The awarding of the Julius Wess Award is always linked to a lecture of the award winner at KIT, which is open to all students. This lecture attracts active interest and makes a strong contribution to providing undergraduate and graduate students with details of the latest research results.

The seminar of the 2022 Wess Award winner Prof. Elena Aprile (Columbia University, New York) is entitled "Selected Topics on Instrumentation for Particle and Astroparticle Physics" and takes place from September 22 to 25, 2023.

More information about the seminar

More information about the Julius Wess Award and Prof. Elena Aprile

From December 7 to 10, 2021 Dr. Ingo Allekotte from Centro Atómico Bariloche, Argentina, gave a series of lectures on the Cosmic Rays of the Highest Energies. The course took place online via zoom. This lecture is part of the Double Doctoral Degree in Astrophysics and the Helmholtz International School HIRSAP between UNSAM and KIT.
To the course materials ...

The KSETA Alumni Panel Discussion will take place on March 12, 2020 at 6 pm at Campus South, building 30.22, room 229.4. Further information and registration form are available on the https://indico.scc.kit.edu/event/748/. After the discussion a buffet will be served (about 7:30 pm). For the planning of the amount of food please register until March 7.

The Julius Wess Award 2018 was presented to Prof. Dr. Sally Dawson in recognition of her outstanding scientific contributions to the theoretical description and deepened understanding of processes at hadron colliders, in particular regarding the physics of the Higgs boson and the top quark, where her theoretical insights have proven crucial for understanding the properties, reactions and signatures of the Higgs boson.

More information about the seminar of Sally Dawson

From October 28 to 31, 2019 Andreas Haungs, Group leader CR Technologies (IKP), will give a series of lectures on Galactic Cosmic Rays at the Universidad Nacional de San Martín (UNSAM) in Buenos Aires, Argentina. This lecture is part of the Double Doctoral degree in Astrophysics (DDAp) between KIT and UNSAM.

The dedication of the Julius Wess Award is linked with a lecture course of the laureates at KIT, open for all students. These lectures find a lively interest and contribute effectively in imparting newest research results to the undergraduate and PhD students of KCETA.
The seminar of Prof. Halzen, Wess Awardee 2017, is entitled "Opening a New Window on the Universe from the South Pole" and will take place from 24 to 26 October 2018 at Campus North.

More information about the seminar
More information about the Wess Prize and about Prof. Francis Halzen

This year's destination of the KSETA excursion (September 6 - 7, 2018) was the Dutch Institute for Radio Astronomy ASTRON. A total of 12 KSETA Fellows visited the radio antenna telescopes: Dwingeloo Telescope, Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope and the entire LOFAR experiment.

Besides the scientific program, the excursion included a visit to the Westerbork transit camp.

This year’s GridKa School will take place from August 27-31, 2018 at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany.
It will again impart knowledge using a mixture of plenary talks and hands-on courses focussing on interesting and state-of-the-art topics in workflow management, modern programming and data analytics.

For example:
Deep Learning, GoLang, Julia, Scientific Python, Jupyter Notebooks, Embedded Programming, Concurrent Programming, GPUs, High Performance Computing, Thrill, Docker, (No)SQL, Pachyderm, HTCondor, Quantum Computing, Security and much more.
 
Please visit our website for more details and https://indico.scc.kit.edu/event/427/ for the agenda and registration.
Looking forward to welcome you at GridKa School 2018!

On April 17, 2018 the first kick-off event for the Helmholtz International Research School for Astroparticle Physics and Enabling Technologies (HIRSAP) of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the Universidad Nacional de San Martín (UNSAM) in Buenos Aires (Argentina) took place at KIT.

It started with welcome talks by KIT Vice President Research Prof. Oliver Kraft and by UNSAM Vice Rector Prof. Alberto Carlos Frasch followed by introductory talks by the KIT head of division 5, Prof. Johannes Blümer, by Spokesperson of HIRSAP at KIT Prof. Ralph Engel, and by Spokesperson of HIRSAP at UNSAM/ITeDA Prof. Alberto Etchegoyen from Argentina. Two PhD students of the existing program Double Doctoral degree in Astrophysics (DDAp), Isabel Astrid Goos (CNEA/IB, Bariloche), and David Schmidt (KIT), presented some special insights in their impressions and experiences in the cotutelle program. Finally the keynote speaker Dr. Walter Winter from DESY gave a very interesting talk on “Multi-Messenger Astroparticle Physics”.

