CHIPP: Swiss Institute of Particle Physics
The main highlights of 2018 were the two Swiss Strategic Workshops (SWICH), which were extremely successful. The first Workshop (SWICH1) was held at the Centre Loewenberg in Murten: 3-6 April 2018 and the second one (SWICH2) in the Parc Hotel in Fribourg: 13-14 September 2018. During the first Workshop many excellent speakers presented the state of the field in Particle and Astroparticle Physics in Switzerland and internationally, in preparation of the Swiss input for the European Strategy (ESPP) process in 2019. Four days of presentations and discussions set the scientific base to prepare the discussion leading to a priority list of our Swiss activities during the second Workshop in Fribourg. In the meantime, there was an update of the White Paper for Pillar 1 (Particle Physics at High Energy/Intensity). At the SWICH2 Workshop, the final discussions in each pillar took place separately followed by a common session summarized the main Swiss strategy. The CHIPP Chair, T. Nakada, was asked to prepare a first draft for the Swiss document to be submitted for the ESPP process based on the conclusion reached at SWICH2. The final document was ready for submission by December 2019.
In August 2018 the EPFL (Lausanne) hosted the CHIPP Annual Plenary Meeting. A rich scientific program covered the three CHIPP pillars: particle physics at the high-energy and intensity frontiers, astroparticle physics, and neutrino physics. There was a session with reports of the activities of the various committees such as the European Committee for Future Accelerators, the International Particle Physics Outreach Group, the Astroparticle Physics European Consortium (APPEC) and the Nuclear Physics European Collaboration Committee (NuPECC). During the meeting CHIPP held the elections to cover the different roles in the association and to select the Swiss representatives in the international organizations.
The CHIPP annual meeting was organized in conjunction with annual meeting of the Swiss Physical Society where the CHIPP participated in the organization of parallel sessions for particle and astroparticle physics. One of the two public lectures, Thorium-Based Systems A new concept for nuclear waste elimination and energy production, was given by Prof. M. Bourquin (University of Geneva). Prof. G. Isidori (University of Zurich) presented during the conference a very stimulating talk on Hints of New Physics from flavour-changing processes. As part of the SPS award ceremony where all winners of the various SPS prizes are honored and the CHIPP prize for the best 2018 PhD thesis work in particle physics was awarded to C.Tambasco (EPFL) for her decisive contributions to the understanding of Landau damping and beam-beam effects at the LHC with Beam-Transfer-Function measurements that led to a substantial increase in luminosity".
During 2018, the CHIPP Executive Board and the CHIPP Board were very active in the preparation of a coherent set of requests for the funding of experiments via the FLARE program of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) for the next two years.
On the 8 November, the CHIPP Chair, Prof. T. Nakada, was invited to a meeting in Bern organized by SERI for the occasion of the DoE-FNAL visit to summarise the Swiss neutrino activities. The meeting was triggered by a letter sent by the DoE Under Secretary to the SERI State Secretary. The letter re-iterates encouragement for the Swiss participation in the Neutrino Program.
The CHIPP outreach activities continued supporting the thematic portal hosted on the SCNAT website, the multi-lingual particlephysics.ch. Thanks to the SCNAT support, we could continue to keep this a lively page with 13 interviews given by B. Vogel, a professional journalist, and several other news articles and press releases in 2018.
CHIPP continues to cooperate with CERN in its outreach program, about 30 visits to CERN organized by Swiss Professors took place, not only for university students in physics and other disciplines, but also for children, high-school pupils, alumni, members of societies, the media, and the public at large, more than 1000 people had the possibility to visit the experiments and CERN. In preparation for the next CERN Open Days, Prof. A. Sfyrla (U. Geneva) is co-organizing the ATLAS participation in the event. A very special event was held for the occasion of an official visit by the President of the Swiss Confederation, Alain Berset, to CERN on 21 June 2018. Prof. O. Schneider (EPFL) organized (together with the VIP service at CERN) a round-table discussion with 12 young Swiss physicists and engineers. On December 17th Ueli Maurer, head of the Federal Department of Finance visited CERN hosted by the CERN management and Prof. M. Weber (U. Bern).
