Physics Department - Extern RSS Feeds

You see an empty field? We see an “Open Sky Laboratory”!

The Future Circular Collider (FCC) Feasibility Study is developing a concept for a new research infrastructure to host the next generation of higher-performance particle colliders with the aim of extending the research currently being conducted at the LHC, once the HL-LHC reaches its conclusion, beyond 2040.

In 2021–2022, the EU-funded FCC Innovation Study* launched an international challenge-based competition called “Mining the Future”, which invited scientists and companies to propose innovative yet technically feasible solutions to turn the material excavated during the construction of FCC underground structures into a usable resource. The reuse potential of the excavation material is one of the factors that will contribute to the acceptability and cost efficiency of the FCC project.

The proposed solutions are now being integrated into a unique design and evaluated in the field, and will reach maturity by 2030. The objectives of the evaluations are twofold. Firstly, to establish how to conduct the online identification, sorting and pre-treatment of the materials during the excavation process. Secondly, to prepare different reuse pathways to sort and pre-treat materials, including transforming sterile rock – a soft and heterogeneous sedimentary rock called molasse – into fertile soil for agriculture, forestry and renaturation applications, in line with the principles of a circular economy. The quality-assured creation of fertile soil is a lengthy process spanning several years and has been chosen as the first large-scale experiment with field tests at an “Open Sky Laboratory”.

The plot of land located near LHC Point 5 (CMS, Cessy, France) destined for the Open Sky Laboratory. (Image: CERN)

The Open Sky Laboratory, a plot of about 10 000 m2 located near LHC Point 5 (CMS, Cessy, France – see image), has been made available and will be prepared in collaboration with CERN’s SCE and EN departments. Molasse extracted during the HL-LHC excavations will be transported to this field to be used in the tests. Initial laboratory analyses will be performed off site to identify the most suitable mix of molasse and other materials. These will be followed by field tests in the Open Sky Laboratory’s controlled environment (monitoring of the field, weather and plant growth conditions), using scientific protocols developed by a collaboration of universities working in this domain.

In keeping with CERN’s long-standing tradition, this project relies on an open collaboration with academia and industry. Currently, the collaboration includes university and research experts in agronomy, pedogenesis and geology and industrial partners in soil engineering and phytoremediation, soil treatment techniques and monitoring and supervisory control systems.

A socioeconomic assessment of reuse cases for the transformed soil will be performed in order to evaluate the potential economic benefits for FCC construction and the potential advantages for the entire construction sector in Europe.

*Grant agreement 951754

anschaef Tue, 03/12/2024 - 11:33 Byline Luisa Ulrici Publication Date Thu, 03/14/2024 - 09:30

Computer Security: Bingo walk-through

Once more, bravo to all those who participated in the Bull**** Bingo in the last but one Bulletin issue and sent us their solution. The Hawaiian pizza was quickly gone. But some people were wondering why their responses were not correct… Good point, so let’s walk through that Bingo:

