Here you find current News from the Laboratory for Particle Physics. For scientific highlights, please see these pages.
The Zuoz school’s 26th edition
26th Zuoz Summer School on particle physics took place at the Lyceum Alpinum with close to 100 participants.
2024 Guido Altarelli Award to Javier Mazzitelli
The Guido Altarelli Award honours the memory of the late Guido Altarelli, one of the founding fathers of QCD, an outstanding communicator of particle physics, and a mentor and strong supporter of Junior Scientists.
Javier Mazzitelli has been awarded the 2024 Guido Altarelli Award in acknowledgement of his distinguished contributions to the field of particle physics. The Guido Altarelli Award is awarded every year to junior scientists for outstanding scientific contributions to the fields covered by the DIS Conference series.
In the search for New Physics at the Intensity Frontier: a first result from the MEG II experiment
In a special seminar at the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) in Switzerland, the MEG II collaboration presented on October 20th its first results, based on data collected in 2021. The results are reported on a paper published on arXiv and submitted to the European Journal of Physics C.
Japanese – Swiss BRIDGE Workshop at PSI
BRIDGE stands for Bridging Research Innovations in Diverse muon and neutron science by GEneral collaboration between Japan and Switzerland. After a first remote edition of this new workshop series in 2022, an in-person BRIDGE workshop took place at PSI, October 18-20, 2023.
PSI medal winners at SwissSkills Championships 2023
At the recent SwissSkills Championships 2023 for apprentices in Sindex/BE Melvin Deubelbeiss and Andrin Kästli from the electronics apprenticeship group in NUM/LTP have won two medals: Andrin became third, won a bronze medal and Melvin even won the championship and was honored by the gold medal.
Shea Distinguished Member Award of IEEE NPSS to Stefan Ritt
The Nuclear & Plasma Sciences Society of IEEE acknowledges the outstanding contributions of Dr. Stefan Ritt in terms of technological developments and services to the NPSS community with the 2023 Richard F. Shea Distinguished Member Award.
Marino Missiroli elected Trigger Coordinator of the CMS experiment at CERN
Marino Missiroli, a postdoctoral researcher in the High-Energy Particle Physics group of the Laboratory for Particle Physics (LTP) in NUM, will join the management team of the CMS experiment at CERN as Trigger Co-Coordinator in September 2023.
Jupiter mission to explore conditions conducive to life
Ganymede, Callisto and Europa: Jupiter’s icy moons are the destination of the upcoming ESA mission. On board: a high-tech detector developed by PSI.
Harald Ita appointed Associate Professor ad personam at University of Zurich
Harald Ita, currently senior scientist at the Laboratory for Particle Physics at NUM/PSI was appointed as Associate Professor ad personam at UZH Zurich. Harald is an international acclaimed researcher in the field of theoretical high-energy particle physics.
Seeking the sensational on a small scale
The Swiss Research Magazine 'Horizons' features particle physics performed at PSI.
Aldo Antognini Adjunct Professor at ETHZ
Aldo Antognini, currently lecturer and senior scientist at both ETH Zurich and the Laboratory for Particle Physics at NUM/PSI was awarded the title of Adjunct Professor at ETH Zurich.
Update on the Status of HIMB
A workshop to discuss and further develop the science case for the High Intensity Muon Beams (HIMB) has been held.
Silver medal at the EuroSkills
Silver medal for Mario Liechti at the EuroSkills in Graz, Austria.
CHRISP — All the key results in one place
A specialSciPost volume, entitled “Review of Particle Physics at PSI”, has recently been completed.
Size of helium nucleus measured more precisely than ever before
In experiments at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI, an international research collaboration has measured the radius of the atomic nucleus of helium five times more precisely than ever before. The new value can be used to test fundamental physical theories.
Magnetically shielded from the rest of the world
The shielding room in which the n2EDM experiment is expected to clarify whether the neutron has a measurable electric dipole moment or not.
(Photo: Paul Scherrer Institute/Markus Fischer)
Prestigious IEEE award for Stefan Ritt
Stefan Ritt, leader of the Muon Physics group at the Laboratory for Particle Physics, has received today the prestigious IEEE Emilio Gatti Radiation Instrumentation Technical Achievement Award, for "contributions to the development and democratization of ultra-high-speed digitizers”.