On Halloween, the 31stOctober, at the Luzern Planetarium in the frame of the Dark Matter Day, the University of Zurich (Prof. L. Baudis and Prof. F. Canelli) together with the Planetarium staff organized a special event covering the latest scientific development in the research field of the elusive Dark Matter with a brief introduction, the presentation of the show Phantom of the Universe and afterwards a first edition of a Dark Matter Science Slam Switzerland won by Dr. M. Baker (UZH) presenting What could dark matter be. Dr. M. Paniccia (U. Geneva) participated in the organization of the Dark Matter Day from the AMS Control Room at CERN, where Paola Catapano (CERN science communicator) interviewed her, by a questions & answers session from the general public on Facebook.
CHIPP would like to highlight one outreach website on particle theory, gravity and cosmology: https://un-solved.com/about/, where Dr. A. Monin (EPFL), together with Prof. F. Riva (U. Geneva) are the founders. Prof. M. Shaposhnikov (EPFL) and Prof. J. Penedones (EPFL) have helped producing the material. This project is currently funded by an Agora grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation.
A very successful channel of communication nowadays is videos, the University of Zurich has invested a lot of effort in setting up the YouTube channel where several talks about Flavour physics are posted.
The release of the new 200 CHF Swiss banknote was a very special contribution from physics to economy, Prof. G. Dissertori (ETHZ) contributed in the design, and two of the articles that were written about this are listed below.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAqK1OfxCPhp1G7QYkfLu9A/featured
As already mentioned before, in March 2018 a strategic document on particle physics at the high-energy and intensity frontiers, referred to as the CHIPP Pillar 1 White Paper was published on the SCNAT website and the final document of the Swiss input to the European Strategy in Particle Physics was available since 18 December 2019.
In 2018 CHIPP continued to work on its networking and educational goals and organized directly or through its members several meetings, schools and workshops. In chronological order:
Scientific cooperation
Research in particle and astroparticle physics usually involves large infrastructures, which are the result of regional, national and worldwide collaborations. In order to cover the important intellectual and technological challenges, the amounts of human and financial resources required can no longer provided by a single country. The table below shows a snapshot of the current international experimental collaborations involving CHIPP Board members.
Furthermore, smaller cooperation projects exist; many of them occur spontaneously between groups working in the same field or requiring the same type of infrastructure or in a coordinated way by CHIPP.
Project - Swiss institutes - CHIPP Board Members - Institutes worldwide
High-Energy particle physics
ATLAS - Bern, Geneva - Beck, Ereditato, Golling, Iacobucci, Mermod, Nessi, Sfyrla, Weber, Wu - 218
CMS - ETHZ, PSI, Zurich - Canelli, Dissertori, Grab, Kotlinski, Kilminster, Pauss, Shchutska, Wallny - 198
LHCb - EPFL, Zurich - Bay, Nakada, Schneider, Serra, Straumann - 81
LHC Tier-2 - ETHZ, CSCS - Grab - > 200
HL-LHC - EPFL, PSI - Rivkin - 55
CLIC - ETHZ, PSI - Rivkin - 70
FCC - Bern, EPFL, ETHZ, Geneva, PSI - Blondel, Rivkin, Dissertori, Laine - 134
Na64 - ETHZ - Rubbia - 8
Astroparticle physics
AMS - Geneva - Wu - 63
ArDM - ETHZ - Rubbia - 7
CTA - ETHZ, Geneva, Zurich - Biland, Courvoisier, Montaruli, Straumann, Canelli - 210
DAMIC - Zurich - Kilminster - 10
DARWIN - Bern, Zurich - Baudis - 24
IceCube - Geneva - Montaruli - 50
MAGIC+FACT - ETHZ - Biland, Pauss - 24-4
XENON - Bern, Zurich - Baudis - 27
Neutrino physics
GERDA - Zurich - Baudis - 18
MICE - Geneva - Blondel - 28
NA61 / T2K / HyperK - Bern, ETHZ, Geneva - Blondel, Ereditato, Sanchez, Rubbia - 33-63-75
SBN(MicroBooNE) - Bern - Ereditato, Weber - 34
SHiP - EPFL, Geneva, Zurich - Bay, Blondel, Kilminster, Mermod, Serra, Shaposhnikov - 53
WA105 + DUNE - Bern, ETHZ, Geneva - Blondel, Rubbia, Weber - 21-175
High-precision and muon physics
CREMA - ETHZ, PSI - Hildebrandt, Kirch - 9
GBAR - ETHZ - Rubbia - 18
MEG II - PSI - Hildebrandt, Ritt - 15
Mu3e - ETHZ, Geneva, PSI, Zurich - Blondel, Dissertori, Grab, Hildebrandt, Kotlinski, Ritt, Straumann, Wallny - 8
nEDM/n2EDM - ETHZ, PSI, Bern - Kirch, Lauss, Piegsa - 15
PANDA - Basel - Krusche - 64
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In parallel to these experimental collaborations and projects, Swiss theorists are involved in numerous international collaborations. The prominent ones, in which Swiss theory institutes are key players is
At the University of Bern the work on the review of lattice results continues. It is related to pion, kaon, D- and B-meson physics with the aim of making them easily accessible to the particle physics community.