• 1A “There is no malware for Apple devices” ─ was a slogan of the past, as the big market share was with Microsoft Windows. But that has changed. And owners of a MacBook are perceived as being richer, so the spoils are larger...;
• 1B “Software from the Google Play Store is harmless” ─ actually, anyone can push any application to the Google Play Store. It is not curated or validated so it has become a dump for malware, too. The Apple store is better in that respect, as Apple keeps it tightly controlled (to make money) and only admits applications that follow their policies (which doesn’t mean that there are no problems either);
• 1C “Security is everyone’s responsibility” ─ indeed! Given the academic environment at CERN, its openness and the freedom you have to benefit from any (legal) computing resource, it is impossible for the Computer Security team to shoulder the responsibility for your digital assets. We have to count on you to keep those secure, and we are happy to help you do so;
• 1D “SSH on port 2222/tcp is more secure” ─ nope. This is called security-through-obscurity as SSH normally runs on port 22/tcp. Changing that might only deter the lightweight attackers and, thus, keep the noise level down. The experts run reconnaissance tools like “nmap”, which find SSH regardless of which port you use;
• 1E “Spam and malware filtering is 100% effective” ─ we wish! But in CERN’s environment, with the openness to use the CERN email address for personal matters, with the multitude of languages spoken and written at CERN, and with the large academic community sending emails back and forth, for many emails it is hard to tell whether they are spam or not. We try our best, but, admittedly, there is room for improvement;
• 2A “2FA is a big step forward for account protection” ─ it is! With two-factor authentication it is no longer enough to remotely steal your password (e.g. via a so-called phishing attack). The attacker would also need to have physical access to your smartphone or hardware token, and most attackers are not close by. In addition, you would quickly notice the theft of your smartphone or keys, no?
• 2B “Emails from “@cern.ch” are legitimate” ─ emails can be easily spoofed. That means that an email is not necessarily sent from a “cern.ch” mail service but from another one (e.g. gmail.com). This is called “spoofing” and is the reason why so many emails are currently quarantined in our mail appliances, because the sender is consciously or accidentally spoofing email addresses;
• 2C “I'm personally not a target as I'm not interesting to attackers” ─ don’t be so humble. You are interesting (!) even if you might not be the one working on that very confidential, top-secret or highly visible stuff. You might just be the entry point. The personal assistant used to attack the boss. The colleague to trick your peers. The patient zero to infect and compromise others…
• 2D “Back-ups cannot be altered” ─ as long as they remain connected and remotely reachable and are not immutable, most back-ups can be altered. CERN takes special care to ensure that back-ups are secure, but if you leave your external hard-disk connected to your laptop, it is for some malware only another folder to subject to ransomware encryption…
• 2E “I have nothing to hide” ─ don’t you? Can I get your credit card PIN? Install a camera in your place? Access the “deleted photos” folder on your smartphone?
• 3A “I would never fall for phishing” ─ said many other people before. We usually catch out 10% of CERN accountholders with our annual phishing campaigns;
• 3B “Only the link behind a text/QR code reveals its truth” ─ yessss! What is displayed can be anything (for readability or for obfuscation). Only once you hover your mouse over the link or check the text displayed right before taking the QR photo, is the real destination revealed.
• 3C “CERN’s technical network is secure” ─ it is secured. But given its complexity, its automatic interaction with CERN’s Data Centres and the need for experts and operators to remotely connect to the technical network, it is far from being perfectly secure. There is still some margin for improvement!
• 3D “A password written on a post-it is a good idea” ─ if you want to give the cleaning personnel or visitors access to your computer. And you shouldn’t!
• 3E “QR codes always link to legit sites” ─ nope. There is no guarantee of that (see 3B above);
• 4A “A (free) VPN service protects me” ─  but remember, if you're not paying for the product, there's a very high chance that you​ are​ the product. There is no guarantee regarding anonymity or privacy with a free VPN, and the provider is free to share your data with third parties as they see fit or to (ab)use your network bandwidth for other purposes. This is why, for example ”Hola! VPN” is forbidden at CERN. Paid VPNs are better, but still protect only your communication, they do not protect against the content you access. In the end, it is a question of whom you trust more, your ISP (and thus indirectly the country/jurisdiction under which that ISP operates) or your VPN provider (and the country where they/their servers are
  located);
• 4B “Password protection on my laptop protects its data” ─ actually, that password protects interactive access to your laptop. But if you don’t take extra precautions to encrypt your hard disk with Bitlocker (Windows) or Filevault (MacOS), your laptop is for an attacker just another unprotected storage system like a USB stick;
• 4C “My browser’s password manager is secure” ─ that depends very much on the kind and on which version you run. In the past, passwords were even stored in plain text in some browsers. Hence, if you can’t remember your passwords, a stand-alone password manager might be the better choice;
• 4D “CERN is not interesting to attackers” ─ was never a true statement. The Chaos Computer Club infiltrated CERN in 1986; at the beginning of the millennium we fought “Phalanx”, “Windigo” and “ebury” in our data centres and on the WLCG; and today CERN is targeted by ransomware attacks like anyone else ;
• 4E “CERN’s anti-malware software is free for you to download” ─ yes, it is! For the protection of your devices at CERN and at home, and for the wider protection of CERN;
• 5A “Using “https” means the website is secure” ─ the “s” in “https” indicates that the communication is protected by encryption and, hence, from eavesdropping. But this doesn't imply the trustworthiness of the website behind;
• 5B “CERN’s outer perimeter firewall keeps all threats away” ─ if that were true, we wouldn’t have this article here. While that firewall blocks a large fraction of malicious and unwanted traffic, it is not watertight and requires other “defence-in-depth” layers to catch all threats;
• 5C “Cloud services cannot be hacked” ─ actually, cloud service providers are in the same boat as everyone else and, in addition, are big targets with lots of revenue to be made. Indeed, there have been reports in the past of a multitude of successful attacks on large cloud service providers like Okta, Microsoft, LastPass, etc.;
• 5D “Encryption is easy; key management is complicated” ─ true! There are a multitude of good encryption mechanisms on the market. It gets tricky, however, to ensure that the decryption keys are properly and securely stored. If they get lost, so is your encrypted data. And it gets even more tricky if several people, each with their own decryption key, need to access the data;
• 5E “WiFi is always secure” ─ WiFi is just a communication method, here via the air. It does not say anything about access protection or encrypted communication. If you want a secure WiFi, ensure that the communication is subject to “WPA3” and, even better, always use encrypted protocols: SSH or HTTPS (see 5A above).

Complicated? Maybe. But that’s why we keep you regularly updated in our Bulletin articles. So, once again, CONGRATULATIONS to those who got five right answers. And THANK YOU to you all for helping to keep CERN secure!

_______

Do you want to learn more about computer security incidents and issues at CERN? Follow our Monthly Report. For further information, questions or help, check our website or contact us at Computer.Security@cern.ch.

anschaef Tue, 03/12/2024 - 11:13 Byline Computer Security team Publication Date Tue, 03/12/2024 - 11:07

Computer Security: Bingo walk-through

Once more, bravo to all those who participated in the Bull**** Bingo in the last but one Bulletin issue and sent us their solution. The Hawaiian pizza was quickly gone. But some people were wondering why their responses were not correct… Good point, so let’s walk through that Bingo:

