The seminar will provide a glimpse of some elements of the rapidly evolving field of quantum sensing, specifically focusing on particle physics. Specific approaches involving quantum systems, such as low-dimensional systems or manipulations of ensembles of quantum systems, hold great promise for improving high-energy particle physics detectors, particularly in areas like calorimetry, tracking, and timing. The use of quantum sensors for high-precision measurements, as well as the development of new quantum sensors based on superconducting circuits, ion and particle traps, crystals, and materials engineered at the atomic scale, are equally relevant for low energy particle physics and for fundamental physics.

However, significant advances and improvements in existing or future quantum technologies will be necessary to address such topics related to the dark universe, the detection of relic neutrinos, precision tests of symmetries and of the standard model and probing general foundational issues in physics. The seminar will thus also feature discussions of the Quantum Sensing Initiatives at CERN and the ECFA R&D Roadmap on Quantum Sensing and Advanced Technologies and will discuss options for future collaborations in the context of the imminent implementation of this roadmap.

There has been a renewed interest in the exploration of the Moon in recent years. Monitoring the radiation environment on and around the Moon is useful for advancing our understanding of galactic cosmic rays and solar energetic particles, identifying resources on the Moon, and improving the radiation safety of future astronauts. This talk will focus on the LunPAN mission and the Lunar HardPix detector, both being developed in collaboration with the IEAP CTU. LunPAN is a proposed spacecraft designed to orbit the Moon at low altitudes, measuring the spectra of charged particles from 0.1 GeV/n to 10 GeV/n and analyzing lunar albedo particles. The Lunar HardPix detector, intended for deployment on a lunar rover, aims to identify areas with higher concentrations of water in the lunar soil by measuring the flux of lunar albedo neutrons. Both missions would utilize Timepix3 or Timepix4 hybrid pixel detectors.

Hadron structure is fully determined by equations of QCD, however, due to the low-energy behaviour of this theory is difficult to calculate from the first principles. The structure manifests itself in hard interactions involving hadrons in the initial or final state. In this context, it can be described in terms of parton distribution functions (PDFs). Three PDFs exist for each parton species. If the intrinsic transverse momentum of the partons cannot be neglected, the structure is even richer, with 8 transverse momentum dependent (TMD) PDFs at leading twist, describing correlations between the hadron and parton spin and the intrinsic transverse momentum. They were extensively studied by experiments at CERN, DESY, BNL, JLab and elsewhere and they form an important part of the future electron-ion collider (EIC). The experimental knowledge of these functions and the prospects of the near future will be reviewed.

The meeting with students takes place on Monday February 17 at 14.00 in the A945 room (big lecture room on the 9th floor). All interested ones in the study of the Particle and Nuclear Physics program are kindly invited. Information in English will be given individually, the meeting is planned in Czech.

The first (not necessarily final) version of time-tables is available at

• Time-table for the 3rd year Bc. students [cz]
• Time-table for the 1st year MSc. students [cz]

This seminar will review the recently published paper [1], which proposes and discusses the feasibility of an experiment to observe the exchange of energy quanta between matter and gravitational waves. In cross-correlation with classical gravitational wave detectors, such as LIGO, this experiment could allow for the detection of single gravitons.

[1] G. Tobar, S.K. Manikandan, T. Beitel et al., Detecting single gravitons with quantum sensing, Nat. Commun. 15, 7229 (2024), https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-51420-8; available also on

arXiv:2308.15440

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2024 was awarded jointly to John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with Artificial Neural Networks” (ANNs).  The informal seminar is devoted in its first part to the basic ideas and works in the field of ANNs for which both laureates got the prize (1/2 + 1/2). The second part partly summarizes arguments causing shared fear of both Nobel prize winners from (misuse of) Artificial Intelligence, which can, in the end, overcome the contemporary human one. 

This seminar presents a measurement for a Higgs boson produced in association with a W or Z boson and decaying to a bb pair. The analyzed data samples, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb^-1, were collected in proton-proton collisions at the LHC at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV from 2015 to 2018 (Run 2) by the ATLAS detector. The measurement focuses on high vector boson transverse momentum phase spaces where the decay products of the Higgs boson can be effectively reconstructed as a large-radius jet (R = 1.0). The reconstruction of the large radius jet collections, in particular the jet energy and mass scale calibration are also presented.

abstract: Neural Network as a perfect approximator for searching patterns in nuclear data; how successful a prediction of alpha and beta decays for different isotopes can be?

The traditional informal meeting with PhD students and supervisors will take place on Friday, October 11, at 14.00 (A945 or will be specified later).