Welcome to the autumn issue of the EP newsletter!

It has been a busy summer with a wealth of new physics results presented at international conferences. The CMS collaboration presented results from their direct search of the Higgs boson decaying into charm quarks while the ATLAS experiment presented results from searches for Higgs decays to muons and electrons. These results pave the way for a deeper understanding of the Higgs boson and how it interacts with lighter fermions which is one of the key challenges for the next runs of the LHC. NA62 experiment presented an update on the ultra-rare Kaon decay (K⁺ → π⁺νν^-),  while in this issue you can also read about the latest results from LHCf, NA61 and COMPASS experiments reflecting the diversity of CERN's experimental programme. 

Progress in particle physics often relies on breakthroughs in instrumentation. This is one of the motivations for the new R&D initiative of the EP department on new Detector Technologies which will start in 2020. You will read more about this exciting topic in forthcoming issues of this newsletter. In this issue, we cover two major detector development efforts, namely the ALICE ITS upgrade, an all-new vertexing and tracking detector based on innovative monolithic silicon sensors, as well as the latest status of the upgrade of the ATLAS New Small Wheel. You find also an interesting essay on machine learning for new detector technologies.    

Finally, this edition features a special focus on the importance of crosstalks between experts from the fields of astroparticle physics, particle physics and nuclear physics both regarding physics results but also mastering challenges related to instrumentation, data acquisition and analysis. This includes a very interesting interview with Nobel Laureate Adam Riess who shared the prize for discovering the accelerating expansion of the Universe and who is leading one of the teams that revealed the intriguing discrepancy in the value of the Hubble constant. You can read a report from the special joint session organized by ECFA during the annual EPS conference in Ghent but also an article on the AEDGE workshop that was held at CERN and brought together the cold atom interferometry community with particle physicists and the gravitational-wave community.

Last but not least, as has now become a tradition, we have also prepared an interactive world map reflecting the diversity of cultures, regions and topics that characterise the CERN summer students’ programme. 

I hope that you will enjoy reading the new issue.

Christian Joram,