• 1A “There is no malware for Apple devices” ─ was a slogan of the past, as the big market share was with Microsoft Windows. But that has changed. And owners of a MacBook are perceived as being richer, so the spoils are larger...;
• 1B “Software from the Google Play Store is harmless” ─ actually, anyone can push any application to the Google Play Store. It is not curated or validated so it has become a dump for malware, too. The Apple store is better in that respect, as Apple keeps it tightly controlled (to make money) and only admits applications that follow their policies (which doesn’t mean that there are no problems either);
• 1C “Security is everyone’s responsibility” ─ indeed! Given the academic environment at CERN, its openness and the freedom you have to benefit from any (legal) computing resource, it is impossible for the Computer Security team to shoulder the responsibility for your digital assets. We have to count on you to keep those secure, and we are happy to help you do so;
• 1D “SSH on port 2222/tcp is more secure” ─ nope. This is called security-through-obscurity as SSH normally runs on port 22/tcp. Changing that might only deter the lightweight attackers and, thus, keep the noise level down. The experts run reconnaissance tools like “nmap”, which find SSH regardless of which port you use;
• 1E “Spam and malware filtering is 100% effective” ─ we wish! But in CERN’s environment, with the openness to use the CERN email address for personal matters, with the multitude of languages spoken and written at CERN, and with the large academic community sending emails back and forth, for many emails it is hard to tell whether they are spam or not. We try our best, but, admittedly, there is room for improvement;
• 2A “2FA is a big step forward for account protection” ─ it is! With two-factor authentication it is no longer enough to remotely steal your password (e.g. via a so-called phishing attack). The attacker would also need to have physical access to your smartphone or hardware token, and most attackers are not close by. In addition, you would quickly notice the theft of your smartphone or keys, no?
• 2B “Emails from “@cern.ch” are legitimate” ─ emails can be easily spoofed. That means that an email is not necessarily sent from a “cern.ch” mail service but from another one (e.g. gmail.com). This is called “spoofing” and is the reason why so many emails are currently quarantined in our mail appliances, because the sender is consciously or accidentally spoofing email addresses;
• 2C “I'm personally not a target as I'm not interesting to attackers” ─ don’t be so humble. You are interesting (!) even if you might not be the one working on that very confidential, top-secret or highly visible stuff. You might just be the entry point. The personal assistant used to attack the boss. The colleague to trick your peers. The patient zero to infect and compromise others…
• 2D “Back-ups cannot be altered” ─ as long as they remain connected and remotely reachable and are not immutable, most back-ups can be altered. CERN takes special care to ensure that back-ups are secure, but if you leave your external hard-disk connected to your laptop, it is for some malware only another folder to subject to ransomware encryption…
• 2E “I have nothing to hide” ─ don’t you? Can I get your credit card PIN? Install a camera in your place? Access the “deleted photos” folder on your smartphone?
• 3A “I would never fall for phishing” ─ said many other people before. We usually catch out 10% of CERN accountholders with our annual phishing campaigns;
• 3B “Only the link behind a text/QR code reveals its truth” ─ yessss! What is displayed can be anything (for readability or for obfuscation). Only once you hover your mouse over the link or check the text displayed right before taking the QR photo, is the real destination revealed.
• 3C “CERN’s technical network is secure” ─ it is secured. But given its complexity, its automatic interaction with CERN’s Data Centres and the need for experts and operators to remotely connect to the technical network, it is far from being perfectly secure. There is still some margin for improvement!
• 3D “A password written on a post-it is a good idea” ─ if you want to give the cleaning personnel or visitors access to your computer. And you shouldn’t!
• 3E “QR codes always link to legit sites” ─ nope. There is no guarantee of that (see 3B above);
• 4A “A (free) VPN service protects me” ─  but remember, if you're not paying for the product, there's a very high chance that you​ are​ the product. There is no guarantee regarding anonymity or privacy with a free VPN, and the provider is free to share your data with third parties as they see fit or to (ab)use your network bandwidth for other purposes. This is why, for example ”Hola! VPN” is forbidden at CERN. Paid VPNs are better, but still protect only your communication, they do not protect against the content you access. In the end, it is a question of whom you trust more, your ISP (and thus indirectly the country/jurisdiction under which that ISP operates) or your VPN provider (and the country where they/their servers are
  located);
• 4B “Password protection on my laptop protects its data” ─ actually, that password protects interactive access to your laptop. But if you don’t take extra precautions to encrypt your hard disk with Bitlocker (Windows) or Filevault (MacOS), your laptop is for an attacker just another unprotected storage system like a USB stick;
• 4C “My browser’s password manager is secure” ─ that depends very much on the kind and on which version you run. In the past, passwords were even stored in plain text in some browsers. Hence, if you can’t remember your passwords, a stand-alone password manager might be the better choice;
• 4D “CERN is not interesting to attackers” ─ was never a true statement. The Chaos Computer Club infiltrated CERN in 1986; at the beginning of the millennium we fought “Phalanx”, “Windigo” and “ebury” in our data centres and on the WLCG; and today CERN is targeted by ransomware attacks like anyone else ;
• 4E “CERN’s anti-malware software is free for you to download” ─ yes, it is! For the protection of your devices at CERN and at home, and for the wider protection of CERN;
• 5A “Using “https” means the website is secure” ─ the “s” in “https” indicates that the communication is protected by encryption and, hence, from eavesdropping. But this doesn't imply the trustworthiness of the website behind;
• 5B “CERN’s outer perimeter firewall keeps all threats away” ─ if that were true, we wouldn’t have this article here. While that firewall blocks a large fraction of malicious and unwanted traffic, it is not watertight and requires other “defence-in-depth” layers to catch all threats;
• 5C “Cloud services cannot be hacked” ─ actually, cloud service providers are in the same boat as everyone else and, in addition, are big targets with lots of revenue to be made. Indeed, there have been reports in the past of a multitude of successful attacks on large cloud service providers like Okta, Microsoft, LastPass, etc.;
• 5D “Encryption is easy; key management is complicated” ─ true! There are a multitude of good encryption mechanisms on the market. It gets tricky, however, to ensure that the decryption keys are properly and securely stored. If they get lost, so is your encrypted data. And it gets even more tricky if several people, each with their own decryption key, need to access the data;
• 5E “WiFi is always secure” ─ WiFi is just a communication method, here via the air. It does not say anything about access protection or encrypted communication. If you want a secure WiFi, ensure that the communication is subject to “WPA3” and, even better, always use encrypted protocols: SSH or HTTPS (see 5A above).

