Stephen Sekula – Page 27 – Going Up Alleys

June 16, 2012

Higgs Hunting in Uppsala

The Angstrom Laboratory. Only 1/6 of the complex is visible in this photo. It is home to many branches of science, including physics.

Two days ago, I arrived in Uppsala, Sweden, so that I could spend a day working and interacting with the ATLAS group at the University of Uppsala (Uppsala Universitet). Uppsala is a beautiful city located north of Stockholm, just a short bus ride from the Stockholm Arlanda Airport (where I landed). Everything in Uppsala is within comfortable walking distances (~30 minutes in any direction), and the city has a wonderful mix of history and modernity. Uppsala may be one of my favorite places on Earth, and to boot ATLAS group here is a powerhouse in physics that is very interesting to me.

I’ve talked about the charged Higgs boson before – the subatomic chimera that wears both the spin and couplings of a Higgs boson and also the electric charge that denotes a coupling via the electromagnetic interaction. This unique beast is not of the Standard Model, but appears automatically in even modest extensions of the Standard Model. Such extensions are needed to explain how particles outside the Standard Model, such as dark matter, acquire their mass. If the Higgs mechanism is the way in which nature gives mass to particles, then there is an excellent chance that the charged Higgs exists in nature. Only by careful experimentation can we know.

Poster from CHARGED-2010, the last installment of the Uppsala-hosted charged Higgs boson conference.

The Uppsala group has rich history of investigation into the charged Higgs boson, and routinely hosts a conference on the subject (every two years, typically in September). Yesterday, they were gracious enough to host me in their department. I even attended their Friday morning meeting, where they discussed the latest updates on their research (some of which is aimed for the ICHEP conference in a few weeks). They even set aside time at the end for a discussion with me about plans to extend the search for the charged Higgs boson beyond its current confines, taking advantage of the unique strengths of the Large Hadron Collider to define a new front in the search for this particle.

Having only arrived in Europe on Wednesday morning, and being in the throes of jet lag, being able to interact with the students and faculty of the Uppsala group has energized me. I’ve also had the chance to spend a little time in Uppsala itself, having lunch with some of the Ph.D. students by the river and walking the streets to find new sites I have not yet seen (and getting my exercise in the process).

Below are some of the photos that I shot while on my wanderings around Uppsala. One of my favorite parts of the city is the Domkyrkan (cathedral), which one of the students quipped probably took longer to build than the U.S. is old. I love it that, in Europe, you can readily find examples of such things that set the youth of my home nation in perspective.

[nggallery id=3]

June 12, 2012June 16, 2012

I ride the train

For about half the summer, I will be at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. This is a chance for me to become completely immersed in something I love very much: experimental physics research. I’ve been negligent in posting anything to this blog since my last trip to CERN, in March. That mostly has to do with balancing priorities. Research and teaching have taken up all my professional time; I set aside specific relaxation time this past semester because the research and the teaching were so demanding. Between teaching a new course (Introduction to the Scientific Method) and finishing my first major contribution to an ATLAS publication (more about that in another post), I was swamped. Add to that the usual and necessary business of writing proposals for grants, engaging with students on research topics, and faculty activities (department and university business and collaboration), and you HAVE to make a conscious decision to set aside time for relaxation.

Most of that time was devoted to my wife. Next year, I will be spending about half a year physically at CERN. My time with Jodi is therefore precious this year. Given that we both have crazy travel schedules this summer, and the importance of devoting explicit time to my personal life becomes even clearer.

The summer is here. My research is taking me to Europe again. I can reprioritize, now that I know I will be away from home and SMU for many weeks. Thus . . . there is some room for “professional blogging” again.

Since this is my day of travel to Europe, I thought it would be nice to share my feelings on airports. You might think that this will be a rant. It will not be a rant. I’ve taken a zen-like attitude toward airports over the past few years. I know that I will be spending a great deal of my life in them, whether it is to work or to visit family. Therefore, I have decided to accept that airports and airlines are like friends; they have things you don’t like about them and things you do like about them, but in the end it’s more important to remain close to them than to keep them at arm’s length.

So I have two pieces of advice for all of you that get ENRAGED when you have to deal with airports. You know who you are. You’re suit-guy in front of me in line at the ticket counter, checking his wristwatch every 10 seconds and sighing heavily, just for good measure. You’re control-freak woman, who when the slightest thing deviates from your itinerary flips out and blames the TSA.

