Prof. Robert Klanner, University of Hamburg and DESY, was chosen to receive the Julius Wess Award 2016.

More Information

Am 5. und 6. September besuchten 18 KSETA-Doktoranden das Double-Chooz-Experiment. Dieses dient zur Erforschung des Neutrino-Mischungswinkels Theta_13 und ist auf dem Gelände des Kernkraftwerks Chooz an der französisch-belgischen Grenze aufgebaut. Bei einem Rundgang durch das Besucherzentrum und einer anschließenden Führung über das Kraftwerksgelände lernten die Teilnehmer zunächst etwas über die Funktionsweise und den Betrieb des Atomkraftwerks. Das Atomkraftwerk Chooz erzeugt die höchste Nettoleistung aller Atomkraftwerke weltweit. Beeindruckend für die mitgereisten Doktoranden waren die spürbaren Vibrationen des unter Volllast laufenden, tonnenschweren Generators der Anlage.

Nach einem Einführungsvortrag zum Double Chooz Experiment ging es anschließend in das Untergrundlabor des Nahdetektors auf dem Gelände des Kraftwerks. Da der Detektor gerade Daten nahm, ließen sich die Ausmaße unter den Abschirmungen nur erahnen. Dennoch bot das Labor interessante Einblicke und die Teilnehmer konnten so manche Frage loswerden, bevor es wieder zurück nach Karlsruhe ging.

Dr. Silvia Mollerach (CONICET, Centro Atómico Bariloche, and Universidad Nacional de San Martín, UNSAM, Argentina)  gave a KSETA Seminar on Statistical Methods for Astroparticle Physics.

The course covered different statistical methods used to analyse data in astroparticle physics, including the simulation and comparison of measurements to theoretical models.

Some basic statistical topics like the concept of probabilities, probability distributions, the calculation of expectation values and higher moments, and the determination of uncertainties as well as correlations were reviewed.

More advanced topics relevant to data analyses and statistical inference were discussed. Among these were fitting appropriate models to data, estimating the goodness of fit, testing hypotheses and the construction of confidence intervals. This also included a discussion of the look-elsewhere-effect and the cosmic variance.

To better explore these topics, the study of anisotropies in the cosmic rays distribution was used as examples, including large scale anisotropies, clustering studies, and correlation with possible source populations.

This seminar was part of the KSETA Topical Courses as well as of the Double Doctoral Degree in Astrophysics between UNSAM and KIT.

The  international GridKa School is one of the leading summer schools for advanced computing techniques. The school provides a forum for scientists and technology leaders, experts and novices to facilitate knowledge sharing and information exchange. The target audience are different groups like grid and cloud newbies, advanced users as well as administrators, graduate and PhD students. Organized by the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), GridKa School is hosted by Steinbuch Centre for Computing (SCC).

http://gridka-school.scc.kit.edu/2016/

https://indico.scc.kit.edu/indico/event/196/registration/

Lisa Randall, professor at Harvard University, was chosen to receive the Julius Wess Award 2015. She received the prize for her pioneering work on theories beyond the Standard Model, in particular the unified description of basic physical forces in models with extra spatial dimensions.

On July 7 and 8, 2016 she gave two lectures at KIT.

The presentation of the award took place on July 8, 2016. More ...

Prof. Esteban Roulet (CONICET, Centro Atómico Bariloche, and Universidad Nacional de San Martín, UNSAM, Argentina) gave a KSETA Seminar on Neutrino Astrophysics from July 4 – 15, 2016.

The following topics were covered in his lectures:

• Neutrinos: from the Fermi theory to the Standard Model
• Neutrino interactions and detection techniques
• Neutrino masses and oscillations
• Geoneutrinos, Solar neutrinos, Supernova neutrinos, Atmospheric neutrinos
• High energy astrophysical neutrinos. Galactic and extragalactic sources. Icecube results.
• Cosmogenic neutrinos.
• Neutrinos and cosmology: relic neutrinos, nucleosynthesis and neutrinos. Leptogenesis.

As in the past years, the KSETA Doctoral Workshop took place in Freudenstadt in July.

As usual the motto was "From doctoral students, for doctoral students". In addition it was linked to the KSETA motto "Broader, Deeper, Better":

Broader - Get an comprehensible insight into PhD projects of KSETA colleagues and discuss links to your own project in small groups.
Deeper - Learn more about a specific topic within the scope of KSETA in plenary talks prepared by fellows.
Better - Get to know alumni now working for companies and ask them about employee's life in industry. Improve your scientific writing skills in a writing workshop.

Please find more informationen on the Indico Website.

Master student Thomas Huber (IKP), member of the cosmic ray group, took his audience into the world of physics and explained within only three minutes, what cosmic rays are about. Using props limited to what he could carry on stage, he talked about the fascination of cosmic rays, why they are hard to detect and how a telescope attached to the space station ISS is supposed to find out more about them from 2017 on.

