Homework Handout #2


This assignment is an exercise to ensure that you can use latex to produce a scientific paper. This concentrates on the mechanics of doing so not the form or content, that's next. So, if you already live in latex this will be trivial, if you don't, it will be a useful learning experience.


  1. Get the tools needed to run latex and view the dvi and/or postscript output setup on the computer you use to do your work. If you're on a Mac or Linux box, this setup is trivial. If you're on a Windows box, take a look at the useful links website and set things up using the MikTeX and WinEDT tools.

  2. The example paper we will use is Super-K's “Evidence for Oscillation of Atmospheric Neutrinos” paper, (Phys.Rev.Lett.81:1562-1567,1998). Find it on SPIRES, and on Physics Review Letters' own website (links to journal websites are on the physics department web page) Find it on arxiv.org, this paper is .hep-ex/9807003 but see if you can find it using their search engine first. How would you cite this paper in something you were writing? Hint – SPIRES can even provide you with the latex snippet you'd need.

  3. Practice compiling an existing paper. On the same links webpage, you can download the tex source and figures for the Super-K paper. The revtex style package used by physics journals is also linked from there, although you need to use the older version of revtex for this particular paper. Compile and print out a nice copy of this paper. Turn in a marked-up copy of this paper, where you identify the various structural sections of a paper.

  4. This paper uses some dated formats. You will want to write your own stuff using the modern formats, (revtex v4 & latex2e), and to use bibtex for your references. Update the Super-K paper to this standard. All the content can stay the same. The hardest part will be building a bibtex file of the references – but SPIRES can do the dirty work for you, you can click on a “give me the bibtex entry” for any given paper and paste that blob of text into your file.

  5. Go to arxiv.org, SPIRES, or ADS. Get a paper of interest to you, or follow a citation from the Super-K paper and work with that paper. Download its latex source (most papers on arxiv.org offer this option, be sure to choose a paper which does), compile it, print it out, and turn it in with a short (paragraph or two) summary of your take on the paper and what interests you about it.