What is ParticleBites?
ParticleBites is an online particle physics journal club written by graduate students and postdocs. Each post presents an interesting paper in a brief format that is accessible to undergraduate students in the physical sciences who are interested in active research.
The papers are accessible on the arXiv preprint server. Most of our posts are based on papers from hep-ph (high energy phenomenology) and hep-ex (high energy experiment).
Why read ParticleBites?
Reading a technical paper from an unfamiliar subfield is intimidating. It may not be obvious how the techniques used by the researchers really work or what role the new research plays in answering the bigger questions motivating that field, not to mention the obscure jargon! For most people, it takes years for scientific papers to become meaningful.
Our goal is to solve this problem, one paper at a time. With each brief ParticleBite, you should not only learn about one interesting piece of current work, but also get a peek at the broader picture of research in particle physics.
Who writes ParticleBites?
ParticleBites is written and edited by graduate students and postdocs working in high energy physics. Feel free to contact us if you’re interested in applying to write for ParticleBites.
ParticleBites was founded in 2013 by Flip Tanedo following the Communicating Science (ComSciCon) 2013 workshop. It is now organized and directed by Flip and Julia Gonski, with ongoing guidance from Nathan Sanders.
What’s your logo?
The ParticleBites logo is a cartoon a gauge boson picking up a longitudinal polarization from “eating” a Goldstone boson. It represents the part of the phenomenon of electroweak symmetry breaking which plays a central role in the Standard Model of particle physics. The cartoon is based on one of Flip’s blog posts on Quantum Diaries (US/LHC).
Acknowledgements
ParticleBites has been hosted and supported by the American Astronomical Society.
In the past ParticleBites, was generously hosted on the AstroBites server thanks to to generosity of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. We especially thank the AstroBites organizers of the Communicating Science 2013 workshop for their encouragement, guidance, and support while setting up ParticleBites. Any views or opinions expressed here are solely those of the ParticleBites authors.