Author: Gordana Medin
The third Hands-on Edition of the EPS
Technology & Innovation Group on optics, powerful lasers, wakefield,
plasma accelerators, and intense terahertz pulses, usually organized at
CERN in Geneva, this time took place at Petrovac, Montenegro, between
July 7 and 9, 2023. 34 students from Poland, Czech Republic, Croatia, and the
Balkans were present to build absorption/emission spectroscopy
experiments and measure transient currents in state-of-the-art timing
detectors developed for CMS and ATLAS High Energy Physics experiments at
the HL-LHC in CERN. For the first time, the Workshop was organized in a
hybrid mode: in-person and online. Eight students attended the Workshop
remotely (from Germany, Spain, Italy, and Portugal).
On
the first day, students received introductory lectures. Dusan Medin,
representing the local community, gave a talk titled: "Montenegro from
West to East" after the Chairperson of the event, Prof. Gordana
Lastovicka-Medin from the University of Montenegro welcomed
participants. This was followed by a talk given by Markus Nordberg from
CERN: "The importance and role of serendipity in instrumentation
innovation". Massimo Ferrario, senior scientist at INFN Frascati,
coordinator of the SPARC_LAB facility at the Frascati INFN Laboratories,
where the first FEL driven by a plasma accelerator has been recently
demonstrated, brought an outstanding talk: "Accelerating the future". In
his fascinating talk, Massimo introduced students to new acceleration
technique mechanisms and discussed the most interesting and inspiring
results and applications obtained so far, including a description of the
new accelerator facility EuPRAXIA based on plasma modules to built in
the next decade. A week later we learned that Massimo was one of the
three winners of the prestigious “2023 Enrico Fermi Prize” of the
Italian Physical Society (SIF). Congratulations to him! The president
of the EPS and research scientist at CEA (French Commission for Atomic
Energy and Alternative Energies), Luc Bergé, who is also a member of the
EPS-TIG Board gave a talk on THz Physics. Located between microwaves
and optical waves in the electromagnetic spectrum, terahertz waves can
now be exploited in molecular spectroscopy from plasma emitters produced
by femtosecond laser pulses ionizing gases such as air. Luc Berge
firstly overviewed the recent results on the plasma-based terahertz
spectroscopy of materials in the context of the project ALTESSE;
secondly, new THz radiation originating from the ponderomotively driven
in strongly magnetized plasmas was discussed. Mateusz Rebarz, a laser
expert from ELI Beamlines (Prague) who was also a demonstrator at the
Workshop, introduced students to the potential of the laser facility,
ELI ERIC while Prof. Gordana Lastovicka-Medin gave an overview of the
R&D on the Low Gain Avalanche Detectors (LGAD) that are now a mature
technology and baseline for the timing detectors at the ATLAS and the
CMS #experiments at LHC. She also overviewed the main features of the
Technique of transient currents (TCT). On the evening of day 1,
participants also enjoyed exploring the historical points of Petrovac,
local fortress and Gallery.
The
second day started with the students' poster presentations. The poster
session was aimed to give the students a chance to present the piece of
research that they are particularly proud of. At the same time, it was
an effective way for students to get to know each other, as well as for
the lecturers to get to know the participants of the workshop.
Additionally, Anna Grigoryan from Republic of Armenia, participating as
the and hands-on training. Representative of EPS Young Mind (on-line)
introduced students to the association “EPS Young Minds”. For the
Hands-on training, the two experiments were set: 1) Absorption and
emission spectroscopy, and 2) Exploring sensors LGAD with TCT set up.
The students were assigned into groups, each being in charge of
realizing one subcomponent of a tutorial experiment on said topics.
Since eventually all pieces had to be integrated into a complete
experiment they did not only have to work on the technical tasks, e.g.,
assembling the electromechanical and optical setup or establishing the
data acquisition, but also on the coordination of their work with other
teams, where communication and interpersonal skills in technology and
scientific environments was key. Lunch was offered on the beautiful
sandy beach where students enjoyed a break while swimming and enjoying
the local street food. In the evening they played some games (such as
chess and cards) at the beach and worked on creating presentations about
their experiments (focused on reflecting on what they learnt).
On
the third day, in the morning, before the resumption of the
experiments, each group was tasked with presenting the results obtained
the previous day. This allowed the students to think about what they
were doing after performing the experiment, and through the presentation
to make a recapitulation of what was done and think about the
interpretation and meaningfulness of the results. This session was
moderated by Eugenio Nappi from INFN Frascati. For us seniors, it was
inspiring to watch and observe how the diversity of the “collaborators”
backgrounds including their knowledge was brought into and affected the
co-developing process. Students had different disciplinary backgrounds
and they have been at different academic levels, so, all this brought
different but necessary pieces necessary for them to overtake personal
limits and grow up with a new skill needed not only for the sake of
intellectual development but also to grow as people. All over it was
very successful event, with a lot of fun!
Images by Gordana Medin and Nevena Živković
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