The meeting offered the chance to those working within the group to get an overview of the ongoing research activities, find out more about the recent results and exchange ideas in a stimulating environment. Moreover, it helped the members of the group learn more about each other’s research and helped new members, whether they are staff or fellows, familiarize themselves with the rest of the group.

The idea of organizing a special meeting of the TH Group outside CERN dates back to 2009 when Michelangelo Mangano was invited by his colleagues of the Saclay Theory Group to their retreat. Mangano says: “there were around 80 participants, with a couple of invited external speakers.  I thought that this format was very interesting and when I came back to CERN I proposed it to my colleagues who were very positive about the idea.”

Up to that time, the TH group held a meeting near the end of November, where all members of the Group – including new visitors and new fellows who usually arrive in early November – were invited to give a short 2-minute presentation of their work. About 100 people were invited and they had to present themselves and their work within a very tight timeslot. Mangano adds: “After the meeting it was hard to remember everyone’s face and get a clear picture of their research interests. A 3-day retreat would have allowed a more structured event, and the opportunity for a closer interaction. The École de Physique des Houches center was chosen as an ideal venue: perfect infrastructure, close to CERN, and well within budget!”

 Mangano kicked off the meeting on Wednesday afternoon, followed by an introduction of the CERN TH group for the newcomers, given by the TH Group Leader and PH deputy Department head, Ignatios Antoniadis. Sergio Bertolucci, CERN’s Director of Research and Scientific Computing, discussed the works carried out during the LS1. He also offered an update about the long term plans for the high luminosity phase of the LHC and his presentation triggered a lively discussion with the audience. The rest of Wednesday afternoon was dedicated to Standard Model physics, covering the activities in Lattice Field Theory (introduced by Martin Luescher) and the activities in the area of QCD and LHC phenomenology (introduced by Mangano). Following the tradition of this meeting, the general introductions were followed by short 12’ seminars from each fellow, and shorter presentations by the staff members.

Thursday was dedicated to the Heavy Ion programme and to the String/QFT activities, with Urs Wiedemann and Boris Samuel Pioline delivering the two introductory speeches. Among the impromptu informal activities stimulated by the meeting, Thursday evening saw a discussion on Future Circular Colliders.. Theorists had the chance to gain some insight on future projects for circular accelerators and reflect on possible scenarios that could be examined in these machines. Finally, Friday morning was dedicated to the activities in physics beyond the Standard Model, astroparticle phyiscs and cosmology, introduced by Andreas Weiler..

The meeting has been very successful in a twofold way: first it presented state-of-the-art  activities across the research fields in which the TH Group is involved and, second, it opened a space where members of the Group could interact in a more direct way. Many new collaborations were born after the talks and during the breaks.

Following the success of this year’s meeting the organizers are thinking to repeat it next year and to hold it annually instead of every two years as was done since 2009. They are also exploring a number other options about the structure of the meeting and the form of the presentations in order to ensure that participants will make the most of this retreat. As Mangano explains: “our goal is to further enhance the interaction between the members of the TH Group, and in particular to make it easier for new fellows to integrate in the Group.” We hope that they will realize their ideas, as they have already started preparing next year’s meeting that will take place in Les Houches. We are looking forward to it.

You can find more information on the Indico page:

https://indico.cern.ch/conferenceOtherViews.py?view=standard&confId=244184