Complicated? Maybe. But that’s why we keep you regularly updated in our Bulletin articles. So, once again, CONGRATULATIONS to those who got five right answers. And THANK YOU to you all for helping to keep CERN secure!

_______

Do you want to learn more about computer security incidents and issues at CERN? Follow our Monthly Report. For further information, questions or help, check our website or contact us at Computer.Security@cern.ch.

anschaef Tue, 03/12/2024 - 11:13 Byline Computer Security team Publication Date Tue, 03/12/2024 - 11:07

Farewell to the Alcatel phone exchange

On 14 February, CERN disconnected the Alcatel phone exchange, which began in 1990 (and hit the frontpage of the Bulletin at the time). This now marks the end of physical office telephones in the Laboratory, with the migration to the software-based systems – TONE and CERNphone – now completed.

“We replaced the Alcatel phone exchange, which routes calls within CERN and to outside lines, with a CERN-built exchange called TONE,” explains Tony Cass, head of the IT Communications Systems group. Last year, the TONE exchange also took over the features of the old “call centre” system that handles calls to, e.g., the Service Desk where several people respond to calls to a single number.

“The harder task,” he continues “was to build the software phone application and replace all the physical phones by software phones.”  After considering various alternatives and providers, rollout of two CERNPhone applications started at the end of 2020. Read more details in the IT README.

When CERN began in 1954, “the CERN phone directory contained everyone’s home number” as Franco Bonaudi recalls in our CERN70 series.  By 1965, just 17 phone lines served 1000 CERN extensions, with callers facing long waits. Now, as well as TONE and CERNphone for phonecalls, CERN also offers the CERN Campus App for on-site information, news and events.

katebrad Mon, 03/11/2024 - 15:17 Publication Date Tue, 03/12/2024 - 11:10

Farewell to the Alcatel phone exchange

On 14 February, CERN disconnected the Alcatel phone exchange, which began in 1990 (and hit the frontpage of the Bulletin at the time). This now marks the end of physical office telephones in the Laboratory, with the migration to the software-based systems – TONE and CERNphone – now completed.

“We replaced the Alcatel phone exchange, which routes calls within CERN and to outside lines, with a CERN-built exchange called TONE,” explains Tony Cass, head of the IT Communications Systems group. Last year, the TONE exchange also took over the features of the old “call centre” system that handles calls to, e.g., the Service Desk where several people respond to calls to a single number.

“The harder task,” he continues “was to build the software phone application and replace all the physical phones by software phones.”  After considering various alternatives and providers, rollout of two CERNPhone applications started at the end of 2020. Read more details in the IT README.

When CERN began in 1954, “the CERN phone directory contained everyone’s home number” as Franco Bonaudi recalls in our CERN70 series.  By 1965, just 17 phone lines served 1000 CERN extensions, with callers facing long waits. Now, as well as TONE and CERNphone for phonecalls, CERN also offers the CERN Campus App for on-site information, news and events.

katebrad Mon, 03/11/2024 - 15:17 Publication Date Tue, 03/12/2024 - 11:10

Nature Physics, Published online: 11 March 2024; doi:10.1038/s41567-024-02443-x

Copper-based and iron-based compounds exhibit an interplay between magnetism and superconductivity. Now, this idea is extended to two-dimensional oxide heterostructures, where a spatially varying superconducting order is demonstrated at the EuO/KTaO3 interface.

Nature Physics, Published online: 08 March 2024; doi:10.1038/s41567-024-02417-z

Cooling efficiency in thermoelectric devices decreases considerably at lower temperatures. Now thermoelectric cooling at cryogenic temperatures is directly imaged in a van der Waals semimetal.

Nature Physics, Published online: 07 March 2024; doi:10.1038/s41567-024-02421-3

The concept of temporal mode-locking has been leveraged to study the interplay between laser mode-locking and photonic lattices that exhibit non-Hermitian topological phenomena. The results suggest new opportunities to study nonlinear and non-Hermitian topological physics as well as potential applications to sensing, optical computing and frequency-comb design.

Nature Physics, Published online: 07 March 2024; doi:10.1038/s41567-024-02427-x

Excitation of magnons — quanta of spin-waves — in an antiferromagnet can be used for high-speed data processing. The addition and subtraction of two such modes opens up possibilities for magnon-based information transfer in the terahertz spectral region.

Enabling open access to books

CERN and the not-for-profit organization OAPEN Foundation are happy to announce a further expansion of their collaboration to jointly promote open access to books.

Since 2021, CERN and the OAPEN Foundation have collaborated to disseminate books that are made available in open access through SCOAP3 for Books, a collective open-access initiative hosted at CERN.

Building on this successful track record and the aligned values and goals, OAPEN and CERN have now signed an expanded collaboration agreement whereby, from 2024 onwards, CERN will use its extensive technical infrastructure to directly host both the OAPEN Library and the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) in its Data Centre, alongside its other scholarly communication services such as INSPIREhep and Zenodo.

