channels at the LHC in the last four years, contributing in this way to the global effort necessary for the discovery of this long awaited particle that was announced by CERN, and lead to the award of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2013 to François Englert and Peter Higgs. The discovery of this new particle also attracted a lot of interest from the media and the society. Several outreach events were organised at different meetings of the network, and all of them successfully reached the general public. Several meetings and workshops were organised to review the state of the art in the phenomenology at the LHC, including the Kick-off Meeting held in Valencia in February 2011 and the Final Meeting held in Berlin in November 2014. The events also hosted discussions on future developments of customised open source software for precision physics at colliders. As part of the training in complimentary skills, all the fellows gave presentations in these events on the status and results of their respective research work and were invited to participate in different management activities of the network. The fellows participated as members of the Local Organizing Commitees of the network events, and one of them was acting as representative of all the ESR and ER companions in the Supervisory Board. The fellows organised by themselves two fellow´s meetings in Buenos Aires in April 2013 and Paris in June 2014, where by their own initiative they devoted a session to discuss on career development perspectives beyond physics. A key component of the LHCPHENONET network's training activity was the doctoral training events organised by the different network teams. Here, the best specialists in the field from around the world lectured and discussed about higher order perturbative corrections in the Standard Model and beyond, and explained how the basic building blocks of matter interact, governed by the four fundamental forces. The 6 training events organised by the network were attended not only by the network fellows, but also by other PhD students and postdoctoral researchers from the partners of the network, as well as by external participants. During the 48 months of the LHCPHENONET network fellows and members published 506 scientific papers, 179 of those publications are coauthored by the ESR and ER fellows. Collaboration among the different partners resulted in several joint publications, more than 40% of those papers involve researchers from at least two different partners. In addition, many fellows and network members updated and developed open computer codes, which are available from different web sites. The results obtained during the LHCPHENONET project will be instrumental to understand better the properties of the sub-atomic world and to extract new information from experiments at the LHC that should help to find the missing pieces and fundamental interactions of the physics puzzle hidden deep at sub-atomic scales in the next run of the LHC starting in 2015.

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз