Teaching

LHC Physics - Spring 2022

This is a fourteen-hour course given in seven weeks. The target audience is first year particle physics master students at the UniGe. Similar material was shown in spring 2023, with the addition of hands-on exercises based on toy data and open data (material to be added).

Course contents:

Week 1: Introduction to the LHC: why and how

What was happening in the particle physics world when the LHC started being discussed? Why was the LHC needed? How did its approval happen? Are there other similar projects?
In LHC physics we use a large number of slang words (luminosity, pile-up, transverse momentum, underlying event, hard scattering, ...). What do these mean?

Week 2: Trigger, data preparation, simulations

The three things you have to understand before starting to talk about LHC physics.

Weeks 3-4: Reconstruction

LHC data is basically made of analogue and digital signals coming from the detector. How is the LHC data reconstructed, i.e. how are these signals translated into objects that we can associate to elementary particles?

Week 5: Data analysis methods through key examples

How are analyses *really* done? A step-by-step guide to few representative examples (measurements and searches).

Week 6: Discussion of LHC results: measurements

Standard model measurements (jets, top, precision measurements of masses, ...) with focus on the higgs boson.

Week 7: Discussion of LHC results: searches

Bump searches, tail searches, non-conventional searches, some tantalising results, and what's next.