LTP: Laboratory for Particle Physics

Dr Paolo Crivelli (ETH Zurich, Department of Physics, Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics) has recently been awarded an ERC Consolidator grant for his project "Mu-MASS" aiming at a new precision measurement of the Muonium 1S-2S transition energy, ultimately with an improvement by three orders of magnitude. Muonium is the hydrogen-like atom formed by a positive muon and an electron. Its energy levels are, in contrast to the case of ordinary hydrogen, completely dominated by Quantum-Electro-Dynamics (QED) and precision QED calculations are currently ahead of experiment. It will be the first time that CW two-photon spectroscopy is applied to muonium. Results will improve our knowledge of the muon mass, test bound state QED and search for physics beyond the Standard Model of Particle Physics. Moreover, it will help to resolve the present 'proton radius puzzle' by providing a determination of the Rydberg constant free of finite size effects. While Dr. Crivelli is located at ETH H&oml;nggerberg, he and his team will spend a large amount of time at PSI and collaborate closely, both, with the NUM laboratories for Muon Spin Spectroscopy and for Particle Physics.

Dr Lea Caminada, a researcher in the High-Energy Particle Physics group of the Laboratory for Particle Physics (LTP) in NUM, has been awarded a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) Eccellenza Professorial Fellowship. Together with the High-Energy Particle Physics group Lea is working for the CMS experiment at the LHC facility at CERN. Her research proposal consists of two parts. In the first one she proposes to investigate the decay of the Higgs boson into charm quarks, which will enable a deeper understanding of it's nature. The second part focuses on the further development of silicon pixel detectors, a speciality of the group at PSI. Lea obtained her PhD in 2010 at the ETH in Zurich. After a 4 year postdoc at LBNL in Berkeley she moved to the University of Zurich in 2014. Since 2016 she has been holding a joint scientist position at PSI and University of Zurich.

Lea Caminada, a researcher in the High-Energy Particle Physics group of the Laboratory for Particle Physics (LTP) in NUM, has received the annual CMS Young Researcher Prize. This Prize is given once a year to outstanding young physicists who made very significant and sustained contributions to the CMS experiment at the LHC facility at CERN. Dr. Caminada has been recognized for her contribution to the construction, installation and commissioning of the two pixel detectors which were build at PSI for the CMS experiment. Her work also included the measurement of the B-meson production cross section and the observation of the Higgs boson in association with top quarks.