List of possible student project on Future Experiments


  1. High energy frontier physics

    1. BSM searches at Super-LHC (link)
    2. BSM searches at ILC (link)
    3. Higgs at Super-LHC (link)
    4. Higgs at ILC (link)
    5. Higgs with FCC (link)

  2. High intensity frontier physics (link)

    1. Heavy Flavor factories: Belle-II at KEKB
    2. Lepton flavor violation: MEGII at PSI
    3. Lepton flavor violation: Mu2e at Fermilab
    4. Low mass dark sector: CERN SPS SHIP experiment

  3. Non-Accelerator based Dark Matter searches (link)

    1. Xenon1T
    2. COUPP-500

  4. Neutrino Oscillations and mixing (link)

    1. Fermilab's Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) + Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE)
    2. Fermilab's Microboone experiment
    3. Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO)

  5. Dirac vs Majorana neutrinos: neutrinoless double beta (link)

    1. SuperNEMO expriment in Frejus/Modane
    2. EXO-200 in new Mexico


Overall guidelines for the digestion of information and preparation of your summary


You are totally free to consult any reference material you prefer, but in order to assist you, we provide you with a short list of selected review papers, physics proposals and technical design reports for each physics topic (accessible by clicking on your chosen topic).

If you're totally unfamiliar with the type of physics you investigate, it is often good to read a review paper first rather than jumping into the proposals for the new projects. It will allow you to get familiar with the context and the key parameters/plots/techniques.

Don't loose yourself into the mathematics or formulas. Ask yourself simple and naive questions and try to distill an intuitively clear answer first.

In your assessment you should pay attention to:

  1. Introduction to the physics case:

    1. Why is this measurement important, in terms of the big open questions in our field?
    2. What is currently already experimentally established for this type of physics ? (example: we know for a fact that neutrino's do oscillate and posses mass, we do know there's a scalar particle, ...)
    3. What is currently not or badly known for this type of physics ? (example: the neutrino mass hierarchy, the self coupling of the scalar, ...)
    4. Are there any controversies that need to be resolved? (conflicting experimental data, interpretational issues?)
    5. How can one measure these badly known properties ?
    6. What is needed to improve these measurements ? (bigger detectors, more data, higher energy, different beams, ...)

  2. The essential experimental techniques:

    1. How do you measure the key parameters of your physics problem (specific decay channels, specific kinematic properties, golden signatures, ...)
    2. What beams, detectors are typically used?
    3. If there are several techniques/facilities, what are the pros and cons ?
    4. Are some techniques/facilities complementary?

  3. Key features of your proposal:

    1. Does it involve an existing beam, lab, or does it require a new accelerator?
    2. Does it involve an upgrade of an existing experiment or a totally new design?
    3. What are the key features of the experimental setup, and why are they necessary?
    4. What is the possible time line of your project ?
    5. What is the current status of approval of your project?