What Will Happen Next

(By Tommaso Dorigo)

The excitement over the 750 GeV would-be resonance could not be higher these days, with 1) accelerator scientists at the LHC producing collisions in the core of the CMS and ATLAS detectors, 2) theorists producing more and more interpretations of the physics scenarios about to open up, and 3) experimentalists getting ready to jump at the data.

The evidence of #1 is of public domain. As a proof of #2 above, below please find a graph

It’s Out!

The article describing the clustering technique that my group has designed to study physics models living in multi-dimensional spaces has finally been published today on JHEP, a high-impact-factor journal. You can find it here (it’s Open Access!)

In statistical analysis, clustering is the way to call a class of problems where

Genesis of a successful blog

Not every blogger writes to acquire a readership, but on the other hand it is undisputable that the success and the impact of a blog on its target audience can be measured -very precisely, indeed- by the number of hits it receives, or the number of people who read it.

Sense the reality II

In a previous post I entertain with the data of my newborn daughter’s daily habits. After publishing the article I was asked if the number of barfing events per day was Poisson distributed. I want to do a small research about that. I’m also sorry if anybody is disguised by the subject, but the curious question cannot be left unanswered.

The accelerators of the future

by Daniela Bortoletto

I attended the second Future Circular Collider (FCC) week that took place in Rome from 11 to 15 April. It was a very interesting event, covering amazing physics reach and important technological developments.

Alone In Building 40

Well, that’s not how I had figured it out, but I’ll make the best of it….

What am I talking about ? I am going to explain it. I had planned to come to CERN for a week with the two researchers who are spending 100% of their time on our search for H-boson pair production. The plan involved getting to CERN on Thursday evening, and then working together almost full time through the weekend, aiming at presenting updated results next Wednesday at the relevant analysis meeting.

I lost a bet!

Almost two months ago, Tommaso and I designed a challenge about guessing the b-flavour content of jets in simulated QCD processes. The aim of the competition was to predict the fraction of events with 0,1,2,3 and 4 selected b-jets (i.e. jets which contain b-hadrons) after an event selection which resembles the one used for the HH → bbbb analysis we are working on.

An introduction to Monte Carlo event-generation

Hej! Work’s starting to pick up here at LIP-Lisbon as we begin to think about Monte Carlo sample production.

Monte Carlo (MC) generators are an important tool for us particle physicists since they allow us to simulate the particle collisions which occur at colliders like the LHC, whilst having access to the entire record of processes (MC truth). This allows us to determine background contributions to data, design new detectors, or, as we at AMVA4NP will make great use of, test and optimise selection algorithms.

AMVA4NewPhysics among the spires of Oxford

by Daniela Bortoletto

Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world. The university existed in some form already in 1096 but it started developing rapidly in 1167, when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris. Oxford has educated many notable alumni including 27 Nobel laureates, 26 British prime ministers and many foreign heads of state.