Here you find current News from the Laboratory for Particle Physics. For scientific highlights, please see these pages.
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.
A la recherche d’une nouvelle physique
L’accélérateur de protons à haute intensité HIPA permet à l’Institut Paul Scherrer PSI de produire des particules élémentaires pour élucider la structure de notre univers. Les chercheurs utilisent des pions, des muons et des neutrons pour vérifier la validité du modèle standard de la physique des particules.
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.
Vers le Soleil et au-delà
Le PSI participe à des projets de recherche spatiale. C’est ainsi que s’enrichit le savoir sur notre système solaire, mais aussi que se renforce la renommée de la Suisse en tant que développeur fiable d’équipement spatial de pointe.
De l’hélium pionique avec une longue durée de vie: première preuve expérimentale de l’existence d’une matière exotique
Les atomes exotiques, où des électrons ont été remplacés par d’autres particules, permettent de scruter en profondeur l’univers quantique. Au terme de huit ans de travail, une équipe internationale de chercheurs a réussi une expérience difficile à la source de pions du PSI: créer un atome artificiel appelé «hélium pionique».
Sur la piste de l’énigme de la matière
A la source de neutrons ultra-froids du PSI, des chercheurs ont mesuré une propriété du neutron avec une précision inégalée à ce jour: son moment dipolaire électrique. Aujourd’hui encore, on cherche en effet à comprendre pourquoi il est apparu plus de matière que d’antimatière après le Big Bang.
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”.
CMS Young Researcher Prize awarded to Lea Caminada
Lea Caminada, a researcher in the High-Energy Particle Physics group of the Laboratory for Particle Physics (LTP) in NUM, has received the annual CMS Young Researcher Prize. This Prize is given once a year to outstanding young physicists who made very significant and sustained contributions to the CMS experiment at the LHC facility at CERN. Dr. Caminada has been recognized for her contribution to the construction, installation and commissioning of the two pixel detectors which were build at PSI for the CMS experiment. Her work also included the measurement of the B-meson production cross section and the observation of the Higgs boson in association with top quarks.
SNSF professorship awarded to Andreas Crivellin
The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) awarded this year an SNSF professorship to Andreas Crivellin (NUM, Laboratory of Particle Physics (LTP), Theory Group) for his research plan on the study of Lepton Flavour Universality Violation (LFUV) in B meson decays. These processes received a lot of attention in the last years due to the intriguing hints for LFUV which, if confirmed, would prove the existence of physics beyond the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics.
Le travailleur de force du val Mesolcina
Aldo Antognini a la physique et la convivialité dans le sang. Aldo Antognini, chercheur au PSI, a reçu plus de 2 200 000 francs de l’UE pour sa nouvelle expérience. Son objectif: déterminer la répartition du magnétisme dans le proton. Pour y arriver, ce physicien des particules devra mettre ses talents scientifiques et techniques à contribution, mais aussi son entregent.