On the winners’ podium at the SwissSkills professional championships
With Mario Liechti (gold) and Melvin Deubelbeiss (bronze) two of our electronics apprentices achieved a place on the winners’ podium at the SwissSkills 2020. The SwissSkills are the Swiss professional championships organized by the leading industry associations. The final competition took place October 27 - 30, 2020 at Schindler Elevators in Ebikon.
Swiss National Science Foundation Ambizione grant for Franziska Hagelstein
Franziska Hagelstein has been awarded a Swiss National Science Foundation Ambizione grant with PSI as host institution. She joined the particle theory group (NUM, Laboratory of Particle Physics LTP) in October 2020. In the near future she will be accompanied by a PhD student.
Mu3e magnet arrived at PSI
After almost three years of planning, design and construction, the 31-ton, 2.6 Tesla superconducting magnet for the Mu3e experiment arrived today at PSI. The magnet delivery is an important milestone in the Mu3e experiment at the Laboratory of Particle Physics LTP, which will search for New Physics in muon decays over the next years.
Anna Sótér appointed Tenure Track Assistant Professor at ETH Zurich
Anna Sótér, currently Lecturer and SNSF Ambizione Fellow at ETH Zurich, formerly member of the PSI Laboratory for Particle Physics and member of the PSI Fellow program, has been appointed Tenure Track Assistant Professor of Low Energy Particle Physics. Anna Sótér’s research is in the area of exotic atoms, where particle physics, atomic physics and quantum optics meet.
Tracking down the mystery of matter
At the ultracold neutron source at PSI, researchers have measured a property of the neutron more precisely than ever before: its electric dipole moment. That's because the search is still on for an explanation of why, after the Big Bang, there was more matter than antimatter.
Anna Sótér starts Ambizione fellowship
Anna Sótér has started an Ambizione fellowship at ETH Zurich and PSI. Her project is dedicated to developing a novel source of cold muonium atoms, which will be used for a new interferometry experiment that enables testing the weak equivalence principle by directly probing gravitational interaction of antimatter.
Fascinating colloquium about the 200 Swiss frank banknote
The designers of the new Swiss banknote series together with the scientific advisor Günther Dissertori from ETHZ gave a fascinating PSI-colloquium on the 200 Swiss Frank banknote.
Workshop on the Physics of Fundamental Symmetries and Interactions
The 5th Workshop on the Physics of Fundamental Symmetries and Interactions (PSI2019) took place from 20 to 25 October 2019 at PSI, bringing together 200 scientists from all over the world working on some of today’s most precise particle-physics experiments at the low-energy frontier.
SNSF Ambizione Grant for Max Zoller
Max Zoller has been awarded a Swiss National Science Foundation
Ambizione grant with PSI as host institution.
ERC Consolidator grant for Paolo Crivelli
Dr Paolo Crivelli (ETH Zurich, Department of Physics, Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics) has recently been awarded an ERC Consolidator grant for his project "Mu-MASS" aiming at a new precision measurement of the Muonium 1S-2S transition energy, ultimately with an improvement by three orders of magnitude.
Eccellenza Professorship to Lea Caminada
Dr Lea Caminada has been awarded a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) Eccellenza Professorial Fellowship.
Shang Gao receives SGN Young Scientist Prize
Dr. Shang Gao was awarded the Young Scientist Prize of the Swiss Neutron Scattering Society for his high quality thesis and neutron scattering investigation leading to the discovery of a spiral spin-liquid state in the compound MnSc2S4 and of fast monopole hopping rates in the spin-ice compounds CdEr2X4. The prize is sponsored by Swiss Neutronics and is awarded annualy to a young scientist in recognition of a notable scientific achievement in the form of a PhD thesis. The photo shows Shang together with the SGN president Prof. Henrik Ronnow during the prize ceremony.
Claire Donnelly dissertation and research awards
In August 2018, Claire Donnelly was awarded the SPS Award in Computational Physics, sponsored by COMSOL, and the Werner Meyer-Ilse Memorial Award. We congratulate her on these awards as well as for two awards earlier on in the year: the ETH Medal for an outstanding doctoral thesis and the American Physical Society Richard L. Greene Dissertation Award, recognizing doctoral thesis research of exceptional quality and importance. These prizes are for her dissertation on “Hard X-ray Tomography of Three Dimensional Magnetic Structures”.