This mutually beneficial arrangement will help increase the operational efficiency and reliability of OAPEN and DOAB as vital services for the research community spanning all scholarly disciplines. “For CERN, this further amplifies its existing efforts to support and promote open science,” says Alexander Kohls from the CERN Scientific Information Service. “Utilising the CERN infrastructure will significantly increase stability for researchers worldwide allowing free and open access to the more than 30,000 books hosted in the OAPEN Library. Moreover, leveraging this infrastructure across multiple initiatives and disciplines ensures efficiency.”

Since the very beginning of both organisations, open research has been at the core of their respective missions. CERN has already successfully supported other communities in establishing or expanding open science principles and collaborates with organisations such as UNESCO, the European Commission, and NASA to further accelerate the global transition to open science. For more than a decade, OAPEN has operated three platforms dedicated to the dissemination and discovery of open-access, peer-reviewed books.

abelchio Wed, 03/06/2024 - 10:46 Publication Date Wed, 03/06/2024 - 15:00

Enabling open access to books

CERN and the not-for-profit organization OAPEN Foundation are happy to announce a further expansion of their collaboration to jointly promote open access to books.

Since 2021, CERN and the OAPEN Foundation have collaborated to disseminate books that are made available in open access through SCOAP3 for Books, a collective open-access initiative hosted at CERN.

Building on this successful track record and the aligned values and goals, OAPEN and CERN have now signed an expanded collaboration agreement whereby, from 2024 onwards, CERN will use its extensive technical infrastructure to directly host both the OAPEN Library and the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) in its Data Centre, alongside its other scholarly communication services such as INSPIREhep and Zenodo.

This mutually beneficial arrangement will help increase the operational efficiency and reliability of OAPEN and DOAB as vital services for the research community spanning all scholarly disciplines. “For CERN, this further amplifies its existing efforts to support and promote open science,” says Alexander Kohls from the CERN Scientific Information Service. “Utilising the CERN infrastructure will significantly increase stability for researchers worldwide allowing free and open access to the more than 30,000 books hosted in the OAPEN Library. Moreover, leveraging this infrastructure across multiple initiatives and disciplines ensures efficiency.”

Since the very beginning of both organisations, open research has been at the core of their respective missions. CERN has already successfully supported other communities in establishing or expanding open science principles and collaborates with organisations such as UNESCO, the European Commission, and NASA to further accelerate the global transition to open science. For more than a decade, OAPEN has operated three platforms dedicated to the dissemination and discovery of open-access, peer-reviewed books.

abelchio Wed, 03/06/2024 - 10:46 Publication Date Wed, 03/06/2024 - 15:00

Small version of a CERN detector could help to deliver more precise radiotherapy of head tumours Mária Martišíková (left), the project leader from Heidelberg University Hospital and German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), and DKFZ researcher Laurent Kelleter. (Image: Heidelberg University Hospital / H.Schroeder).

Particle detectors like the ones used by physicists at CERN can have wide applications beyond fundamental research. Scientists from the German National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT), the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), and the Heidelberg Ion Beam Therapy Center (HIT) at Heidelberg University Hospital are now testing a new imaging device supplied by the Czech company ADVACAM on its first patients. The device, which includes a small Timepix3 pixel detector developed at CERN, allows head and neck tumours to be closely monitored during ion radiotherapy, making them easier to target and thus helping limit the treatment’s side effects.

"One of the most advanced methods for treating head and neck tumours involves irradiation with ion beams. This has one unique feature: it can be precisely tailored to the depth inside the human head where the particles should have the maximal effect”, explains Mária Martišíková, the head of the DKFZ team.

Yet like other types of irradiation, ion radiation also has a drawback. The particle beams affect not only the tumour but also part of the healthy tissue around it. This is particularly challenging in the brain, where damage to the optic nerve or a patient’s memory are possible. Ideally, the irradiated area around the tumour should be as small as possible, and the dose to the tumour should be as high as possible. However, current technology does not allow for sufficiently precise targeting of the ions.

To complicate matters further, the situation inside a patient's head can change during therapy. The x-ray computed tomography (CT) scan image taken before treatment is essentially used as a "map" to target the tumour with ion beams. But during therapy, the situation inside the skull may evolve. Until now, physicians lacked a reliable tool to alert them in case of a change in the brain.

The new ADVACAM device could help solve these issues, by improving the navigation of the ion beams inside the head by tracking the secondary particles that are created when ions pass through it.

"Our cameras can register every charged particle of secondary radiation emitted from the patient's body. It's like watching balls scattered by a billiard shot. If the balls bounce as expected according to the CT image, we can be sure we are targeting correctly. Otherwise, it's clear that the 'map' no longer applies. Then it is necessary to replan the treatment," describes Lukáš Marek from ADVACAM.

"We hope the new device will show us how often and where the tumour changes occur. It will allow us to reduce the overall irradiated volume of tissue, saving healthy tissue and reducing the side effects of radiotherapy. We will also be able to apply higher doses of radiation to the tumour" adds Martišíková.

The treatment can benefit enormously from the additional information obtained from the camera. In the first phase, data could lead to an interruption and replanning of the irradiation series when necessary. The ultimate goal is a system that can correct the path of the ion beam in real-time.

The Timepix3 chip developed at CERN is used in the new ADVACAM imaging device. (Image: CERN)

This device exemplifies successful knowledge transfer, showcasing how technology initially developed for detectors used in fundamental physics research can be applied in healthcare.

