(2018 Editor's note: this page is extremely out of date, and is currently being kept here for convenience
only.)
Slightly updated 1995 by MW.
Original by Scott Chase.
Warning! The email addresses given here do not get checked and may be out of date.
The Full Listings of the Review of Particle Properties (RPP), as well as other particle physics databases, are accessible on line. Here is a summary of the major ones, as described in the RPP:
Anyone with a SLAC account can access these databases. Alternately, most of us can access them via QSPIRES. You can access QSPIRES via BITNET with the 'send' command ('tell','bsend', or other system-specific command) or by using email. For example, send QSPIRES@SLACVM FIND TITLE Z0 will get you a search of HEP for all papers that reference the Z0 in the title. By email, you would send the one line message "FIND TITLE Z0" with a blank subject line to qspires@slacvm.bitnet or qspires@vm.slac.stanford.edu. QSPIRES is free. Help can be obtained by mailing "HELP" to QSPIRES.
For more detailed information, see the RPP, p.I.12, or contact: Louise Addis at addis@slacvm.bitnet) or Harvey Galic at galic@slacvm.bitnet.
ALICE can be accessed via DECNET or INTERNET. It runs on the CERN library's VXLIB, alias ALICE.CERN.CH (IP# 128.141.201.44). Use Username ALICE (no password required.) Remote users with no access to the CERN Ethernet can use QALICE, similar to QSPIRES. Send email to qalice@vxlib.cern.ch, put the query in the subject field and leave the message field blank. For more information, send the subject "HELP" to QALICE or contact CERN Scientific Information Service, CERN, CH-1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland, or email malice@vxlib.cern.ch.
Regular weekly or monthly searches of the CERN databases can be arranged according to a personal search profile. Contact David Dallman, CERN SIS (address above) or email callman@cernvm.cern.ch.
DIR is available in Filemaker PRO format for Macintosh. Contact Wolfgang Simon isi@cernvm.cern.ch.
The Particle Data Group is maintaining a new user-friendly computer database of the Full Listings from the Review of Particle Properties. Users may query by paper, particle, mass range, quantum numbers, or detector and can select specific properties or classes of properties like masses or decay parameters. All other relevant information (e.g. footnotes and references) is included. Complete instructions are available online.
The last complete update of the RPP database was a copy of the Full Listings from the Review of Particle Properties which was published as Physical Review D45, Part 2 (1 June 1992). A subsequent update made on 27 April 1993 was complete for unstable mesons, less complete for the W, Z, D mesons, and stable baryons, and otherwise was unchanged from the 1992 version.
DECNET access: SET HOST MUSE or SET HOST 42062 TCP/IP access: TELNET MUSE.LBL.GOV or TELNET 131.243.48.11 Login to: PDG_PUBLIC with password HEPDATA.
Contact: Gary S. Wagman, (510)486-6610. Email: gswagman@lbl.gov
Durham-RAL and Serpukhov both maintain large databases containing Particle Properties, reaction data, experiments, email ID's, cross-section compilations (CS), etc. Except for the Serpukhov CS, these databases overlap SPIRES at SLAC considerably, though they are not the same and may be more up to date. For details, see the RPP, p.I.14, or contact: For Durham-RAL, Mike Whalley (mrw@ukacrl.bitnet,mrw@cernvm.bitnet) or Dick Roberts (rgr@ukacrl.bitnet). For Serpukhov, contact Sergey Alekhin (alekhin@m9.ihep.su) or Vladimir Exhela (ezhela@m9.ihep.su).
There are a number of online sources of preprints:
To get things if you know the preprint number, send a message to the appropriate address with subject header "get (preprint number)" and no message body. If you don't know the preprint number, or want to get preprints regularly, or want other information, send a message with subject header "help" and no message body.
On the Web, some of these preprint archive databases are accessible at http://xxx.lanl.gov.
