I have to read a paper for my PhD qualifying exams but I don't understand any of it. Does that mean I fail? My committee assigned me to read a paper.  But there is a lot of notation I don't understand.  I tried looking at papers in the reference list and I can't really find anything that explains all the notation and concepts.  I also tried looking for talks that the author gave, but they don't go into as much detail as the paper.

What should I do?  I have no background in this field so I'm not really sure where to start.  I also have about three weeks to figure this out.

Edit: Please stop answering this question because apparently it might be cheating.
If you are unsure of your ability to complete the task, you should go immediately to your advisor and/or the other committee members to get as much help as they can give you.  

That is not much of an answer, but I want to supplement it with this: in this case, asking for help on the internet is potentially problematic.  Being assigned a paper and asked to read and understand it in three weeks sounds like a situation which is close to a "take-home exam".  (Maybe it isn't, and maybe you are not understanding the assignment.  Find out.) If so, getting help on the internet on your exam may not be kosher.  

Anyway, most graduate students in most graduate programs in most fields do not automatically or easily understand cutting edge papers.  The whole point of the graduate programs is to give them the help and training they need to do this.  So you should be doing what you can to get that help and training, not worrying about whether you are worthy in some cosmic sense.

Good luck.

Added: For those who are confused by the discrepancy between the answer and my comment above: the original version of the question included a lot of content-related information, including the title and author of the paper itself.  I was worried that could lead to getting content-related help from the internet.  The current version of the question is totally unproblematic in that regard.