By T Binoth, C Buttar, P J Clark and E W N Glover (eds.)
Taylor & Francis
Hardback: £76.99
LHC Physics collects the written versions of lectures delivered at the Scottish Universities Summer School in Physics that took place in August 2009, in St Andrews, and covers many relevant issues for people working on the analysis of LHC data. The first nine chapters include discussions about QCD, the Higgs, B physics, forward physics, quark–gluon plasma and physics beyond the Standard Model, complemented by lectures on the LHC accelerator and detectors. The last three chapters cover Monte Carlo event-generators, statistics for high-energy-physics data analyses, and Grid computing. The lecturers are top-level experts and the book provides a nice introduction to many topics in high-energy physics, making it a valuable addition to many libraries around the world, including those of the hundreds of universities and institutes that participate in the LHC experiments.
The chapter on statistics is particularly useful as an introduction for the PhD students and postdocs who are heavily involved in data analyses. It addresses the relevance of Bayesian approaches and of the Markov-chain Monte Carlo tool, as well as the importance of providing results in the form of posterior probability distributions and how to deal properly with systematic uncertainties. It also overviews the topic of multivariate classifiers (with emphasis on “boosted decision trees”) and readers will probably appreciate the concluding remark that “while their use will no doubt increase as the LHC experiments mature, one should keep in mind that a simple analysis also has its advantages”.
Despite the book being published in 2012, it already seems somewhat old – a clear testimony to the amazing speed at which LHC results are being produced. Since the school took place, around 500 physics papers have been published by the LHC collaborations (a really impressive achievement), including many results that have significantly improved our understanding of most of the topics addressed in this book. While holding such summer schools is obviously important, one might wonder about the usefulness of the corresponding proceedings, especially when published more than two years after the school took place.
