CTEQ Schools on QCD Analysis and Phenomenology

Michigan State University, East Lansing MI

Investigators

Abstract

This award provides funding for the 2021 and 2022 CTEQ Summer Schools, under the direction of Professor Joey Huston at Michigan State University. CTEQ refers to the "Coordinated Theoretical-Experimental Project on QCD", which is the scientific collaboration that organizes these Schools each year. The physics of elementary particles probes the deepest structure of matter. Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) is the theory that governs the strong interactions between elementary particles, and its study at high energies is increasingly necessary in order to understand both elementary-particle and nuclear physics. The recent discovery of the Higgs particle and the intense search for new physics beyond this highlight the need to better understand the tools of QCD. Since 1992, 26 CTEQ Summer Schools have played an important role in elementary-particle and nuclear physics by promoting the knowledge of QCD and its applications to electroweak precision measurements and to new physics searches. These Schools provide training and education for graduate students and post-doctoral research associates beyond what is typically available at their home institutions. These Schools have proved to be extremely useful for participants working at different colliders such as the Tevatron in the US and at HERA in Germany, and are now even more important for students working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland. Over 1700 participants have attended the CTEQ Schools to date, and NSF support has enabled US-based participants to attend. The broader impact of these Schools is felt though the participants' strengthened awareness of the context of their research within the overall enterprise of fundamental physics. The interactive nature of the Schools encourages the skills necessary for communicating the excitement and the results of this research to the wider public. Although open to participants from around the world, the primary audience consists of participants from institutions in the United States, and it is these participants who are partially supported by the funding from NSF. Partial NSF support for these Schools is thus in the national interest by assisting in the development of a skilled and scientifically trained US-based workforce, whether in academic physics or beyond. Indeed, many of the participants go on to careers in academia, and in fact have ended up sending their own students to a subsequent CTEQ School. Other participants have gone into industry or into defense, but all have benefitted from the training they have received at the CTEQ Schools. More specifically, each CTEQ School typically consists of eight to nine days of lectures and discussion during which participants closely interact with distinguished experts, both experimentalists and theorists. This close interaction is one of the hallmarks of the CTEQ Schools. The Schools alternate each year between the University of Pittsburgh and a site typically outside the United States. Each day of the School consists of four one-hour lectures, with long breaks between each lecture for discussion. Each day also includes a 1.5-hour recitation session during which the participants ask the lecturers to amplify on particular aspects of their presentations. This is followed by an informal gathering that allows the participants to interact with the lecturers (and each other) on a one-to-one basis. In this way the participants are brought to the forefront of cutting-edge research in this field. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.