Prof. O. Schneider (EPFL) is convener of a sub-group of the Heavy Flavour Averaging Group (HFLAV). HFLAV is responsible for calculating world averages of measurements of beauty-hadron, charm-hadron and tau-lepton properties from current and past experiments and provides a comprehensive resource for the field in terms of web pages and full documentation of results.
One particular example of scientific collaboration and help at the service of the new arrivals in the LHCb experiment has been provided by the EPFL team that has built the LHCb starterkit project where the lessons from the dedicated Workshops and online tutorials are stored. Violaine Bellée (EPFL) was co-organizer of the LHCb Impackit (Software workshop for LHCb newcomers, who have already taken the Starterkit), 9-11 May 2018, 26 participants. Two EPFL researchers were involved in teaching and helping. Five EPFL researchers were also involved in teaching and helping in the LHCb+ALICE+SHiP Starterkit, a Software workshop for newcomers in high energy physics experiments, 29-30 November 2018, 51 participants. G. Dissertori, as Deputy Spokesperson of CMS, has given the introductory presentation for the so-called CMS Induction Days in January 2018. During those days, newcomers to CMS are presented with many details about the CMS experiment.
Several CHIPP members are acting as official delegates to international organizations in 2018:
One of the main objectives for CHIPP is to attract the young public to Physics and Astroparticle Physics. To achieve this goal more than 50 educational events like information days for BSc and MSc students, for pupils finishing high school and for high-school classes were organized, throughout Switzerland, involving more than 4000 young students.
More than 200 Swiss high-school pupils (at the Universitiesof Bern, Geneva, Zurich and the ETHZ) were invited to participate in the International Masterclasses Hands on Particle Physics, where over 13000 Gymnasium level studentsin about 215 institutes over 52 countries can actually work with real data from the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). For example, the EPFL group has organized a Master Class for the students from the Gymnase du Bugnon, Lausanne. In particular, Dr. F. Redi (EPFL) is the Head of the International Masterclass project for the LHCb experiment, where around six hundred students from dozens of institutes in many different countries have been involved in the LHCb master classes at CERN. Prof. T. Montaruli (U. Geneva) was involved in the organisation of the Masterclass project on the IceCube experiment.
Several events for physics teachers have been organized in the different Institutes. In particular for this year, "Dr. M. Paniccia (U. Geneva) gave a talk and a debate on the "Astroparticle Physics with AMS on the Interanational Space Station" at the Aiglon College Erasmus Society in Chesières-Villars on the 2 February 2018."the University of Geneva has organized for the Aiglon College Erasmus Society a talk and a debate on the Astroparticle Physics with AMS on the International Space Station for both students and teachers of the Aiglon College, Chesières-Villarson the 2 February 2018. The University of Basel has a special program for physics teachers with several events during the full year. Prof. M. Weber (U. Bern) and Dr. S. Braccini (U. Bern) participated to a gymnasium teachers formation event on the 14 January 2018 presenting medical applications of particle physics.
Each institute has its own program towards young students and often organizes special events. For this year, one should mention in particular the following activities:
At the University of Zurich several events have been organized for high school students asthe Science Info Day, whichtakes place annually on a Saturday afternoon in March at Irchel Campus. High school students, their parents, and teachers learn about the degree programs offered by the Faculty of Science. In September, the study information days, organised by UZH and ETH, provided an overview of the broad study program in Zurich. About 200 high-school students attended the lecture on the presentation for the physics major at UZH. Several high school classes were invited to participate to Ladies First! by Dr. L. Caminada (UZH/PSI) at the Schloss Lenzburg.
ETHZ organized a series of eight special event days for 100 gymnasium high-school students in October and November, called ETH-unterwegs. The students were invited to participate in some experiments and lectures. On the website are the programs for different schools.
Some special days for high-school classes were organized for visiting the Physics Department at ETHZ.
Dr. A.Antognini, Prof. C.Grab and Prof. R.Wallny acted as experts for Matura degree exams in an Italian and two German high schools.
