ETP at the DPG Spring Meeting in Erlangen
During the week from March 16-20, approximately 1800 physicists convened in Erlangen for the Spring Meeting of the Matter and Cosmos Section (SMuK) of the German Physical Society (DPG). Across more than 1500 contributions, researchers presented works spanning fields such as particle physics, cosmology, and plasma physics, alongside applications in radiation and medical physics. ETP was strongly represented, contributing to a wide range of topics.
The CMS Higgs to ττ, SM and BSM analysis groups presented their work in several parallel talks covering a broad spectrum of ongoing projects.These included precision measurements of the Higgs boson decaying to τ leptons, searches for additional Higgs bosons beyond the Standard Model and non-resonant di-Higgs production, a measurement of the Z+jets cross section, and contributions to detector performance, such as muon calibration. In addition, some contributions explored more exotic signatures, such as semivisible jets and axion-like particles.
The CMS hardware group was represented with an invited talk about the ongoing detector upgrades of the CMS and ATLAS experiments in preparation for the High-Luminosity LHC by Stefan Maier. Complementary contributions in parallel sessions focused on R&D studies for future detector technologies and colliders, as well as on the application of particle physics methods in the medical domain.
Beyond the LHC program, ETP contributions to the Belle II experiment highlighted the increasing role of modern machine learning techniques in data processing. Several talks demonstrated the use of graph neural networks to improve both real-time event reconstruction for the Level-1 trigger and offline tracking and clustering performance. In addition, analyses of B-meson decays were presented in the context of semileptonic processes, electroweak penguin transitions, and searches for physics in the dark sector.
Future collider studies were another important focus of the meeting. Here, ETP contributions addressed the feasibility of precision measurements of the Higgs boson - such as its CP properties in decays to τ leptons - as well as rare processes including Bs→ττ decays and searches for axion-like particles at FCC-ee.
Recent developments in high-energy physics computing were discussed in dedicated sessions. ETP contributions included an overview of the operation of the Tier-1 WLCG site at Karlsruhe, GridKa, with a particular focus on GPU-based computing. Further contributions covered the development of frameworks for neural simulation-based inference and tools designed to streamline Monte Carlo production workflows. These efforts underline the growing importance of advanced computational methods in enabling next-generation physics analyses.
Furthermore, multiple presentations were given about several outreach projects of ETP at schools, sowing the seeds for future generations of particle physicists.
Overall, this year’s DPG Spring Meeting provided a vibrant platform for scientific exchange, offering especially our young researchers the opportunity to showcase their work and engage with peers across the community, building new connections and collaborations.