Fifteen exceptional ESRs were recruited and enrolled on a PhD programme at their host Beneficiary. During the programme, the ESRs published 49 papers in peer-reviewed journals and a further 14 publications are available as pre-prints (to be submitted to peer-reviewed journals), contributing to our three scientific work packages (Geometry, Loops and Lab). These publications are all open access and can be found via the SAGEX website. They detail the progress and research of the ESRs beyond the state of the art. In addition to the originally planned work packages, SAGEX researchers have adapted techniques for scattering amplitudes to the study of gravitational waves, with renewed impetus following their discovery in 2016, which has resulted in five ESRs working on these important new topics.
All 15 ESRs were provided with excellent 3-month secondment opportunities with one of our industry Partners, who in turn benefitted from the ESR’s expertise within their organisations. The ESRs experienced a bespoke scientific and soft-skills curriculum taking them from master’s level to the cutting edge of scattering amplitudes research. This curriculum has been made available to the field via the SAGEX website (www.sagex.org) as a gold-standard training programme.
In the final two years of the programme, the following training events were held:
• SAGEX Mathematica & Maple School (remote) hosted by CEA-Saclay in January 2021. Lectures were given on the Mathematica and Maple packages.
• European Study Group with Industry 165 (remote) hosted by Durham University. The ESRs worked with other researchers to solve problems posed by Industry.
• SAGEX PhD School in Amplitudes 2021 (remote) hosted by University of Copenhagen. This School, run by the ESRs covered the areas: Amplituhedron and positive geometries, Celestial amplitudes, Post-Minkowskian gravity from scattering amplitudes and QCD phenomenology and scattering amplitudes.
The school lectures were video-recorded for the benefit of the wider community and are available on the SAGEX YouTube channel.
Together with our Partner Organisation, EE Films, the ESRs created a film about their experiences in the network, 'Doing a PhD in Physics' (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbV0YnzeTzQ(odnośnik otworzy się w nowym oknie)). Combining self-recorded video diaries, the film documents their successes, challenges and the common themes uniting their experiences. Working with another Partner Organisation, Milde Marketing Science Communications, the ESRs designed an online outreach exhibition 'SAGEX – at the Frontier of Physics,' (www.exhibition.sagex.org) which launched in early 2022. In addition, many took part in local outreach events at their institutes.
The SAGEX website (www.sagex.org) is a useful resource, with details of the network members, events, publications, a twitter feed and blog. We also built a community repository (www.amplitudes.org) where researchers across the entire field of scattering amplitudes can share code and other research materials.