“When we started developing pixel detectors for the LHC we had one target in mind – to detect and image each particle interaction and thereby help physicists to unravel the secrets of Nature at high energies. The Timepix detectors were developed by the multidisciplinary Medipix Collaborations whose aims are to take the same technology to new fields. Many of those fields were completely unforeseen at the beginning and this application is a brilliant example of that,” says Michael Campbell, Spokesperson of the Medipix Collaborations.

ndinmore Wed, 03/06/2024 - 09:01 Publication Date Wed, 03/06/2024 - 10:03

Small version of a CERN detector could deliver more precise radiotherapy of head tumours Mária Martišíková (left), the project leader from Heidelberg University Hospital and German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), and DKFZ researcher Laurent Kelleter. (Image: Heidelberg University Hospital / H.Schroeder).

Particle detectors like the ones used by physicists at CERN can have wide applications beyond fundamental research. Scientists from the German National Center for Tumor Diseases (NCT), the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), and the Heidelberg Ion Beam Therapy Center (HIT) at Heidelberg University Hospital are now testing a new imaging device supplied by the Czech company ADVACAM on its first patients. The device, which includes a small Timepix3 pixel detector developed at CERN, allows head and neck tumours to be closely monitored during ion radiotherapy, making them easier to target and thus helping limit the treatment’s side effects.

"One of the most advanced methods for treating head and neck tumours involves irradiation with ion beams. This has one unique feature: it can be precisely tailored to the depth inside the human head where the particles should have the maximal effect”, explains Mária Martišíková, the head of the DKFZ team.

Yet like other types of irradiation, ion radiation also has a drawback. The particle beams affect not only the tumour but also part of the healthy tissue around it. This is particularly challenging in the brain, where damage to the optic nerve or a patient’s memory are possible. Ideally, the irradiated area around the tumour should be as small as possible, and the dose to the tumour should be as high as possible. However, current technology does not allow for sufficiently precise targeting of the ions.

To complicate matters further, the situation inside a patient's head can change during therapy. The x-ray computed tomography (CT) scan image taken before treatment is essentially used as a "map" to target the tumour with ion beams. But during therapy, the situation inside the skull may evolve. Until now, physicians lacked a reliable tool to alert them in case of a change in the brain.

The new ADVACAM device could help solve these issues, by improving the navigation of the ion beams inside the head by tracking the secondary particles that are created when ions pass through it.

"Our cameras can register every charged particle of secondary radiation emitted from the patient's body. It's like watching balls scattered by a billiard shot. If the balls bounce as expected according to the CT image, we can be sure we are targeting correctly. Otherwise, it's clear that the 'map' no longer applies. Then it is necessary to replan the treatment," describes Lukáš Marek from ADVACAM.

"We hope the new device will show us how often and where the tumour changes occur. It will allow us to reduce the overall irradiated volume of tissue, saving healthy tissue and reducing the side effects of radiotherapy. We will also be able to apply higher doses of radiation to the tumour" adds Martišíková.

The treatment can benefit enormously from the additional information obtained from the camera. In the first phase, data could lead to an interruption and replanning of the irradiation series when necessary. The ultimate goal is a system that can correct the path of the ion beam in real-time.

The Timepix3 chip developed at CERN is used in the new ADVACAM imaging device. (Image: CERN)

This device exemplifies successful knowledge transfer, showcasing how technology initially developed for detectors used in fundamental physics research can be applied in healthcare.

“When we started developing pixel detectors for the LHC we had one target in mind – to detect and image each particle interaction and thereby help physicists to unravel the secrets of Nature at high energies. The Timepix detectors were developed by the multidisciplinary Medipix Collaborations whose aims are to take the same technology to new fields. Many of those fields were completely unforeseen at the beginning and this application is a brilliant example of that,” says Michael Campbell, Spokesperson of the Medipix Collaborations.

ndinmore Wed, 03/06/2024 - 09:01 Publication Date Wed, 03/06/2024 - 10:03

Nature Physics, Published online: 06 March 2024; doi:10.1038/s41567-024-02393-4

The Hamiltonian describing a quantum many-body system can be learned using measurements in thermal equilibrium. Now, a learning algorithm applicable to many natural systems has been found that requires exponentially fewer measurements than existing methods.

Nature Physics, Published online: 06 March 2024; doi:10.1038/s41567-024-02446-8

Despite being essential to many applications in quantum science, entanglement can be easily disrupted by decoherence. A protocol based on repetitive quantum error correction now demonstrates enhanced coherence times of entangled logical qubits.

Nature Physics, Published online: 06 March 2024; doi:10.1038/s41567-023-02376-x

Complexity of learning Hamiltonians from Gibbs states is an important issue for both many-body physics and machine learning. The optimal sample and time complexities of quantum Hamiltonian learning for high temperature has now been proven.

The Open Quantum Institute launches its pilot phase at CERN

The Open Quantum Institute (OQI) passes a new milestone today, with the operational launch at CERN. Following a successful one-year incubation period led by the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA), the new, three-year CERN-based pilot will build on the efforts to date to help unleash the full power of quantum computing for the benefit of all.

