Research Training Group PhD Grant To Develop New Particle Detectors
Press Release No. 119/2019
11 November 2019
DFG extends HighRR Research Training Group in nuclear and particle physics
The Heidelberg Research Training Group working on the development of new detectors to measure elementary particles will continue its research in a second funding period. After successful evaluation, the “HighRR – High Resolution and High Rate Detectors in Nuclear and Particle Physics” Research Training Group (RTG 2058) at Heidelberg University has been granted funding of approx. 4 million euros by the German Research Foundation for another four and a half years. The approved funds will – on the basis of cutting-edge technologies – allow doctoral researchers to develop and set up the detector systems for the next-generation experiments in nuclear and particle physics. Prof. Dr Hans-Christian Schultz-Coulon of the Kirchhoff Institute for Physics continues as the group’s spokesperson.
With its special emphasis on instrumentation, the HighRR Research Training Group is bridging a gap between fundamental physics and engineering. “HighRR doctoral researchers work at the forefront of technological development, making essential contributions to the investigation of some of the most fundamental, but yet unanswered questions in physics. Developing novel, innovative measuring methods was and is the key to progress in the natural sciences”, states Prof. Schultz-Coulon. “The HighRR research fellows particularly benefit from the broad instrumentation experience of the Heidelberg nuclear and particle physics community – especially in the context of the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the particle accelerator at the CERN European Nuclear Research Centre.”
The Research Training Group, which is jointly led by Prof. Schultz-Coulon and Prof. Dr André Schöning of the Institute for Physics at Heidelberg University, will particularly focus on further developing the LHC experiments ALICE, ATLAS, and LHCb as well as on the construction and commissioning of the so-called Mu3e detector built to search for muon decays not allowed in the framework of the Standard Model of particle physics. In addition, the HighRR research will focus on the development of novel, metallic micro-calorimeters to measure radioactive decays with extreme precision as well as high-rate photodetectors for use at modern synchrotron facilities.