Hadron Collider Physics Summer School – HASCO 2017
This year’s “Hadron Collider Physics Summer School – HASCO 2017” took place from July 16 to July 21, 2017 in Göttingen. Founded in 2012, this is the sixth consecutive year that this dynamic, international school, primarily aimed at Master’s students, has been offered.
This year, 60 undergraduate students from 28 different institutes in fifteen countries came together for a full week to learn about hadron collider physics. The institutes involved included: Lund and Uppsala in Sweden; Bratislava in Slovakia; Bayreuth, Bonn, Erlangen-Nürnberg, Freiburg, Göttingen and Heidelberg in Germany; Lecce, Rome and Pisa in Italy; Barcelona and Santiago de Compostela in Spain; Bucharest in Romania; Bern and Geneva in Switzerland; Ioannina in Greece; Rochester and the Colorado School of Mines in the USA; Bergen in Norway, Cambridge and Oxford in the UK, the Chinese Academy of Science in China; Krakow in Poland; McGill in Canada; and Delft and Groningen in the Netherlands. In particular, Ghent in Belgium, Uppsala in Sweden and Göttingen are members of the closely collaborating U4 network. The twelve lecturers of the school also came from a variety of institutes throughout the world. The students learned about the foundations of quantum field theory and hadron collider physics, particularly in the context of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva.
Arnulf Quadt, local co-organiser of the school, explains: “This type of fundamental research can only be carried out in large international collaborations with experts from all over the world. Hence, it is important that young students learn the fundamentals of quantum mechanics, which was developed in Göttingen, among other places. It is also crucial at this early stage of their careers, that they gain exposure to being part of an international team where diverse ideas and creative solutions thrive. The school not only provides important lectures about particle physics, but also allows the students to network and make friends which can potentially last a lifetime at the outset of their careers.”
At the HASCO school, numerous research topics relevant for hadron collider physics are discussed, among them quantum chromodynamics, jet physics, statistical methods in data analysis, accelerator physics, detector physics, physics of the top quark, and searches for supersymmetry or exotic models and particles. This year’s focus, however, was on the physics of the Higgs boson and the new challenges that come with the high-statistics data sample being recorded during the 13 TeV run at the LHC.
The HASCO school also included an extensive social program, including barbeque with all participants and lecturers, a bowling evening, a history walking tour, and a school dinner in the old town hall of Göttingen. Essentially all participating students passed the written examination at the end of the school and received 3 ECTS (European Credit Transfer System) points, for which they can obtain course credit back at their home universities. The students were inspired by the intense program of HASCO, and which is essential to ensure that young scientists continue to engage in the dynamic field of particle physics. To the students of HASCO: Hope to see you soon and do research with you all!
Further information can be found here.