The third KSETA Plenary Workshop took place from February 22 to 24, 2016 at Hotel Vierjahreszeiten in Durbach, just like in the years before.

All Fellows and Principal Investigators were invited to participate in the plenary workshop of the whole school. The aim of the workshop was to learn more about all the research fields in KSETA and to strenghten cooperation and team building.

More information here.

The Double Doctoral degree in Astrophysics (DDAp) is jointly offered by the Physics Department at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany and the Institute of Technology in Detection and Astrophysics (ITeDA) at the Universidad Nacional de San Martín (UNSAM) in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The Kick-off Meeting will take place on September 1, 2015 at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Campus North, Institute for Nuclear Physics, bldg. 401, room no. 410.
https://indico.scc.kit.edu/indico/event/111/

Program:
09:30 - 09:50 Welcome - Detlef Löhe, Vice-President of KIT and Carlos Ruta, Rector of UNSAM
09:50 - 10:10 „The Double Doctoral degree in Astrophysics“ Johannes Blümer, KIT
10:10 - 10:30 „The Double Doctoral degree in Astrophysics“ Alberto Etchegoyen, ITeDA Buenos Aires
11:00 - 12:00 „Development of nuclear physics at Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe“ Manfred Popp, KIT
13:00 - 13:30 „The structure of the Double Doctoral degree in Astrophysics“ Frank Schröder, KIT
13:30 - 14:00 „First impressions of doctoral researchers“ Ewa Holt, KIT
14:00 - 15:00 „Intercultural first contact situations“ Bernd Müller-Jacquier, Universität Bayreuth
15:30 - 16:30 „Chasing the highest energy particles in Nature: from 1938 to the future“ Alan Watson, University of Leeds

More Details on the Double Doctoral degree in Astrophysics (DDAp) KIT – UNSAM:
http://www.kseta.kit.edu/deutsch/double_doctoral_degree.php

The next KSETA Doctoral Workshop will take place from July 6 to 8, 2015 at Waldhotel Zollernblick in Freudenstadt, located in the Black Forest.

Registration is open until May 31.

On the program there are tutorials by PhDs which can be useful for other PhDs, invited talks from external speakers with topics ranging from soft-skills to scientific themes, and social activities.

Please visit our indico-website for details. 

International Summer School at KIT, September 7-11, 2015

The international GridKa School is one of the leading summer schools for advanced computing techniques in Europe. The school is intended for graduate and PhD students as well as postdocs, who have to program their own code, analyze large amounts of data, or keep care of their computing infrastructure. Topics and practical tutorials will cover efficient and parallel programming, various data analysis tools, storage and database technologies, virtualization techniques and infrastructure management.

More information: http://gridka-school.scc.kit.edu/2015/

The second KSETA Plenary Workshop took place on March 4-6, 2015 at Hotel Vierjahreszeiten in Durbach. All Fellows and Principal Investigators were cordially invited to participate in the second plenary workshop of the whole school. The aim of the workshop was to learn more about all the research fields in KSETA and to strenghten cooperation and team building.

More Information

In der Reihe "KIT im Rathaus" luden der Oberbürgermeister der Stadt Karlsruhe und der Präsident des KIT am 20. Januar 2015 in den Bürgersaal im Rathaus Karlsruhe zu einer Veranstaltung zum Thema „Neues aus der Welt der kleinsten Teilchen“ ein.

Die Karlsruher Bürger fanden die Forschungen in der Teilchen- und Astroteilchenphysik so spannend, dass sie in Scharen ins Rathaus strömten und der Reihe "KIT im Rathaus" einen Besucherrekord bescherten.

Neben Grußworten von Wolfram Jäger (Erster Bürgermeister der Stadt Karlsruhe) und Prof. Dr.-Ing. Detlef Löhe (Vizepräsident für Forschung und Information des KIT) gab es folgende Vorträge:

"Das KIT-Zentrum Elementarteilchen und Astroteilchenphysik stellt sich vor"
Prof. Dr. Johannes Blümer
Leiter des Instituts für Kernphysik und Wissenschaftlicher Sprecher von KCETA und KSETA

"Neutrinos auf der Waagschale von KATRIN"
Dr. Kathrin Valerius
Leiterin Helmholtz-Hochschul-Nachwuchsgruppe KATRIN, Institut für Kernphysik

"Die Entdeckung des Higgs-Teilchens oder wie die Teilchen ihre Masse bekommen"
Prof. Dr. Margarete Mühlleitner
Institut für Theoretische Physik

"Wie durch Algorithmen aus der Elementarteilchenphysik zig Millionen eingespart werden"
Prof. Dr. Michael Feindt
Institut für Experimentelle Kernphysik

Alle Vorträge wurden aufgezeichnet und sind online.