The aim of the Helmholtz International Research School for Astroparticle Physics and Enabling Technologies is the development and application of cutting-edge particle detection techniques and corresponding analysis methods in high-energy astroparticle physics. The graduate school concentrates on the investigation of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. It has an interdisciplinary character by bringing together leading physicists and engineers of the fields of particle detection technologies, data analysis, and model building.

The school builds on a long-standing and very fruitful collaboration between the partner institutes and the existing cotutelle program Double Doctoral degree in Astrophysics (DDAp).

More informationen about the event at KIT

Presse Release of the Helmholtz Association

Andreas Pargner is a doctoral student at the KSETA graduate school and is writing his doctoral thesis on the subject of Axion Cosmology. His lecture dealt with the dark side of our universe:
About 95% of the universe is hidden to us. Starting from what we know, the standard model of particle physics and gravity, we approach the great unknown part of our cosmos. Andreas Pargner explained the concept of Dark Matter and why we urgently need it in our universe, what this invisible form of matter could be and how we try to find it.

The musical part was performed by the young Chinese pianist Xue Huang, who is studying at the Hochschule für Musik in Karlsruhe. She played works by Antonio Soler, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Enrique Granados.

Prof. Robert Klanner, professor at University Hamburg and Julius Wess awardee 2016, will give a seminar on the basic concepts of Si-sensors, focussing on the different types of Si-detectors, bulk and surface radiation damage, and the performance, characterization and open questions of silicon photomultipliers.

The lectures are intended for Master and PhD students working on and using silicon detectors

Time:
24.01.2018   15:00 – 16:30 h
25.01.2018   10:30 – 12:00 h and 13:30 – 15:00 h
26.01.2018   09:30 – 11:00 h

KIT Campus North, bldg. 425, room 206

More information

From November 2 – 10, 2017 we offered a KSETA course with our guest scientists Prof. Dr. Ricardo Piegaia and Dr. Dario Rodrigues from CONICET/UBA/UNSAM in Buenos Aires (Argentina).

Thes course offered a practical approach to those principles and practices of statistics that are most relevant for data analysis in particle and astroparticle physics. The lectures covered parameter estimation, confidence intervals and limits, profile likelihoods, statistical tests for goodness-of-fit, application of hypothesis testing to searches for new phenomena, treatment of systematic uncertainties, and a critical discussion and comparison between the frequentist and the Bayesian approaches to these subjects. Throughout, real-world examples were used to illustrate the practical application of the ideas.

Each session consisted of a 1-hour lecture followed by one hour of practical computing, with exercises based on that day's lecture. In order to follow the hands-on sessions, participants needed to bring their own laptops and have a basic prior knowledge of ROOT and C++. No previous experience with more recent ROOT-based statistics tools like RooFit and RooStats was assumed.

This course was part of the Double Doctoral Degree in Astrophysics between UNSAM and KIT.

The Karlsruhe School of Elementary Particle and Astroparticle Physics: Science and Technology (KSETA) was funded in 2012 in the frame of the Excellence Initiative II. The first funding period ended in October 2017. This was the opportunity to celebrate the success of the first five years with a symposium.

The first part of the event was a scientific symposium which consisted of six talks by the KSETA Alumni Anne Zilles (IAP, Paris), Alessio Porcelli (JGU Mainz), Holger Kluck (HEPHY, Austria), Wolfgang Hollik (DESY), Benjamin Schmidt (LBNL), and Stefanie Falk.

We continued with a special colloquium. KSETA spokesperson Prof. Ulrich Nierste (TTP) gave a KSETA overview followed by two welcome addresses of KIT Vice President Research Prof. Oliver Kraft and Prof. Johannes Blümer (Head of Division Physics and Mathematics).

Special guest and Julius Wess Awardee of 2009 Prof. John Ellis gave a talk on "Particle Physics Today, Tomorrow and Beyond".

More Pictures
More information

We offered two very interesting KSETA courses with Prof. Gustavo E. Romero (CONICET/UNLP/UNSAM, Buenos Aires, Argentina, KSETA guest scientist):

• Scientific Philosophy
  October 4 – 6, 2017, More information
   
• Particle acceleration in astrophysics
  October 9 – 13, 2017, More information

Both lectures were part of the Double Doctoral Degree in Astrophysics between UNSAM and KIT.

