I’ve been a postdoctoral researcher at MIT for three years, but I’ve spent almost all of that time in Geneva, Switzerland working with many other members of the PPC group in our bustling corridor of Building 32 on the CERN campus. Two years before I started at MIT, as a fellow at CERN, I started working on the measurement of the mass of the W boson. This measurement is notorious in our field for its difficulty and for the long time scales that this difficulty brings with it. After I heard the well-known refrain of “if there’s one thing you don’t want to work on, it’s the W mass” enough, some sort of reverse psychology kicked in, and this is the project I chose.
There have been many, many twists and turns, successes and disappointments along the way, but with the measurement finally released to the public, the hard part is over, and it’s now time to share the result with the scientific community. Our measurement has gotten a lot of attention, as it agrees with the theoretical predictions, and calls another recent measurement into question. The PPC group led the effort on many fronts, so after a quick trip to Paris for a seminar, coming back to MIT was the obvious stop. I flew in Saturday, to mitigate jet lag before my talk on Monday, and was met by a beautiful fall weekend with lots of sun and surprisingly mild temperatures. My only other trip to Boston, for a W mass “hackathon” last January, was during much busier times and colder weather, so I barely explored the city. But this time I had a wonderful time running beside the river and taking in the historic sites.
Running along the Charles River on a beautiful fall day
I think the talk Monday was well received. A good turnout of CMS colleagues, non-CMS experimental particle physicists, theorists, and plenty of students asked good questions and seemed impressed and interested in our result. I gave a similar talk at Boston University a few days later, notably with a few very engaged theorists in the audience. They asked lots of questions and started discussions during the talk, but gave me positive feedback at the end. After all the work we invested, it is very satisfying to see the reception the result has had. And it helps that we anticipated so many questions with pre-emptive studies!
Between the two talks, I had a great time working from the MIT offices and spending time with the PPC members on the other side of the Atlantic. Christoph, Luca, Pietro, and I went to dinner at Row 34 to celebrate, where I had an authentic Boston lobster roll. Christoph may have pointed out once or twice that it was the most expensive item on the menu, but it was worth it (even if I didn’t pay, but don’t worry, he didn’t either). I even caught up with Chad, a former member of our group who only very recently moved on to a new position, for my first NBA game. It was a short trip, but packed full of great moments!