First, make a conscious decision to find a gem in every airport you visit. This is important because it gives you something to look forward to when you have to deal with those long lines or incompetent staff. If you have something you LIKE to do, even if it’s a little thing, then it makes all that annoyance seem so minor. For instance, when I travel with Jodi I like to look forward to getting through the security checkpoint so we can find a restaurant with a bar and have margaritas together. This started as her gem; I adopt it when we travel together. The act of imbibing a naughty drink sets the tone for the day: we are together, we are enjoying this trip, and that’s all that matters.

When I travel alone, I have a few gems that I keep in mind. First, I like to find a particular food item or restaurant that I can aim for. You need at least one in every terminal. For instance, at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport I like to look forward to Dickie’s Barbecue, or to Chilis. It depends on the terminal. Sometimes, there are little food gems in airports. In the Milwaukee airport, I look forward to the privately owned non-chain bookstore located outside security. Second, I find a physical activity. This can be as simple as deciding to walk the entire length of the terminal. In the DFW airport, I ride the “Skylink” train. You can board it anywhere and if you ride it long enough, come right back to where you started. It does a snowman-shaped loop around the ENTIRE airport, every terminal and the airport hotel. It’s also zippy; when the thing accelerates, you really feel it. I have a soft spot for trains, so this is a good one.

My other big piece of advise for accepting airports and airlines into your life is to be thankful. Thank every employee. It doesn’t matter what crap job they do. Chances are, they are doing a crap job because people like us treat them like garbage. What kind of job would YOU do if you felt that 99% of the people you dealt with every day treated you like a second-class citizen? You’d do a shit job.

So thank those airline and TSA employees. Don’t coddle them; you should always complain to airlines and the TSA when things go wrong. But don’t assume that each of them is the cause of all your misery when it comes to travel. It’s a good bet that you’re most of the source of your travel misery, either because of negative past experiences or a general dislike of long trips. So be kind and thankful and smile. After all, we’re all trapped on this flying sardine can together. We might as well get along.

Here’s a tip: if you feel wronged by an airline, complain to them. During our last trip together, my itinerary became mysteriously separated from Jodi’s. This meant that the computer treated me like a separate passenger, and I was place in a seat nowhere near Jodi. We complained, but the flight was full. Our time together is precious, as I mentioned above, so we were frustrated. I banged off an email to American Airlines before the plane even left the ground, explaining my frustration and asking for compensation for their mistake. By the time we landed in Dallas, AA had written back and offered me a $200 travel voucher. That was nice of them, and even when I complained I tried to strike a positive tone with them. You should complain, but do it right. Be polite but honest. Airlines like American do need you to consume their product, and they will help if they can. You just have to ask nicely.

April 1, 2012April 1, 2012

Scenes from CERN: March 27-April 1

In an effort to stay awake on the first day of jet lag (my first day at CERN), I spent time thinking about how to adapt our existing electrically charged Higgs boson search – geared toward the decay of top quarks – to a new, heavy Higgs search where the Higgs is produced alongside a top quark.

After dinner on the first night, we go to the top of the building that houses the CERN Main Auditorium and take photos of CERN at dusk.

CERN at night, as photographed from my CERN Hostel Room. I will never forget what my father said to me once when he took me to Boston College, his graduate alma mater. He told me that when the lights were on in the lab at night, you knew there were people in there staying up later than you, working on harder problems than you.

The new courtyard outside the CERN Restaurant No. 1 looks like some alien sawblade.

Mont Blanc stands huge and gorgeous on a particularly clear day.

The Jura are the mountains to the west of CERN (Mt. Blanc and the Alps are far to the east). The strange tower in the foreground is a water tower. It was also my signature goal during my runs at CERN, each of which was about 2.5 miles and involved running a few laps around a ring-road (part of an accelerator complex at CERN) just below the water tower.

A beautiful tree is blossoming. On this day, the blossoms were beginning to blow off in the wind, leaving behind the buds of leaves.

Sharing the same courtyard as the tree above was a fenced off area. Danger! Radiation!

A tour visitor center housed in the same space as the LHC magnet testing facility. This is a display part of an LHC superconducting dipole magnet.

The superconducting magnet test facility. It looks like a busy train station, complete with information signs on the platforms. One of these magnets is currently operating at 26 Kelvin. The magnets can be slid into place and hooked up to services, mimicking the conditions they experience 150m below us in the LHC tunnel.

The cryogens cooling the magnet superconductors to 26 Kelvin, if released into the air, are capable of liquifying the nitrogen in the air. Even if they warm up enough to avoid the liquid nitrogen state, they are still capable of causing the water in the air to rapidly precipitate out. Safety videos of this process shown during CERN training show a cryogen release, followed by cloud formation and precipitation.