Pressemitteilung des KIT

The Julius Wess Award 2014 was dedicated to Prof. Dr. Arkady Vainshtein, who holds the Gloria-Lubkin-professorship at University of Minnesota. Arkady Vainshtein received the award as one of the most influential theoretical particle physicists of the second half of the 20th century.

The Young Scientists Workshop "Flavorful Ways to New Physics" will be held on Oct 28 – 31, 2014 near Freudenstadt in the Black Forest, 85 km away from Karlsruhe, Germany.

The workshop is intended to give PhD students and young postdocs a broad overview on the different topics of flavor physics. We are proud to announce the following confirmed invited keynote speakers:

A. J. Buras (Munich): Quark Flavor
M. Gersabeck (Manchester): Charm Physics at LHCb
P. Krizan (Ljubljana): Belle and Belle II
M. Beneke (Munich): QCD Factorization
G. Perez (CERN/Rehovot): New Physics Models
TBA: Lepton Flavor

These six lectures provide overviews of the main topics and are accompanied by talks of young scientists presenting their recent research. Furthermore, the informal atmosphere will lead to the opportunity of many discussions between the experienced researchers and the young scientists.

We cordially invite you to participate and register at http://indico.scc.kit.edu/indico/event/flavor where you also can find additional information.

Every participant who would like to present his own work in the area of flavor physics and related topics is invited to submit an abstract via the Indico page. The abstract can be submitted after the registration, by Sep 12 at the latest. 

From October 27 to November 7, 2014, Prof. Gustavo Esteban Romero of UNLP and UNSAM, Buenos Aires, Argentinia will come to KIT. He will give lectures in KSETA on "Black hole astrophysics" in the context of the "Double Doctoral Degree Program in Astrophysics DDAp (KIT–UNSAM)".

The lectures will take place each morning during these two weeks on KIT Campus North from 10:45 until 12:15 h, building 425, room 206.

This series of lectures is a self-contained and intensive course devoted to black holes and related astrophysics. The first 3 lectures introduce concepts of space-time, general relativity, and black hole exact solutions of Einstein's field equations. The fourth lecture will be more interactive and devoted to discussions of open issues such as alternative black hole theories, mimickers, black hole information paradox and current speculations about the nature of black holes.

The next set of 3 lectures will cover topics of black hole astrophysics including accretion, black hole coronae, and relativistic jets. Then, as before, a discussion will be offered on current issues of astrophysics, in particular related to black hole formation and evidence of black hole existence. The last two lectures will cover active galactic nuclei, microquasars, and gamma-ray bursts.

Please find the presentations here.

Der vom 22. September bis zum 24. September 2014 stattfindende Workshop besteht aus zwei
Komponenten: Zum Einen sind dies Vorlesungen, die von eingeladenen Sprechern gehalten werden.
Zum Anderen gibt es Vorträge unserer Doktoranden über ihr eigenes Arbeitsgebiet, die dem Informationsaustausch unter den Doktoranden und den verschiedenen Arbeitsgruppen des Kollegs dienen, sowie auch der Vortragsschulung.

Tagungsort:
Internationales Forum Burg Liebenzell
Burg Liebenzell 1A
75378 Bad Liebenzell

Anreise mit dem Bus am 22.09.: ab Campus Süd, KIT-Shuttle-Haltestelle um 10.30 Uhr
Rückreise am 24.09.: ab Internationales Forum Burg Liebenzell um 16.30 Uhr

Anmeldung:
Bitte melden Sie sich bei Isabelle Junge per E-Mail bis zum 5. September zur Teilnahme an und teilen Sie mit, ob Sie mit dem Bus fahren werden.

Die Kollegiatinnen und Kollegiaten im GK können ohne Weiteres teilnehmen: Die Tagungskosten werden direkt vom GK bezahlt. Wer nicht Kollegiat/in ist, sollte bezüglich der Finanzierung mit seiner Betreuerin/seinem Betreuer sprechen.
Diplomanden können an dem Workshop unter dem Vorbehalt teilnehmen, dass noch genügend Plätze verfügbar sind.

Geben Sie bitte Ihren unterschriebenen Antrag auf Genehmigung einer Dienstreise rechtzeitig bei Isabelle Junge ab.

 

The KSETA Doctoral Workshop (July 21–23, 2014) allows interested KSETA fellows to learn more about methods and tools that might support their research. Invited are fellows from all the different research fields in KSETA, from theoretical or experimental particle physicists to software- or cryo-engineers, to spend three interesting and inspiring days together and have the chance to benefit from other's experience.

In groups, the participants are asked to prepare a tutorial "from doctoral fellows for doctoral fellows" on a topic that could be useful to others outside of their own field of research, such as introductions to useful tools, basic technologies for non-engineers, basics in physics for non-physicists or methods for research. The workshop is rounded up by invited talks and discussions.

more ...