August 28 - September 1, 2017, Karlsruhe

The Fellows of KSETA participated in an excursion to DESY-Hamburg. One of the PhD students at DESY took the Fellows for a guided tour which lasted for three hours.

The tour started with a talk from the guide explaining the different accelerator experiments at DESY. This was followed by a visit to the HERA tunnel, where the Fellows could walk inside the tunnel and see the different components of the accelerator. The remaining parts of the HERA-B detector were also seen. Following this the Fellows visited the experimental hall PETRA. The day ended with a social evening including dinner at a local restaurant.

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

More Information

On September 5 and 6, 18 KSETA doctoral students visited the Double Chooz experiment. This serves to investigate the neutrino mixing angle Theta_13 and is constructed on the site of the Chooz nuclear power plant near the French-Belgian border. During a tour of the visitor centre followed by a guided tour of the power plant site, the participants first learned something about how the nuclear power plant works and how it operates. The Chooz nuclear power plant generates the highest net output of all nuclear power plants worldwide. Impressive for the doctoral students were the perceptible vibrations of the plant's generator, which runs under full load and weighs several tons.

After an introductory lecture on the Double Chooz experiment, the participants went to the underground laboratory of the proximity detector on the site of the power plant. Since the detector was taking data, the dimensions under the shields could only be guessed. Nevertheless, the laboratory offered interesting insights and the participants could ask many questions before they went back to Karlsruhe.

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.

This seminar was part of the Double Doctoral Degree in Astrophysics between UNSAM and KIT.

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.

On January 27, 2016 Prof. L. Biermann (MPI for Radio Astronomy, Bonn; Department of Physics, KIT; Department of Physics, University of Alabama; Department of Physics and Astr., University of Bonn) gave a KSETA Course at KIT campus north. He talked about different aspects of Dark Matter and Dark Energy.

More information and abstract

Carl Haber from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA, gave a special course on silicon detectors at KIT in October.

More information on the content is available as pdf.

Please find materials here.

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 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.ikp.kit.edu/english/243.php

From June 23 - July 10, 2015 Prof. Dr. Arkady Vainshtein (Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA), the Julius Wess Laureate 2014, gave a series of lectures at KIT on „Instantons and Supersymmetry“.

He introduced the notion of instanton and related calculus in non-abelian gauge theories. Starting with quantum mechanical examples, he moved to QCD, and then to supersymmetric gauge theories. Applications to  perturbative and nonperturbative quantum effects were reviewed.

In the series "KIT im Rathaus", the Lord Mayor of Karlsruhe and the President of KIT invited to an event on January 20, 2015 in the Bürgersaal in the Karlsruhe City Hall on the topic "News from the World of the Smallest Particles".

The citizens of Karlsruhe found the research in particle and astroparticle physics so exciting that they flocked to the city hall and set a new visitor record for the series "KIT im Rathaus".

In addition to greetings by Wolfram Jäger (First Mayor of the City of Karlsruhe) and Prof. Dr.-Ing. Detlef Löhe (Vice President for Research and Information at KIT), the following presentations were given:

"Introduction of the KIT Center for Elementary Particles and Astroparticle Physics"
Prof. Dr. Johannes Blümer
Head of the Institute of Nuclear Physics and Spokesperson of KCETA and KSETA

"Neutrinos on the scale of KATRIN"
Dr. Kathrin Valerius
Group leader of the Helmholtz-University Junior Research Group KATRIN, Institute of Nuclear Physics

"The discovery of the Higgs particle or how particles get their mass"
Prof. Dr. Margarete Mühlleitner
Institute for Theoretical Physics

"How elementary particle physics algorithms can save tens of millions"
Prof. Dr. Michael Feindt
Institute of Experimental Particle Physics

All presentations have been recorded and are online.

Press Release of 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.

The workshop, which took place from September 22 to 24, 2014, consisted of two components:
- Lectures given by invited speakers.
- Lectures by our doctoral students on their own field of work, which serve the exchange of information among the doctoral students and the various working groups of the Research Training Group, as well as lecture training.

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


 

Prof. Takaaki Kajita (ICRR Tokyo), Julius Wess Awardee 2013, gave two lectures on the studies of atmospheric neutrinos on July 10 and 11, 2014 at KIT. The lectures took place in the mornings at KIT campus south and were followed by informal discussion sessions in the afternoons.

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

Please find more information here.

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 for Experimental Particle Physics (ETP), 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 ETP-Website.