Only 3 weeks late (blame web server troubles), I figure it’s time for me to write a wrapup post about my experience at the CTEQ summer school. Of course, I’m not really sure what to write, other than that it was awesome. If you’re ever in a position to go, I highly recommend it.

As I mentioned in another post, the school is basically an opportunity to go listen to presentations on QCD from members of the CTEQ collaboration and guest speakers that they invite. This means that there are some pretty big names there. And there are plenty of chances to interact with them. We had four one-hour lectures each day (every speaker invariably begged to be interrupted with questions), plus mealtimes (everybody ate in the same dining hall), plus an evening “recitation” which was really just an open Q&A with the day’s speakers, plus a “night cap” a.k.a. the CTEQ Happy Hour ;-)

Of course, there was a lot of physics to be learned. Basically, the school was divided into two halves of four days each: the first half consisting of lectures covering the fundamentals of QCD and quantum field theory (the standard model, renormalization, basic experimental analysis techniques, etc.), and the second half describing specialized topics in current research, including presentations from representatives of ATLAS and CMS as well as other major experiments. As the name suggests, CTEQ spans both theoretical and experimental work on all aspects of QCD, so there are a huge variety of topics discussed. Everybody learns something. For the most part, the presentations were at just about the right level for early- to mid-track PhD candidates (I learned that if you say “grad student” people from Europe won’t necessarily know what you’re talking about); they incorporate both introductory material for people who aren’t familiar with that particular field, and advanced details for those who are.

And of course, I would be remiss not to mention the food. LOTS of food. In addition to cafeteria-style meals, so effectively all-you-can-eat, there was a well-stocked snack table at every break. That’s just the leftovers, by the way. I always did say physicists had the best food…