Ten Days of Neutrino Interactions in the Polish Countryside.

My journey started in the early hours of a cold Sunday morning on the 1st February as I made my way to Stanstead airport for my 6 am flight. I was bound for Wroclaw international airport in the south east region of Poland and I was on my way to the 45th Karpacz Winter School organised by the university of Wroclaw. I had left in the nick of time (depending on your perspective) as the next day the UK was enveloped in the biggest snow storm in 18 years and many flights were canceled. This year the focus of the school was the modeling of neutrino interactions, an elusive type of particle with almost no mass and which only interact through the weak force.

Before I talk about the school and the wonders of Poland (Including lots of physics, lots of snow, some caves, and maybe even a wolf!) I should provide some background as to why I was there. I am a second year PhD student on the T2K long baseline neutrino oscillation experiment, I will skip the summary of the experiment as there are a numerous blogs that have already done this. The modeling of neutrino interactions, in particular with large composite objects like nuclei, is highly relevant for T2K and
other neutrino experiments as the only way to detect a neutrino is via its interaction with a nucleus present in the large detectors built to capture them. In order to make the kind of precision measurements that T2K aims to make it is necessary to know the energy and type of neutrino that has interacted within your detector and, as I found out, getting this right is very dependent on the models you choose to describe the interaction. It is this driving force from the new era of high precision measurements that has caused renewed interest in the field of neutrino interactions.

The aim of the school was to provide lectures on the current and future developments for the theoretical models that describe neutrino interactions alongside the approximations adopted in the various Monte Carlo generators. The Monte Carlo generators are the computer simulations that start the process of taking these theoretical models and making predictions about what will be seen in the experiment. There was also an emphasis on the current experimental activity in neutrino physics, many of these lectures (very good and useful - I would recommend them to any new students on T2K) were given by our very own Dr Morgan Wascko. For me this highlights the best part of the school which was that there was a healthy mix of theorists and experimentalists. Over the 10 days I feel there was a lot of constructive communication and clarification of ideas and requirements between the two groups.

The school lasted for six days and was followed by a three day workshop. The schedule was intense. Days were divided between lectures, theory exercises, Monte Carlo generator workshops, more lectures, and not to forget breaks in which people could explore the local countryside or go skiing. We started at 8.45 am and on many occasions people were still working at 10 or 11 in the evening.


There were many other things to do alongside the Physics. On the Sunday between the school and the workshop a trip was organised to go by coach to the Czech Republic to visit some famous caves in the Moravsky Kras region. They were limestone caves and were famous for the interesting shapes cut into the rock by the many thousands of years of water erosion (not actually erosion as they were limestone so the water dissolves the rock). I have uploaded a picture of the magnificent stalactites and stalagmites that surrounded us in the caves.

Unfortunately I was unable to go on the skiing trips due to a lack of equipment (I am quite tall and they only had little ski boots) and so I was forced to find other ways to explore the local surroundings. On one occasion me and a fellow T2K student went on an expedition up a local mountain (a hill technically but a very steep one at that). It had just snowed fairly heavily and the slope was very steep and slippery. It took us about half an hour to get to the top and on our way up we kept seeing similar sets of tracks in the otherwise undisturbed snow. The hill was wooded but at the top opened up into a very beautiful space bordered by woods. We kept seeing more of the tracks which were all headed to one part of the woods and managed to convince ourselves that they must be wolf tracks (This was for a number of reasons: 1 - There are wolves in Poland. 2 - The tracks implied a large animal with padded and clawed feel. 3 - It was snowing and we were in the woods. 4 - I have an abject fear of wolves). On our return down the hill we couldn't quite shake the feeling that we were being watched! See the image of the tracks on the right.


All in all I had a very productive and enjoyable time at the school and am very grateful to the organisers of the school who provided me with a grant that allowed me to attend.