The University of Bern organized the Physik am Freitag, which is a series of five talks to high-school students. Two of these talks contain CHIPP specific topics: Dr. U. Wenger gave a talk on the mass of the proton and of the Universe; and Prof. M. Weber gave a talk on cosmic muons and their application in topological scans. Two "fresherdays" were organized for cantonal gymnasia and for extra-cantonal gymnasia students with a total of 150 pupils guided through the physics department of the University of Bern. The experimental particle physics department participated to the Nationaler Zukunftstag.
The EPFL Professors have organized more than six visits to CERN for a total of more than 140 students including EPFL Bachelor students, 15 chemistry professors and staff of the EPFL, 15 participants from the UNIL course Science au carre and 30 young students from a Brazilian school.
As in the past years, the EPFL was engaged in creating an interdisciplinary knowledge at the university level. Researchers have collaborated with the University of Lausanne at the program Science au carre providing science courses for the students that follow humanitarian studies.
Prof. O. Schneider was invited to give a presentation at the Young Physicist Forum 2018 in CERN, the 4 April 2018 "CERN, LHC and the LHCb experiment.
Particle physicists at PSI are routinely guiding visitors (~1000 per year) through the facilities and a science exhibition in the frame of the PSI-Forum. School classes are also coming with their teachers to visit the PSI school laboratory iLab. PSI was also involved in the very successful Nationaler Zukunftstag where pupils from the Swiss schools come to explore new professional horizons. A special effort is put in discovering jobs that are usually performed by the opposite gender.
In Geneva, in March 2018, an information open day was held at the University for around 2000 pupils in the last year of high-school. During the three days Stage boussole several visits of the physics department and of the teaching classes were organized. A very successful series of events were organized by several researchers in the occasion of the La Nuit de la science for the 7-8 July 2018 at the Musée d'histoire de sciences.
Basel University organized a series of several special events high-school students and children during the full year 2018 and organized talks for the general public: Saturday Morning Physics.
CHIPP website contains news, documents, minutes of all meetings, as well as the link to the complete membership database. The continuous dialogue between the institutes, which is enshrined inthe CHIPP Statutes and By-Laws, aims at having at hand in a timely and transparent manner the information about current and planned research activities. This information is collected annually in the so-called CHIPP Long-term Financial Tables and includes, for each experiment or project, the detailed manpower involvement per institute and the attributed funds for past and current years, as well as projections and needs for the future years.
As in previous years, CHIPP took an active role in the biannual meetings of SCNAT Round Table International Organisations and Research Infrastructures. The scope of this information forum isthe exchange between the research fields involving with large international infrastructures. It accounts for the participationof Swiss groups in international research facilities and also comprises representatives of the SERI, SNSF, and Swiss universities.
A team from the EPFL (Dr. A. B. Rodrigues Cavalcante and V. Bellée) participated in "Journée internationale des femmes et filles de science -- International Day of Women and Girls in Science" (5-9 February 2018) through a presentation in various schools in Geneva and nearby French region (e.g. Collège de Saussure, 1213 Lancy). This campaign has been initiated by the United Nation to draw the attention of the international community to the serious gender gap that affects the science institutions. CHIPP has contributed to the campaign joining the CERN press office Twitter project #WomanInScience explaining the work by several women in the Swiss institutes. Prof. L. Baudis (UZH), A. Santamaria (EPFL), Dr. T. Nanut (EPFL), N. Chernyavskaya (ETHZ) and L. Vesterbacka (ETHZ) participated to the project.
The SCNAT offered a firm place with increased visibility among the other fields of science for both the CHIPP website and the more general Physics outreach website (particlephysics.ch). The site was kept lively throughout 2018 with the addition of 13 interviews and other news articles. As approved by the CHIPP Board, the articles are authored by B. Vogel, a science journalist collaborating with CHIPP since many years. Dr. H. P. Beck (the University of Bern) was responsible for their scientific content and Angela Benelli inserted them on the SCNAT portal in Italian, in German and in English. CHIPP is grateful to SCNAT for supporting this activity as an important dialogue with the society.
During 2018 the CHIPP Twitter account @CHIPP_news has continuously spread physics news to increase the public awareness about science and publicized available jobs in academia and outside for physicists. Knowledge Transfer and campaigns focused on attracting younger generations to physics are important challenges pursued by the CHIPP and will continue also in the coming years.
