D-PHYS News

Luigi Marchese, a researcher in the Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics, talks about his outreach work with the publisher of an iconic Italian comic series.

In 2022, the Swiss team won the World Physics Championship, the International Young Physicists' Tournament (IYPT). Singapore and Poland came second and third.

Letting your curiosity run free, asking a thousand questions and learning something new. On 17 June 2022, the Department of Physics at ETH Zurich welcomed several thousand guests at the summer festival of science on the Hönggerberg campus, the Night of Physics 2022.

Every year, the Association of Students at ETH Zurich (VSETH) honours on ETH Day lecturers who have provided exceptional teaching with the "Golden Owl". For courses in the Departments of Physics, the award goes this year to Günther Dissertori .

In the current round of appointments, four men and four women were appointed or promoted to ETH professors, among them the physicist Anna Sótér, who has been appointed Tenure Track Assistant Professor of Low Energy Particle Physics.

In 2019, the Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov (MAGIC) telescopes — to which ETH physicists have made substantial contributions — detected the first Gamma Ray Burst at very high energies. With further analyses of those data, the MAGIC scientists now confirmed that the speed of light is constant in vacuum, and not dependent on energy. So, like many other tests, GRB data also corroborate Einstein’s theory of General Relativity. 

Scientists at the CMS experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, to which ETH physicists are making central contributions, submitted their 1,000th paper — and this is just the beginning.

ETH researchers are normally found in the lab. "ETH Globe" asked researchers from the Department of Physics what it’s like working from home.

At its last meeting, the ETH Board appointed a total of 19 new professors at the request of the President of ETH Zurich, Joël Mesot. Among them are five appointments at the Department of Physics.

Prof. Dr. Gert Viertel, retired ETH professor of physics, passed away on 31 July 2019, at the age of 76.

ETH physics professor Günther Dissertori was appointed by the publishers of The European Physical Journal C – Particles and Fields as new Editor-in-Chief for Experimental Physics I (Accelerator Based High-Energy Physics), as of 1 January 2019.

On 2 December, the second running period of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN has come to an end. The most recent scientific highlight during that period was the observation of the decay of the Higgs boson into a pair of bottom quarks. ETH physicists had a leading role in obtaining this landmark result.

ETH researchers had excellent results in the issuing of ERC grants: they were awarded 10 Consolidator Grants in the amount of 24 million Swiss francs for their research. Among the grantees are the three physicists Paolo Crivelli, Christian Degen and Jonathan Home.  

Cosmic-ray events, such as exceptionally large solar eruptions, are recorded globally in trees. This is what 67 scientists from 56 institutions under the leadership of the Laboratory of Ion Beam Physics at ETH Zurich and the WSL Birmensdorf show in a study based on more than 400 radiocarbon analyses of 44 tree-ring records.

Fundamental questions can usually be solved better in cooperation between different disciplines than from a single perspective. Especially when a problem has remained unsolved for decades, despite intensive research: What is dark matter and does it even exist?

Combing Earth- and space-borne observations, first evidence was found for an extragalactic object acting as a source of high-energy neutrinos, and therefore possibly also of cosmic radiation. An important role in this discovery had the MAGIC telescopes, where also ETH scientists are involved.

An observation made by the CMS experiment at CERN connects for the first time the two heaviest elementary particles of the Standard Model. Central contributions to this milestone result came from ETH physicists.

The Laboratory of Ion Beam Physics is one of the world’s leading groups in the dating of organic materials. In its current issue, ETH Globe reports on the intriguing 'detective work' performed in this lab.

The two ETH particle physicists and Pioneer Fellows Jannis Fischer and Max Ludwig are listed on the 2018 "30 Under 30 Europe: Science & Healthcare" of the American business magazine Forbes, which showcases "ground-breaking millennials" in various felds.

In response to the proposals received from the President of ETH Zurich, Professor Lino Guzzella, the ETH Board resolved to appoint 10 professors, among them Lesya Shchutska of the Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics, who was appointed Assistant Professor of Experimental Particle Physics.    

The Charpak–Ritz Prize 2018, which is jointly awarded by the Swiss Physical Society and the French Physical Society, has been awarded to Roland Horisberger (PSI & ETH), for his numerous contributions to the development of precision silicon vertex detectors for particle physics experiments as well as for the application of these technologies in X-ray photon sciences.

Already as a boy, Rudolf Bär was fascinated by astronomy. After graduating from ETH, however, he opted for a career in banking. Only after his retirement did he reach for the stars. In its latest issue, ETH Globe tells the story of the latecomer, who works now in the group of Kevin Schawinski.

A laboratory-based search for axion dark matter ended, not unexpectedly, without a discovery. It provides, however, valuable constraints for the properties that these hypothetical particles can have — and thus a guide to where to look next.

How is it possible to discover new planets far outside of our solar system? How do astrophysicists track down celestial objects that are thousands or even millions of times fainter than their suns? Professor Hans Martin Schmid from the Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics gave members of the Department of Finance of the Canton of Zurich a glimpse into his research.

20 high-school students with a passion for physics had a chance to experience modern research in two large laboratory complexes of the Department of Physics. In the Laboratory for Solid State Physics, they visted the Advanced Semiconductor Quantum Materials group, and in the Institute for Particle Physics the Laboratory of Ion Beam Physics.

Professor Felicitas Pauss, since 1991 a member of the Institute for Particle Physics, gave her farewell lecture, entitled "Tiny particles, big questions, multifaceted experience".

A new management took over at the helm of the CMS Collaboration at CERN, including ETH professor Günther Dissertori, who will act as one of the two Deputy Spokespersons.

Around 180 scientists working on the development and application of cyclotrons meet this week at ETH Zurich, to exchange ideas in a field that has a long-standing tradition at ETH and at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Villigen.

The German radio station Deutschlandfunk reports on work at the ETH Laboratory of Ion Beam Physics.

ETH particle physicist Felicitas Pauss and systems biologist Rudolf Aebersold discuss what forms of cooperation make sense.

On January 6-8 approximatively 70 researchers met at the ETH Zurich Main Building to discuss Higgs physics at the Large Hadron Collider LHC. LHC is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator at CERN.