I just returned from the 13th European Research Conference on Electromagnetic Interactions of Nucleons and Nuclei, a biannual conference held in Cyprus. There were some fascinating results presented, including a new determination of the proton’s charge radius by the PRad Experiment (it’s small!), a calculation of the “gluon EMC Effect” using Lattice QCD by MIT’s Phiala Shanahan, and lots of discussion about Large Momentum Effective Theory (LaMET), a new technique which may finally allow calculations of parton distribution functions on the Lattice.
One of the best things about this conference is that it is preceded by a two-day workshop called “Frontiers and Careers in Photonuclear Physics,” which is specifically geared for students and early-career physicists. I feel honored that I was invited to give a pedagogical lecture about the EMC Effect at this year’s Frontiers, and I was so impressed by the job the organizers, Lena Heikenskjöld (Mainz) and Afroditi Papadopoulou (MIT), to put a wonderful workshop together. I highly encourage students to attend the 2020 edition of Frontiers, which will be held in August in New England in advance of the Gordon Research Conference on Photonuclear Reactions. You will learn a ton and meet a bunch of very interesting young physicists.
Not only did Afroditi co-organize a fantastic Frontiers workshop, she also gave an outstanding talk on one of her research projects, “Electrons for Neutrinos,” in which analysis techniques from neutrino-nucleus scattering are benchmarked on electron-scattering data. Neutrino scattering experiments face the challenge of reconstructing the incoming neutrino energy event-by-event while simultaneously having to model the wide range of nuclear effects that can lead to the event’s measured final state. It’s a tough game, but Afroditi and others are showing how electron data can help.