At the EPFL, G. Pietrzykis in charge of the LHCb Experiment Twitter account: @lhcbexperiment and the LHCbExperiment Instagram Account with around 3500 and 13000 followers respectively. The University of Geneva has set the Particle Physics Twitter @DPNC_Unige. The Facebook site Verflixtes Higgs continued to be fed by Dr. H. P. Beck.
With A. Benelli as the Swiss member in the European Particle Physics Communication Network (EPPCN), CHIPP continues its link between the CERN press office and the Swiss media, as well as with the communication offices of the institutes related to CHIPP. The contact has been established and a measure of the media coverage of particle physics in Switzerland is provided on-line.
CHIPP Board Members gave outreach talks and interviews on particle physics for high-school students, societies and the general public, we would like to mention some of them in alphabetic order:
- Prof. L. Baudis (UZH) was interviewed by the Radio SRF2 in the Mysterium Energy project, and about her work in XENON at the Gran Sasso laboratories.
- Prof. A. Bay (EPFL) La guêpe de la Tanzanie a une ouverture alaire de moins de 1mm, un albatros de 3,6m. Les deux savent voler. Comment, public lecture at UNIL, 21 November 2018.
- Dr. HP. Beck (U. Bern) was invited keynote speaker at the STEP Alpine conference, 31 January 2 February 2018, Interlaken, Switzerland. HP Beck was invited speaker at CERN Cognitive Festival, 22-26 October in Tbilisi, Georgia. This is a scientific and educational event based on CERN scientific research and innovation technologies for the popularization of scientific activities among the young generation and to provoke interest in fundamental research, engineering, IT technology and mathematics. HP Beck discussed (articles in the local press: 1 and 2) with the Georgian Minister of Education, Science, Culture and Sport of Georgia, Mikheil Batiashvili on matters of education and research.
- Prof. A. Biland (ETHZ) was interviewed from the Tagesanzeiger Newspaper on detection of potential source of high-energy cosmic neutrino from different experiments: IceCube, Fermi-LAT and MAGIC.
- Dr. L. Caminada (PSI) was interviewed about her work in the CMS experiment (CERN).
- Prof. G. Dissertori gave several talk for the general public: Make the invisible visible and the impossible possible. The research at CERN at the Sud Tirol Planetarium (6/11/2018) and in Baden (10/10/2018). Stories from the Universe at the Smart Energy Party in Umweltarena Spreitenbach. At the HTW in Chur Prof. G. Dissertori gave a multimedia lecture We are all made of stardust.
- A. Fehr (U. Bern) was interviewed on the ATLAS upgrades that resulted in an article reported on the University of Bern Newsletter.
- Prof. C. Grab (ETHZ) Reinschrift Science Communication, on "Higgs Zerfall in Beauty Quarks".
- Prof. J.-F. Loude, (EPFL) was invited from the AG de l'ASEISTE (Association [nationale française] de Sauvegarde et d'Étude des Instruments Scientifiques et Techniques de l'Enseignement),to present a talk about the Musée de physique de l'Université de Lausanne, in Rennes (Bretagne), 24 Mars 2018. A video of the session is available.
- Prof. T. Montaruli (U. Geneva) gave a presentation Guardando il cielo con occhi nuovi about gravitational waves and neutrino physics, Biogem center, Ariano Irpino in Italy.
- Dr T. Nanut, (EPFL) participated at the roundtable on the topic " Building a research career abroad", Koper, Slovenia, 11 January 2018. She was a guest scientist hosting a chat at Researcher night (international event); specific event: "A chat with a scientist, at Jozef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 28 September 2018.
- Prof. J. Penedones, (EPFL) "Thought experiments about Particle Collisions", EPFL Physics Day, 1 October 2018
- Dr L. Pescatore (EPFL) gave the LHCb outreach talk at XIXXX International Conference on High Energy Physics (ICHEP 2018), Seoul, 6 July 2018.
- Dr. F. Redi (EPFL), was interviewed on the state Italian radio (drive time program, ~1 M listeners), about the Long Shutdown 2 of the LHC.
- Prof. A. Sfyrla (U. Geneva) was interviewed On the occasion of the HL-LHC ground breaking ceremony.
At the University of Zurich science museum started the preparation of a scale model of the CMS experiment by Prof. B. Kilminster.
The EPFL presented the LHCb detector and SciFi tracker project with prototypes of fibre modules, as well as cosmic ray tracker demo at "Salon des technologies et de l'innovation de Lausanne" (STIL), Swiss Tech Convention Centre.
The University of Bern was responsible for a temporary exhibition of a spark chamber at the Gymnasium Koeniz-Lerbermatt.