The ATLAS search community is coming to Clermont-Ferrand!
Image: A graphic I used in my interview for my job as junior professor at Université Clermont Auvergne. It’s an adaptation of “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog” by Caspar David Friedrich, but I photoshopped out the fog in favour of the beautiful Chaîne des Puys which Clermont-Ferrand is nestled in. About a month ago,…
An ode to Moriond
Image: The conference photo for the 60th edition of the “Rencontres de Moriond: Electroweak Interactions and Unified Theories”. I’m somewhere on the left side of the zero. Credit: Moriond. This March, I had the pleasure of attending the “Rencontres de Moriond: Electroweak Interactions and Unified Theories” conference (“Moriond” for short). It is one of the…
If Particle Physics were a railway, who would lay the track and who would drive the trains?
Image: LHC magnet being assembled. If Particle Physics were a railway, CERN would be in charge of laying and maintaining the tracks and signalling. Image © CERN. This weekend, I’ve been visiting some friends from my university days. While catching up, they asked me a question which I get a lot: are you still working…
High Energy Physics is a generational project
Image: The planned location of the Future Circular Collider at CERN. Credit: CERN. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that the entire field of particle physics is less than 130 years old. I pick as a starting point the date that we discovered our first fundamental particle: the electron (discovered in 1897 by J. J. Thompson).…
Five things we learned about fundamental particle physics in 2025
Image: Louie preaching to the converted (during a visit of his masters students to ALICE experiment at CERN in December 2025). Credit: Adrien Auriol. I would like to dedicate this post to the memory of Deepak Kar, who passed away tragically last week after a short illness. We co-organised the CHACAL school together, and I…
What it takes to build a detector
Image: the High Granularity Timing Detector and where it will fit within ATLAS. (Credit: ATLAS collaboration) Last week, I travelled to Lyon to give an overview of the status of the ATLAS High Granularity Timing Detector (HGTD) upgrade project for the leaders of the IN2P3 (the French particle and nuclear physics institute). For each major…
“Particle Physics for Babies” reaches new heights!
A mountain ascent, a new print run, and new translations! Image Credit: Alexis HELLAL. “Particle Physics for Babies” at the summit of Gran Paradiso, at over 4000m of altitude. I often joke with students that writing “Particle Physics for Babies” was a high-point of my career. As you can see from the cover photo, some…
Ooooh, we’re halfway there…!
NB: All opinions expressed below are my own, not necessarily those of the ATLAS collaboration! The LHC started physics-quality collisions in 2009. It is currently due to operate until 2041. The halfway point of its 32-year lifespan is right now: 2025. In other words, we are (already!) halfway through the LHC’s lifespan. So we have…
They said the PhD would be the last formal exam I would ever do: they were wrong.
In my last post I talked about PhD defences and how they vary from country to country. Sometimes the PhD defence is described as the last formal exam you’ll ever take, because it’s the highest academic qualification you can have. Well, turns out that’s true in many countries, but not all. In France, Germany and…
PhD defences at home and abroad
Last week I was back at Imperial college High Energy Physics department, where I spent 3.5 years working on my PhD. But this time, I was back as an external examiner for a PhD viva. It was a very validating experience to know that 8 years after my own PhD defence, I am now enough…
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Louie D. Corpe 