Tips for Writing a CDF Thesis

This page contains miscellaneous information that I and others have found useful in writing our theses. This information is of necessity incomplete, fragmented and suited to individual taste. Note that no Microsoft products have gone in to this page :-). Most of it you pick up over time, but I thought it might be useful to try and put it all in one place. Hopefully you will find something useful here. If you have any suggestions to add to this page, please contact me (Leslie Groer groer@fnal.gov).

• Latex style guides, bibtex, etc.
• Incorporating postscript
• CDF Picture database
• Making figures, Feynman diagrams etc.
• Finding references/information (CDF Notes, SPIRES, etc.)
• Information Resources at Fermilab
• General Resources

Latex style guides, bibtex, etc.

• Beg, borrow, steal or buy a copy of
  • Leslie Lamport's : LaTeX: A Document Preparation System: User's Guide and Reference Manual and
  • Goossens, Mittelbach and Samarin : The LaTeX Companion.
  The Fermilab Stock Room has a supply of these.
• CTAN - Comprehensive TeX Archive Network. Contains all the packages and macros etc. for Tex/LaTeX.
• Bibliography - .bst files. unsrt.bst.

Incorporating postscript

• How to use Adobe PostScript language files properly - Discussion from Randy with examples, FAQs, software links etc.
• Just a little PostScript - Slides from a class given by Randy.
• Here are a couple of examples that I use for getting a postscript file into LaTeX, using the epsf package.

CDF Picture database

For Run I (also has good Tevatron schematics)

• The CDF Experiment- Drawings and pictures of the detector, event pictures, luminosity, CDF Institutions, Fermilab Logo
  
  
• CDF Pictures database - Lots of postscript pictures of various components of the detector, accelerator, detector coverage maps etc.
  The last time the database was updated was in 1995(!). If you have a pretty postscript picture of any detector component or something else that you think might be of general use, please let me know and I can put it in the database. New pictures added in 1998 (from Kara Hoffman and Wasiq Bokhari).
  
  
• CDF Photos - Photos of various people, objects, detector components, etc. at CDF. Stored in JPEG format, which can be converted to other formats. Maintained by JJ.

For Run II

• CDF Upgrades has a good isometric view of the detector, plus links to all the different systems upgraded and the Run II TDR.
  
  
• CDF Detector Pictures - most of these are pictures of the actual detector, rather than detector schematics, so they may or may not be of use to you.

Making Figures

• xfig - Pretty good, free drawing package that runs under Unix and VMS. Can be found on cdfsga and most Linux systems easily. Output formats include LATEX, PS, EPS, GIF and JPEG. Try man xfig for usage, or look at the html or postscript of the man pages.
• Latex Feynman packages - Useful for drawing Feynman diagrams in LaTeX. There are two available:
• feynman - Fairly simple to use and output can be viewed in DVI. Warning, does not have scalar loops which makes some SUSY diagrams difficult.
• feynmf - Seems more versatile, but more complicated than the feynman package - I have not used it myself.
• FEYN - Feynman diagram drawing package using Macros in PAW. Pretty easy to use and can produce color diagrams easily (see tutorial).

Here is an example .kumac and the resulting .eps file for Standard Model Higgs associated production.

Finding References/Information (CDF Notes, SPIRES, etc.)

• CDF Notes - Our very own electronic catalog of internal CDF documents. Get very familiar with it.
• SPIRES database at SLAC - Best source to find references to all papers, etc. in HEP. Has links to the Los Alamos preprint server and electronic journals.
• Los Alamos Preprint Server - Most papers nowadays get posted to the Preprint Server first. hep-ex and hep-ph are the most useful.
• Particle Data Group - Reviews of Particle Physics and Properties available online with latest updates.
• Fermilab Library Online Catalog

Information Resources at Fermilab

• Accelerator
  • Accelerator Concepts - Table of Contents - Insider's description of the Fermilab accelerator complex and operation (tip from Kara Hoffman)
  • PBar source Rookie book - Table of Contents - Description of the Tevatron's pbar source (tip from Kara Hoffman)
  • Fermi III Home Page - Upgrade plans for the Tevatron/Main Injector. Includes previous statistics and parameters (tip from Kara Hoffman)

General Resources

• How to Write a PhD Thesis - Some notes from Joe Wolfe, School of Physics, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Contains some good advice and general overview of the dissertation phase of your research.
• Graduate Student Resource Page - from Dan Horn, a graduate student in Psychology at the University of Michigan. Contains lots of resources for current, furture and finishing graduate students. Includes resources for applying to graduate schools, getting through graduate school, finances, completing that dissertation and getting a job as well as humor (tip from Kara Hoffman)
• Association for Support of Graduate Students - ASGS is a service organization of graduate students, graduate-student organizations (GSOs), and graduate-degree-granting institutions. A lot of their services are charged for but there are a couple of freebies.

To add or update information to this page please send me mail (groer@fnal.gov).

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Maintained by Leslie Groer groer@fnal.gov
This Page last modified on April 04, 2005 by Jen Pursley