Cornell BSM Journal Club

This is an archive of old pages and notes from the Cornell BSM Journal Club from its rebirth in 2009 to my graduation in 2013. To access the current BSM Journal Club, see Nic Rey-Le Lorier's website.

The particle theory graduate student journal club meets once a week to discuss topics of interest in beyond the Standard Model phenomenology and model building. Topics roughly alternate between review articles and new papers.

Image from Carmi et al. 1202.3144

Note: these pages are no longer updated! The next generation of grad students have taken over running the journal club. The current Cornell BSM Journal Club website can be found here.

Archives of past semesters:

BSM Club Fall 2009
BSM Club Spring 2010
BSM Club Fall 2010
BSM Club Spring 2011 (geometry)
BSM Club Fall 2011 (colliders)
BSM Club Spring 2012
BSM Club Fall 2012
BSM Club Spring 2013

Resources

Unsure about places to start looking for talk ideas? Here are a few suggestions, geared towards the pedagogical side.

• Collections of reviews and lectures: The Net Advance of Physics, Ulrich Theis' page, or The String Wiki.
• It may also be worth looking through journals that specialize in review articles: RMP, Physics Reports, Annual Reviews, Reports on Progress in Physics, Proceedings of Science, Living Reviews.
• You can also use tools like SPIRES and arXiv Structure to find papers and reviews. For example, you can search for proceedings from summer schools (TASI, Les Houches, SLAC, Cargese, Cracow)

Scanning: it is often helpful to share your notes with the journal club, especially for review talks. Hand written notes may be scanned easily using the LASSP document scanner on the 5th floor of Clark or Mann library (photocopiers with free scanning option). These have automatic document feeders and can e-mail you a pdf of your notes.

Guidelines

• Announce your topic two weeks in advance, include a link to the relevant paper(s).
• You should give one pedagogical talk and one 'new paper' talk over the course of the semester.
• All members are required to have read 'new papers' that are being presented. Pedagogical talks should be accessible without pre-reading. Review and 'new paper' talks should alternate to give students time to read the new paper.
• Use discretion when presenting a new paper; if it is based on a topic that is unfamiliar to our group, it would be better to coordinate a pedagogical talk before presenting the paper.
• Speakers should focus on leading a discussion rather than giving a 1.5 hour lecture; students are expected to participate actively. Chalkboard talks are strongly preferred.
• Because of the composition of pheno students we have, we are in a unique position to take advantage of this kind of activity. This will only work if we all make this a priority.

History

The current BSM journal club was started in 2007 by Flip Tanedo, David Curtin, Itay Nachshon, Josh Berger, and Yuhsin Tsai. Previous manifestations include a collider journal club organized by Matt Reece and Patrick Meade. In the distant past Michael Peskin explains that the students had a "Gradshteyn" seminar since it was meant to integrate the collective knowledge of the graduate students.