Institute of Mathematics and Physics

BAC3 students CERN trip
As it has been the case since more than 10 years, Ph.D. students in high energy particle physics from CP3 brought the future physicist generation at CERN in the context of their first lecture in particle physics. In March, students in their third year in physics had indeed a unique opportunity to visit CERN and the various experiments done there. Follow the link for more details.

The whole Universe pictured by the Planck satellite at an unprecedented resolution
The anisotropies of the Cosmic microwave background (CMB) as observed by Planck. The CMB is a snapshot of the oldest light in our Universe, imprinted on the sky when the Universe was just 380 000 years old. It shows tiny temperature fluctuations that correspond to regions of slightly different densities, representing the seeds of all future structure: the stars and galaxies of today.

CP3 Summer Students program
This year again, we open internship positions in experimental high energy physics. These positions are open to BAC3 and Master (1 and 2) students. The exact topics will be chosen is agreement with the selected candidates, and may range from computing and analysis methods to instrumentation, in either the CMS or NA62 collaborations. For master students, a stay at CERN is possible.

Interested? Apply online!

First evidence for the exclusive two-photon production of W pairs, and new limits on anomalous quartic couplings
One year and a half after the first (and fully performed at CP3) measurement of exclusive processes at the LHC, four CP3 members made first ever observation of W pair production via photon fusion. As a consequence, it allowed to push the best limits on anomalous quartic couplings by two orders of magnitude. Finally, this ensured excellent perspectives for CMS toward further studies of the electroweak sector of the Standard Model using the two-photon processes.

Belgian physicists meet at CP3 to discuss about Higgs boson studies
On November, 22 and 23, Belgian physicists gathered in CP3 for a mini-workshop dedicated to Higgs search efforts in Belgium.
On Thursday, we discussed the implications of the recent results presented at the HCP conference in Japan, both from a theoretical and experimental perspective. The session on Friday was restricted to the CMS collaboration, with an emphasis on synergies among the different Belgian groups.