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More Help for Experiments

Below is older help information that may or may not be useful.  If you're stuck, you can always  ask us for help.

Here is a full list of the search terms you can use in this file. Some are explained below, from older help files, others might be self-explanatory. We know that this older information may not be as helpful as you might like, please feel free to ask if there is something unclear.

Simple Index:  EXP, EXPT, EXPT-NUM, R, REPT-NUM, RN 
Simple Index:  ABS, ABSTRACT, CE, COLLABORATION, DESCRIPTION, DESCRP, EXPERIMENT, EXTRA-KEYWORDS, K, KEYWORD, KEYWORDS, KW, OTHER.NAME, TITLE, WWW-DESCRIPTION 
Simple Index:  REL, RELATED
Simple Index:  DATE, DATE-PROPOSED 
Simple Index:  DAP, DATE-APP, DATE-APPROVED
Simple Index:  DATE-STARTED, DS 
Simple Index:  DATE-COMPLETED, DC
Simple Index:  SP, SPKS, SPOKESMAN, SPOKESPERSON
Simple Index:  OLD-SPOKESMAN, OLD-SPOKESPERSON, OLDSPKS 
Simple Index:  CONTACT, E-MAIL, EMAIL 
Simple Index:  ESP, ESPKS, EXACT-SPOKESMAN
Simple Index:  WL, WWW-LABORATORY, WWWLAB 
Simple Index:  WC, WWW-CATEGORY, WWWCAT 
Simple Index:  WE, WWW-EXPNO, WWWEXP
Simple Index:  LAB-COUNTRY, LABCC 
Simple Index:  A, AUTHOR, N, NAME 
Simple Index:  AF, AFF, AFFIL, AFFILIATION, INST, INSTITUTION
Simple Index:  EA, EXACT-AUTHOR 
Simple Index:  CC, COUNTRY
Simple Index:  S, SOURCE 
Simple Index:  DATE-UPDATED, DMOD, DU, DUPD
Simple Index:  DA, DADD, DATE-ADDED, DENT
Simple Index:  EE, EXACT-EXPERIMENT

Simple Searching

This is a description of how to search each of the fields on the search form.

Participants

To find all the experiments in which the author Johnson has participated, type the author's last name (surname) into the appropriate box. If an initial is added, separate it by a comma, e.g., johnson, g. Keep in mind that somebody you may know as Betty could officially be Elizabeth, Bob may be signing his papers as Robert, etc. If you are not sure what the right first name is, just do not use the initial. The last name can be truncated, e.g., leder# for Lederman. To deal with a combination of several authors, use the words and, or, & and not, e.g., johnson or smith will yield experiments by either physicist, johnson and smith will find experiments in which both have participated, whereas johnson and not smith will yield experiments by Johnson so long as Smith is not involved. If a special character appears in a name, such as the ë in the German spelling of Mëller, try alternate spellings, such as muller or mueller. If you happen to know that author Johnson is from SLAC, for example, use both the participant and the affiliation boxes. If you are only interested in experiments which author Johnson did at Fermilab, type in the name (johnson), and also select Fermilab in the list of accelerators. To initiate a search, press the Perform Search button. Do not forget to use the Clear All Fields button between two searches.

Titles

If you are interested in the experiments that study the CP violation, for example, try the title-word search. Enter any or all expected words from the title in any order. A truncated search may be used, e.g., cp# in the title-word box yields titles containing the word CP standing free (as in CP violation), and also all the titles in which CP is hyphenated (as in CP-violating). If you type solar neutrino into the title-word box, you will find all the experiments with these two words (any order) in the titles. You can combine any number of other elements with your title-word search. For example, to find some of the recently approved CP violation experiments, type cp# in the title-word box, and select After and 1990 in the two pull-down menus for the date-approved search element.

Affiliations, Exp-numbers

To find all the experiments in which people from a given institution participated, type the institution's name (you should use the SPIRES short version of the name) into the affiliation box. Similarly, type the experiments' official code number into the exp-number box (e.g., type cern-na-048 to find more about the NA48 experiment at CERN). For many experiments you can also use a nickname instead of the complete code number. For example, if you type opal in the exp-number box, you will find the CERN-LEP-OPAL entry, while d0 or dzero yields the FNAL-740 description. (You can also find the OPAL and D0 entries by selecting the corresponding detectors in the list of detectors). To find both D0 and CDF entries, use dzero or cdf, and to find all four LEP experiments, type cern-lep-# into the exp-number box.