Proposed, designed, and incubated through GESDA, in collaboration with some 180 experts from all over the world, the OQI is a multilateral science diplomacy initiative, uniting academia, technology companies, the private sector, the diplomatic community, philanthropy organisations and global citizens in a joint effort towards more open and inclusive quantum computing. By facilitating equal access to cutting-edge nascent technologies, the OQI seeks to accelerate the potential of quantum computing for all society and to support the development of concrete quantum solutions aimed at achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

During its pilot phase, hosted at CERN and supported by the Union de Banques Suisses (UBS), the OQI will be part of CERN’s wider Quantum Technology Initiative (QTI), launched in 2020 and managed by the IT department. Building on QTI’s mission to explore the full potential of quantum technologies and to maximise their societal impact, the OQI will work to push the boundaries of geography and disciplines to ensure that quantum computing is harnessed to tackle some of the key global challenges.

“CERN offers ideal conditions for the development of the OQI, and my hope is that this initiative will not only be a success, but also a model of what scientific diplomacy can do to promote concrete projects of benefit to humanity”, says Fabiola Gianotti, CERN Director-General. “During the pilot phase, the OQI will benefit from CERN's experience in deploying scientific and technological progress to the benefit of society. We look forward to working with GESDA and other partners from academia, industry and government to ensure that quantum computing is accessible to all, including underserved regions of the world."

The focus will lie on the selection of SDG-related use cases to explore applications of quantum computing in fields like health, energy, climate action, clean water, and food security. Some examples of potential projects include: improving the sustainability of global food systems through quantum computing optimisation (addressing SDG 2, zero hunger); finding quantum machine learning solutions to improve medical imaging accuracy and early diagnosis of diseases (addressing SDG 3, good health and well-being); and using quantum computing simulation to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (addressing SDG 13, climate action).

“The UN’s SDGs represent the international community’s collective view of what the greatest societal challenges are today,” says Enrica Porcari, Head of CERN’s IT department. “This is why we are proud to host the OQI at CERN and to provide a platform for innovation, fostering real-world applications of quantum computing to address the SDGs.”

CERN will host the OQI from 2024 to 2026 and support three or four projects targeting SDG-related use cases. It will also lay the foundation for the next phase of the programme and potentially become a reference point for other initiatives aimed at deploying quantum technologies to address societal challenges. GESDA will remain the science diplomacy advisor and fundraiser, helping to ensure the continuity of the initiative and contributing to its diplomatic engagement, while UBS will act as the lead support partner, ensuring further growth of the institute.

Organisations and individuals, committed to human-centred, inclusive and responsible quantum computing, can play their part in OQI by submitting use cases for SDGs, developing educational tools, curating the diplomatic dialogue on quantum computing and much more.

For full details on how to get involved, please visit the website, and follow OQI on LinkedIn and X.

abelchio Mon, 03/04/2024 - 15:46 Byline Anastasiia Lazuka Publication Date Tue, 03/05/2024 - 17:31

The Open Quantum Institute launches its pilot phase at CERN

The Open Quantum Institute (OQI) passes a new milestone today, with the operational launch at CERN. Following a successful one-year incubation period led by the Geneva Science and Diplomacy Anticipator (GESDA), the new, three-year CERN-based pilot will build on the efforts to date to help unleash the full power of quantum computing for the benefit of all.

Proposed, designed, and incubated through GESDA, in collaboration with some 180 experts from all over the world, the OQI is a multilateral science diplomacy initiative, uniting academia, technology companies, the private sector, the diplomatic community, philanthropy organisations and global citizens in a joint effort towards more open and inclusive quantum computing. By facilitating equal access to cutting-edge nascent technologies, the OQI seeks to accelerate the potential of quantum computing for all society and to support the development of concrete quantum solutions aimed at achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

During its pilot phase, hosted at CERN and supported by the Union de Banques Suisses (UBS), the OQI will be part of CERN’s wider Quantum Technology Initiative (QTI), launched in 2020 and managed by the IT department. Building on QTI’s mission to explore the full potential of quantum technologies and to maximise their societal impact, the OQI will work to push the boundaries of geography and disciplines to ensure that quantum computing is harnessed to tackle some of the key global challenges.

“CERN offers ideal conditions for the development of the OQI, and my hope is that this initiative will not only be a success, but also a model of what scientific diplomacy can do to promote concrete projects of benefit to humanity”, says Fabiola Gianotti, CERN Director-General. “During the pilot phase, the OQI will benefit from CERN's experience in deploying scientific and technological progress to the benefit of society. We look forward to working with GESDA and other partners from academia, industry and government to ensure that quantum computing is accessible to all, including underserved regions of the world."

The focus will lie on the selection of SDG-related use cases to explore applications of quantum computing in fields like health, energy, climate action, clean water, and food security. Some examples of potential projects include: improving the sustainability of global food systems through quantum computing optimisation (addressing SDG 2, zero hunger); finding quantum machine learning solutions to improve medical imaging accuracy and early diagnosis of diseases (addressing SDG 3, good health and well-being); and using quantum computing simulation to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (addressing SDG 13, climate action).

“The UN’s SDGs represent the international community’s collective view of what the greatest societal challenges are today,” says Enrica Porcari, Head of CERN’s IT department. “This is why we are proud to host the OQI at CERN and to provide a platform for innovation, fostering real-world applications of quantum computing to address the SDGs.”

CERN will host the OQI from 2024 to 2026 and support three or four projects targeting SDG-related use cases. It will also lay the foundation for the next phase of the programme and potentially become a reference point for other initiatives aimed at deploying quantum technologies to address societal challenges. GESDA will remain the science diplomacy advisor and fundraiser, helping to ensure the continuity of the initiative and contributing to its diplomatic engagement, while UBS will act as the lead support partner, ensuring further growth of the institute.