Prof. Takaaki Kajita (ICRR Tokyo), Julius Wess Awardee 2014, will give two lectures on the studies of atmospheric neutrinos on July 10 + 11, 2014 at KIT. The lectures will take place at KIT campus south Gaede lecture hall each day from 9:45 – 11:15 h. The lectures will be followed by informal discussion sessions in the afternoons from 13:30 – 15:00 h.

The first lecture will cover a review of the studies of atmospheric neutrinos until the discovery of atmospheric neutrino oscillations in 1998. On the second day Prof. Kajita will present various studies of atmospheric neutrinos that have been carried out so far and will discuss future investigations. 

Please find more information here.

Registration is required: http://indico.scc.kit.edu/indico/event/kajita-lectures.

A travel to the past to plan the future

In the week of March 31 – April 4, 2014, the CMS collaboration met at Karlsruhe Institute für Technologie, KIT.

With the goal of expanding the physics reach of its experiments, the Large Hadron Collider in its Phase 2 will be upgraded to reach an instantaneous luminosity that is an order of magnitude higher than what will be achieved in the upcoming runs from 2015 onwards. In order to exploit the full power of the accelerator and to survive the hostile high radiation environment as well as to meet the challenge of reconstructing the more than 100 interactions that will occur at each bunch crossing, the detectors at the LHC need to undergo an extensive upgrade programme. At this collaboration meeting in Karlsruhe, which was organised by long-term CMS member institute Institut für Experimentelle Kernphysik (IEKP), 264 experts from the CMS collaboration from 80 institutes all over the world congregated to exchange ideas and to plan the ambitious upgrade of the detector.

The five day conference was focused on the preparation of a Technical Proposal to be submitted to the LHCC at its September session. With 130 presentations in plenary and parallel sessions, accompanied by eight management meetings, the CMS week provided a unique opportunity to review the motivations for the proposed upgrades and to consolidate the organization of the R&D programs. The engagement of the collaboration has recently escalated and tremendous progress was reported, demonstrating all the strength of the CMS upgrade program to fully exploit the HL-LHC in its most challenging physics potential. The new light Tracker, with selective read-out at 40 MHz for the purpose of enabling a hardware trigger, and the extension of coverage in the forward region, in conjunction with a high resolution and fine granularity endcap calorimetry, in order to discern Vector Boson Fusion or Scattering processes, are among the major innovations foreseen for the future detector. Many new ideas to provide enhanced background reductions, mitigate the effect of pile-up and improvements in the acceptance to various physics signals were also discussed.

To take a break from these intense discussions and the long meeting days, the collaboration took a trip into the past by riding on a 90 year-old steam train into the Black Forest. 30 km south of Karlsruhe, the small spa town of Bad Herrenalb (home town of the organiser of the CMS Week, Thomas Muller) welcomed the visitors with a traditional Schwarzwaldabend. Accompanied by regional food, the participants enjoyed presentations by the local Hornblowers and traditional dancers. Another highlight of this evening was the award of a CMS model that was laser-engraved into a crystal to Simon Weingarten from RWTH Aachen for the best poster presented at the meeting.

Many more pictures on the IEKP-Website.

Mit sehr interessanten Vorträgen von externen Sprechern gab der erste Plenar Workshop von KSETA eine Übersicht über alle Forschungsbereiche der Graduiertenschule. Vom 24. bis 26. Februar 2014 bot diese Veranstaltung in Bad Herrenalb, an der mit 142 Teilnehmern nahezu alle Mitglieder von KSETA teilgenommen haben, eine Plattform zum Austausch zwischen Doktorand/innen und den KSETA Principal Investigators.

Das Programm wurde ergänzt durch viele exzellente Vorträge von engagierten jungen Wissenschaftlern, Promovierenden und PostDocs aus KSETA. Sie stellten einen bunten Reigen der aktuellen Forschungsarbeiten dar und zeigten dabei ihr Können in professionellem Präsentieren.

Das gegenseitige Kennenlernen und Zusammenwachsen als Gruppe wurde mit einer spannenden Abendveranstaltung aus unterhaltsamen Spielen und einem gelungenen Fondueabend unterstützt.

In kleinen Arbeitsgruppen beschäftigten sich die Teilnehmer mit Fragen zur Graduiertenschule im Allgemeinen, u. a. zu Erwartungen an und Angeboten von KSETA. Die zum Teil sehr interessanten Diskussionsergebnisse werden selbstverständlich mit aktiver Unterstützung aller Beteiligten zur Verbesserung von KSETA umgesetzt.

Der nächste Plenar Workshop wird im März 2015 stattfinden mit sicherlich wieder sehr interessantem Programm.

Die diesjährigen Präsentationen finden Sie hier.