Studied Particles

To use the studied-particle box, you must know the database-adopted spelling of various particles. We use k+, for example, and not kplus for K+ and pi0, not pizero for the neutral pion. An antiparticle name in the database is usually formed by adding the suffix bar to the corresponding particle name. Thus the antiproton in the studied-particle box should be written as pbar. Find a pointer to an extensive list of the `correct' particle names. (Note that the particle names in the studied-particle search are strictly standardized. In a title search, to the contrary, particle names are somewhat variable in their spelling and several forms should be tried).

Other Elements

If you are interested in finding all the experiments at a given accelerator, select the appropriate laboratory in the list of accelerators. Similarly, if you know a detector's name, try the list of detectors. The defaults are Any Accelerator and Any Detector. The date-approved search is useful if you know the approval year. You can also eliminate older experiments from your search result if you select the date-approved carefully. The default for the date-approved is Don't Know.

Advanced searching

For the old hands and for those who want to have better control over searching, the form has a separate part named Make your own search. This part only has one search window into which you type a complete SPIRES search command. Here we give a few examples of what could be typed into the SPIRES search window. We use lower case, but a search is case insensitive, and in an actual search you may use both lower and upper case characters.

Important note: whenever a term you wish to find contains characters

')' , '>' , '<' , or '(' ,

the entire search value must be enclosed in double quotes (see examples below)

FIND, SHOW and BROWSE are some of the command verbs you can use in SPIRES searching. You can formulate a variety of search commands by using these three verbs. For example,

show indexes

(Shows the available search terms, e.g., AUTHOR, PAPER, EXP, etc. Use these terms in your search request to BROWSE and FIND, e.g., BROWSE AUTHOR ... , or FIND PAPER ... , FIND EXP ... , etc.)

browse author trilling

(Displays values in the author-name index surrounding the stated value.)

browse exp

(No search value for EXP is given. SPIRES returns several random values of experiment code-numbers.)

browse exp desy

(Displays values in the code-number index alphabetically surrounding the specified value. Useful if you do not know the exact form or spelling of a search value.)

find author rubbia, c

or

find author c rubbia

(Finds experiments in which the stated author has participated. The first-name initial is optional: find author rubbia will also work fine.)

find exp saturne-258

(Finds the record corresponding to the specified value.)

find paper "PR D37 (1988) 1131"

(Finds the experiment reported in the stated reference. Note that the reference has spaces but no commas between the elements. Double quotes are obligatory, see the box above.)

find reaction "e+ e- --> mu+ mu- x"

(The 'arrow' is composed of two minus signs and a 'greater-than' sign. Note the obligatory quotes.)

find ac kek-tristan

(Finds experiments using the stated accelerator.)

find de crystal-ball

(Finds experiments using the stated detector.)

find title cp phase difference

(Finds experiments with the words CP, PHASE, and DIFFERENCE in the title. The order of title words in a search command is unimportant.)

find af rutgers u

(Finds experiments in which people from the stated institution participated.)

find af rutger#

(Finds experiments with the stated affiliation. '#' represents any remaining characters.)

find particle d+

(Finds experiments studying the specified particle.)

The following search commands are also allowed:

find author prefix patters

(Finds authors whose last names begin with the string PATTERS, e.g., Patterson)

find af prefix northwest

find reaction prefix pi+ n

find exp sld

(For most of the large experimental collaborations you may type just the collaboration name instead of the full experimental number)

Compound searching is not only possible, but also desirable, because it keeps search results smaller:find author prokoshkin and exp prefix cern

find af moscow, itep and not date before 1992

find particle j/psi or "psi(2s)"

Occasionally a search may fail. With some care you can reduce unsuccessful searching to a minimum: (i) Remember that any search value containing any of the special characters ) , > , < , ( , must be enclosed in double quotes. See the examples above for the PAPER, REACTION, and PARTICLE searches; (ii) Use the `correct' form of a search value: a database-adopted particle name (e.g., K+, not Kplus), proper experiment code-name (e.g., FNAL-761, not FNAL-E761), etc. To find the correct forms, use the BROWSE command for the index you are searching.


SPIRES HEP was a joint project of SLAC, DESY & FNAL as well as the worldwide HEP community.
It was superseeded by INSPIRE

Last Updated: 05/30/2017

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