The following GOPHER servers that are concerned with physics are currently running on the Internet. They mainly provide a full-text indexed archive to the preprint mailing lists:
xyz.lanl.gov, port 70 (LANL Nonlinear Sciences)
mentor.lanl.gov,70 ('traditional' preprint lists)
babbage.sissa.it,70 ('traditional' preprint lists)
physinfo.uni-augsburg.de,70 (all lists, but only abstracts)
In addition to the preprint services already described, there are several mailing lists that allow one to regularly receive material via email. To get a long list of many of them, send mail to listserv@listserv.net with the following command in the text (not the subject) of your message:
LISTS global
To subscribe, send mail to listserv@listserv.net with the following command
in the text (not the subject) of your message:
SUBSCRIBE <listname> <your first name> <your last name>where <listname> is the name of the list. Example:
SUBSCRIBE PHYSICS Isaac Newton
Here are a few of the physics-related lists:
ACC-PHYS Preprint server for Accelerator Physics
ALPHA-L L3 Alpha physics block analysis diagram group
ASTRO-PH Preprint server for Astrophysics
FUSION Redistribution of sci.physics.fusion
OPTICS-L Optics Newsletter
PHYS-L Forum for Physics Teachers
PHYS-STU Physics Student Discussion List
PHYSHARE Sharing resources for high school physics
PHYSIC-L Physics List
PHYSICS Physics Discussion
POLYMER Polymer-related discussions and announcements
POLYMERP Polymer Physics discussions
SPACE sci.space.tech Digest
SUP-COND SuperConductivity List
WKSPHYS Workshop Physics List
The AIP runs several mailing lists. The server is listserv@aip.org. Leave the subject line blank,
and send text of "help" and "longindex" on separate lines for a general help file and
description of the mailing lists. Three mailing lists are
add <address> <listname>
in the text of a message to the server. Example: add user@aip.org fyi
There is a wealth of information, on all sorts of topics, available on the World Wide Web [WWW], a distributed HyperText system (a network of documents connected by links which can be activated electronically). Subject matter includes some physics areas such as High Energy Physics, Astrophysics abstracts, and Space Science, but also includes such diverse subjects as bioscience, music, and the law.
If you have no clue what WWW is, you can go over the Internet with telnet to info.cern.ch (no login required) which brings you to the WWW Home Page at CERN. You are now using the simple line mode browser. To move around the Web, enter the number given after an item.
If you have a WWW browser up and running, you can move around more easily. The by far nicest way of "browsing" through WWW uses the x-terminal based tool "XMosaic". Binaries for many platforms (ready for use) and sources are available via anonymous FTP from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu in directory Web/xmosaic. The general FTP repository for browser software is info.cern.ch (including a hypertext browser/editor for NeXTStep 3.0)
For questions related to WWW, try consulting the WWW-FAQ: Its most recent version is available via anonymous FTP on rtfm.mit.edu in /pub/usenet/news.answers/www-faq , or on WWW at http://www.vuw.ac.nz:80/non-local/gnat/www-faq.html
The official contact (in fact the midwife of the World Wide Web) is Tim Berners-Lee, timbl@info.cern.ch. For general matters on WWW, try www-request@info.cern.ch or Robert Cailliau (responsible for the "physics" content of the Web, cailliau@cernnext.cern.ch).
A list of useful web resources for physics has been compiled on another page.
An archive of the electronic newsletters of the American Institute of Physics is now available on nic.hep.net. The three publications are "For Your Information", "The Physics News Update" written by Dr Phil Schewe, and "What's New" written by Dr Robert Park.
There is an FTP archive site of preprints and programs for nonlinear dynamics, signal processing, and related subjects on node lyapunov.ucsd.edu (132.239.86.10) at the Institute for Nonlinear Science, UCSD. Just login anonymously, using your host id as your password. Contact Matt Kennel (mbk@inls1.ucsd.edu) for more information.
PHYS-L PHYS-L@UWF Forum for Physics Teachers
PHYS-STU PHYS-STU@UWF Physics Student Discussion List