Enrico Stomeo - A Lifelong Passion For Meteor Studies

I was reached this evening by the news of the passing of a dear friend, Enrico Stomeo. Enrico was...

Surviving Queues: 1 - At The Airport

Nobody likes to wait in line. Whether you are sitting in your car waiting to reach the toll booths...

Choosing Your Bets: The Selection Bias

As some of the long-time readers of this blog know, in this column I have occasionally discussed...

Have A Master In Science, Want A Post-Doc Position Directly?

Do you have a master in Science, and want to start a Post-Doc position directly? You can have it...

Tommaso Dorigo

Tommaso Dorigo is an experimental particle physicist, who works for the INFN at the University of Padova, and collaborates with the CMS and the SWGO experiments. He is the president of the Read More »

The Say of the Week

Jul 23 2009 | comment(s)

"Other people's data ntuples are a bit like their genitals. You may occasionally be allowed to play with them, but you should not expect to be granted unhindered access."

Unknown (the previous attribution to M. F. is fallacious)

B-Quark Jets: Keys To New Discoveries

Jul 22 2009 | comment(s)

In this two-parts article I wish to describe in some detail, but still at an elementary level, the characteristics of one of the most important probes of the physics of subnuclear collisions at today's particle physics experiments: jets of hadrons originated from energetic bottom quarks, or more familiarly, b-jets. By posting a dedicated article on b-jets, I hope I will be able to describe in more detail elsewhere other physics topics, such as Higgs boson decays or top quark signatures, without being hampered by having to introduce the phenomenology and detection of b-jets from scratch every time.

The Nuts And Bolts Of The "Nail The Higgs Down" Plot

Jul 20 2009 | comment(s)

As silly as it may look, I am going to start this post by publishing for the third time in a row the same figure. That is because I want to keep the promise I made earlier that I would explain in terms as simple as possible (although not simpler) the details hidden behind the coloured curves and functions pictured there. I will also take this chance to come down a little from the level of technicality of the recent posts: after all, this blog is supposedly for everybody, and not just for Ph.D. students and recipients.

Blogging from Simos Beach

Jul 19 2009 | comment(s)

Simos beach is one of the best beaches of Greece, and arguably of the whole European continent. It is located at the southern tip of the small island of Elafonissos, a four-mile-wide rock dangling off the eastern of the three fingers shaping the Peloponnese. I chose this place for three weeks of sun, snorkeling, and rest with my family; and to rearrange my thoughts in view of September, when several interesting occupations await me: a conference in Japan, a couple of articles to produce, a course of Subnuclear Physics to hold.

Running Top Mass Points To SUSY-Like Higgs

Jul 17 2009 | comment(s)

Yesterday I posted a short article whose main purpose was to show a figure I had received from Sven Heinemeyer, a phenomenologist who specializes in the study of Minimal Supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model (MSSM).

Besides predicting a mirror copy of Standard Model (SM) particles, MSSM models are characterized by containing not just one, but five distinct Higgs bosons; over much of the space of possible parameters of these theories, one of the five Higgs bosons is quite similar to the one and only SM Higgs, so that one can discuss the SM Higgs and the lightest neutral scalar of the MSSM together without generating confusion.

Just One Higgs Search Plot...

Jul 14 2009 | comment(s)

...waiting for a piece I will post tomorrow, to stimulate your curiosity -and allow me to travel from Venice to Patras by ship, with no internet connection.

The subject is not only the Higgs mass, but the top quark mass. Which top mass ? The "pole" mass -the real part of the pole in the perturbative top-quark propagator. Have I lost you ? Ok, do not worry -definitions are for theorists. Let us just say that the top quark, being a complicated coloured object which thus cannot live free of the influence of strong interactions,
is measurable at a hadron collider like the Tevatron only within uncertainties of the order of a constant called "Lambda QCD", which is of the order of 200 MeV.