Main content

What we do

At present, our research focuses almost exclusively on the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment operating at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and its future upgrades, taking leading roles both in physics analysis and future detector upgrades.

The data analyses activities focus on the characterization of the Higgs boson in the final states with photons and b-quarks in the final state, and search for SuperSymmetry with hadronic and leptonic final states.The hardware activities revolve around the Phase-2 upgrades of the CMS pixel detector upgrade, R&D for future trackers (DMAPS and diamonds), and basic R&D for calorimetry for the Phase-2 upgrade.

The long-term plan is to broaden this research program as soon as the way to a new international high-luminosity/high-energy collider facility will become clear.

Wallny’s group is also committed to strongly contribute to the teaching mission of the department, providing a well-balanced portfolio of large propaedeutic (lower division) courses as well as Master’s and PhD level classes. We also take an active role in outreach and the promotion of science towards the public as important aspect of our teaching mandate.

D-PHYS News

Nonlinearity makes photonic neural networks smarter

Researchers in the Institute for Quantum Electronics have produced the core processing unit of a photonic neural network in which optical nonlinearity plays a key role in making the network more powerful.

08.07.2024

Superfluid surprise

Transport between two connected superfluid reservoirs

Researchers from the Institute for Quantum Electronics and the Quantum Center studied particle and entropy flows between two connected superfluid reservoirs and found unexpected evidence of irreversible and enhanced entropy transport.

25.04.2024

Long live the graphene valley state

Artistic impression of the physical system

Researchers in the Laboratory for Solid State Physics at ETH Zurich found evidence that bilayer graphene quantum dots may host a promising new type of quantum bit based on so-called valley states.

17.01.2024

An ammonia trail to exoplanets

With the help of the James Webb Space Telescope, a team of researchers including members from the Institute for Particle Physics and Astrophysics at ETH Zurich measured ammonia in the atmosphere of a cold brown dwarf, showing that the isotopic abundance of ammonia can be used to study how giant gas planets form.

07.11.2023

More news items

Coronavirus

Information on the coronavirus

The ETH task force headed by the Vice President for Infrastructure is monitoring developments in the coronavirus pandemic and will continue to draw up suitable measures as necessary. You can find constantly updated information on the coronavirus web page.

To ETH's coronavirus web page

D-PHYS Events

All events at ETH Zurich are cancelled until the end of August.

Further information

Information on planned events can be found in the following pages, but we recommend to refer for most current information to the websites of the respective event organisers:

Additional Information

We perform particle physics at the high-energy frontier and tackle outstanding questions of Particle Physics, such as the elucidation of the mechanism of electroweak symmetry breaking and the particle origin of dark matter. We operate the present detectors and prepare the future ones. We teach physics to the next generation of scientists.

Prof. R. Wallny studied physics at the Universities of Tübingen (Germany), Washington (Seattle, M.Sc., 1994) and Heidelberg (Diplom, 1996). He received his PhD degree in Physics from the University of Zürich. From 2001 to 2003, he held a CERN Research Fellow position working on the ATLAS Semiconductor Tracker. From 2003 to 2010, he was a faculty member at the University of California, Los Angeles, receiving tenure in 2008 and promotion to full professor in 2010. He joined D-PHYS in 2010 as full professor. His group plays a leading role in CMS high-p_T physics analyses and in the upgrade of the CMS pixel detector.