Organisations and individuals, committed to human-centred, inclusive and responsible quantum computing, can play their part in OQI by submitting use cases for SDGs, developing educational tools, curating the diplomatic dialogue on quantum computing and much more.

For full details on how to get involved, please visit the website, and follow OQI on LinkedIn and X.

abelchio Mon, 03/04/2024 - 15:46 Byline Anastasiia Lazuka Publication Date Tue, 03/05/2024 - 17:31

LHCb observes a new decay mode of the charmed beauty meson

The LHCb collaboration recently reported the first observation of the decay of the Bc+ meson (composed of two heavy quarks, b and c) into a J/ψ charm-anticharm quark bound state and a pair of pions, π+π0. The decay process shows a contribution from an intermediate particle, a ρ+ meson that forms for a brief moment and then decays into the π+π0 pair.

The Bc+ is the heaviest meson that can only decay through the weak interactions, via the decay of one heavy constituent quark. Bc+ decays into an odd number of light hadrons and a J/ψ (or other charm-anticharm quark bound states, called “charmonia”) have been studied intensively and have been found to be in remarkable agreement with the theoretical expectations. The decay of Bc+ into a J/ψ and a π+π0 pair is the simplest decay into charmonium and an even number of light hadrons. It has never been observed before, mainly because the precise reconstruction of the low-energy π0 meson through its decay into a pair of photons is very challenging in an LHC proton-proton collision environment.

A precise measurement of the Bc+→J/ψπ+π0 decay will allow better understanding of its possible contribution as a background source for the study of other decays of Bc mesons as well as rare decays of B0 mesons. From the theoretical point of view, decays of Bc into J/ψ and an even number of pions are closely related to the decays of the τ lepton into an even number of pions, and to the e+e– annihilation into an even number of pions. Precise measurements of e+e– annihilation into two pions in the ρ mass region (as in the Bc decay discussed here) are crucial for the interpretation of results from the Fermilab g-2 experiment measuring the anomalous magnetic dipole moment of the muon, since low-energy e+e– annihilation into hadrons is an important source of the uncertainty of the g-2 measurements.

The ratio of the probability of the new decay to that of the decay of Bc+ into J/ψπ+ has been calculated by various theorists over the last 30 years. Now these predictions can finally be compared with an experimental measurement: most predictions agree with the new result obtained by LHCb (2.80±0.15±0.11±0.16).

The large number of b-quarks produced in LHC collisions and the excellent detector allows LHCb to study the production, decays and other properties of the Bc+ meson in detail. Since the meson’s discovery by the CDF experiment at the Tevatron collider, 18 new Bc+ decays have been observed (with more than five standard deviations), all of them by LHCb.

Read more in the LHCb paper.

ptraczyk Mon, 03/04/2024 - 10:15 Byline LHCb collaboration Publication Date Mon, 03/04/2024 - 10:06

LHCb observes a new decay mode of the charmed beauty meson The LHCb detector (Image: M. Brice/CERN)

The LHCb collaboration recently reported the first observation of the decay of the Bc+ meson (composed of two heavy quarks, b and c) into a J/ψ charm-anticharm quark bound state and a pair of pions, π+π0. The decay process shows a contribution from an intermediate particle, a ρ+ meson that forms for a brief moment and then decays into the π+π0 pair.

The Bc+ is the heaviest meson that can only decay through the weak interactions, via the decay of one heavy constituent quark. Bc+ decays into an odd number of light hadrons and a J/ψ (or other charm-anticharm quark bound states, called “charmonia”) have been studied intensively and have been found to be in remarkable agreement with the theoretical expectations. The decay of Bc+ into a J/ψ and a π+π0 pair is the simplest decay into charmonium and an even number of light hadrons. It has never been observed before, mainly because the precise reconstruction of the low-energy π0 meson through its decay into a pair of photons is very challenging in an LHC proton-proton collision environment.

A precise measurement of the Bc+→J/ψπ+π0 decay will allow better understanding of its possible contribution as a background source for the study of other decays of Bc mesons as well as rare decays of B0 mesons. From the theoretical point of view, decays of Bc into J/ψ and an even number of pions are closely related to the decays of the τ lepton into an even number of pions, and to the e+e– annihilation into an even number of pions. Precise measurements of e+e– annihilation into two pions in the ρ mass region (as in the Bc decay discussed here) are crucial for the interpretation of results from the Fermilab g-2 experiment measuring the anomalous magnetic dipole moment of the muon, since low-energy e+e– annihilation into hadrons is an important source of the uncertainty of the g-2 measurements.

The ratio of the probability of the new decay to that of the decay of Bc+ into J/ψπ+ has been calculated by various theorists over the last 30 years. Now these predictions can finally be compared with an experimental measurement: most predictions agree with the new result obtained by LHCb (2.80±0.15±0.11±0.16).

The large number of b-quarks produced in LHC collisions and the excellent detector allows LHCb to study the production, decays and other properties of the Bc+ meson in detail. Since the meson’s discovery by the CDF experiment at the Tevatron collider, 18 new Bc+ decays have been observed (with more than five standard deviations), all of them by LHCb.

Read more in the LHCb paper.

ptraczyk Mon, 03/04/2024 - 10:15 Byline LHCb collaboration Publication Date Mon, 03/04/2024 - 10:06