Experimental Nuclear and Particle Physics 101
UNDER
CONSTRUCTION
Introduction
This page has been designed as a starting point for students interested
in nuclear and particle physics.
How
to
read a scientific article
By Dr. Laurel S. Collins at FIU's Department of Earth Sciences
Nuclear and Particle Physics for everybody
The Contemporary Physics Education
Project offers three very nice introductions to Nuclear Science,
Plasma
Physics and Fusion, and
Fundamental Particles and Interactions. We highly recommend you take
the tour through
The ABC's of Nuclear Science
and The Particle
Adventure.
National Nuclear Science
Week
Journals and Search Engines
Experimental Nuclear & Particle Physics Tool Box
OK, now you have gotten interested and maybe even landed a job as an
undergraduate or
graduate
research assistant in the FIU lab. However, even if you already took an
introductory
level
nuclear physics course, you might feel overwhelmed by the jargon used
in
the
lab.
If you don't know yet what a photomultiplier or the missing
mass is, check out The
Particle Detector BriefBook. There you will find a list of common
expressions
with a short explanation and a literature reference. You also might
want to check the The
Data
Analysis BriefBook, especially, if you have no clue what a
Poisson distribution or a Kolmogorov test is. And the treasure chest as
such is the Particle Data Book with
everything we know about every particle we know and many useful summary
articles, including detector technology.
Data Analysis: Statistics
and Errors
See Roger Barlows page: http://www.hep.man.ac.uk/u/roger/
Writing Papers and Theses:
AIP Style Manual: http://www.aip.org/pubservs/style/4thed/toc.html
Computers & Software:
Operating systems
In the nuclear and particle physics community, we mainly use UNIX or
LINUX as operating systems (sorry Bill ;-). Because of its free
availablity and the affordability of fast PCs, more and more systems
are
running LINUX. You need to learn LINUX. Here are some on-line resources:
Many more links can be found at Steve's Linux
Links and many more sites. Let me know, when you find something
useful.
Programing languages
A lot of software that we use has been written in Fortran, however, the
future trend seems to be toward C++. You should at least learn the
latter and depending on your specific needs both. Here some links:
General C++ learning links:
http://cplus.about.com/cs/ctutorial1/index.htm
http://cliodhna.cop.uop.edu/~hetrick/c-sources.html
http://www.gnu.org/manual/make/html_chapter/make.html#SEC_Top
Book on learning C++:
"The C++ Programming Language" Bjarne Stroustrup, 1997
ROOT tutorials and examples:
The $ROOTSYS/tutorials directory has many examples of root c++ scripts
A set of lectures on how to use root:
http://www.nevis.columbia.edu/~seligman/root-class/
Scientific Computing at JLab Wiki: https://wiki.jlab.org/cc/external/wiki/index.php/Scientific_Computing
Languages
The international language for physics is English. In case you need
some tutoring check out http://www.learnenglish.org.uk/.
General analysis and Monte Carlo software
The most commonly used data analysis and plotting packages are PAW
(Fortran based)
and its successor
ROOT (C++ based), both developed at CERN .
[Did
you
know that the www
has been invented at CERN?]
Jefferson Lab specific software:
Hardware
VME
CAEN
LeCroy
CAMAC
ODU
Accelerator
Physics Course (PHYSICS 417/517)
FIU Nuclear Physics Home Page
Jefferson Lab Home Page