LEP Leaves a Legacy

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

LEP Leaves a Legacy LEP leaves a legacy MICROPATTERNS GRAVITATION Innovative detector techniques The race to detect gravitational The universe's best-kept secret give improved performance pl4 waves gathers pace p 17 hits its 30th birthday pl9 econd Announcement http://www.nss-mic.org uclear Science Symposium and Medical Imaging Conference ^ 12th International Workshop on Room-Temperature Year! Semiconductor X- and Gamma-Ray Detectors Town & Country Radiation Detectors * Short Courses Resort and And Electronics: * Oral Presentations Applications in Physics, * Plenary and Parallel Sessions Convention Center Industry, Space * Poster Sessions and Medicine * Workshops San Diego, California * Social Events Physics, Engineering and * Companion Program Mathematical Aspects of November Medical Imaging Abstract Deadlines: April 20,2001 (NSS, MIC, SNPS) | 4-10,2001 June 15,2001 (Workshop) ******** Industrial Exhibi Bakersflel Oxnard 3 Los Angeles San Diegc&L£ALIF- Wui Pacific Meictcali Ocean General Chairman: Anthony Lavietes awrence Livermore National Laboratory 7000 East Avenue L-153 Livermore, California 94550 USA CONTENTS Covering current developments in high- energy physics and related fields worldwide CERN Courier is distributed to Member State governments, institutes and laboratories affiliated with CERN, and to their personnel. It is published monthly except January and August, in English and French editions. The views expressed are not necessarily those of the CERN management. CERN Editor: Gordon Fraser CERN, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland E-mail [email protected] Fax +41 (22) 782 1906 Web http://www.cerncourier.com News editor: James Gillies COURIER VOLUME 41 NUMBER 2 MARCH 2001 Advisory Board: R Landua (Chairman), F Close, E Lillestol, H Hoffmann, C Johnson, K Potter, PSphicas Laboratory correspondents: Argonne National Laboratory (USA): D Ayres Brookhaven, National Laboratory (USA): PYamin *~H'C\ \ \ Cornell University (USA): D G Cassel DESY Laboratory (Germany): Ilka Flegel, PWaloschek Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (USA): Judy Jackson GSI Darmstadt (Germany): G Siegert INFN (ltaly):APascolini IHEP, Beijing (China): Qi Nading Jefferson Laboratory (USA): S Corneliussen . V 7 JINR Dubna (Russia): B Starchenko \/V"- U KEK National Laboratory (Japan): A Maki Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (USA): Christine Celata Los Alamos National Laboratory (USA): C Hoffmann HERA - B changes direction p8 Behind the LEP closure p26 Leprince-Ringuet tribute p36 NIKHEF Laboratory (Netherlands): Margriet van der Heijden Novosibirsk Institute (Russia): S Eidelman Orsay Laboratory (France): Anne-Marie Lutz News 5 PSI Laboratory (Switzerland): P-R Kettle Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (UK): Jacky Hutchinson Data Grid project gets EU funding. Experiments revisit the quark-gluon Saclay Laboratory (France): Elisabeth Locci soup. Moscow accelerator creates first beam. HERA-B finds a new IHEP, Serpukhov (Russia): Yu Ryabov Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (USA): M Riordan direction. JAERI/KEK project gets government approval. Physics TRIUMF Laboratory (Canada): M K Craddock meeting reflects Vietnam's prosperity. Scientists seek the secret of Produced for CERN by Institute of Physics Publishing Ltd start-up and spin-off success. CESR set to bow out ofB-particle IOP Publishing Ltd, Dirac House, Temple Back, Bristol BS16BE, UK Tel. +44 (0)117 929 7481 business. Canadian isotope source reaches maximum energy. E-mail [email protected] Web http://www.iop.org Astrowatch 13 Head of magazines: Richard Roe Sales manager: Justin Mafham Marketing manager: Tessa Edgecombe Features Art director: Andrew Giaquinto Micropattern detectors face up to a big future 14 Production controller: Kate Boothby Production editor: Lucy Farrar Improving the performance of radiation detectors Technical illustrator: Alison Tovey Advertising manager: Nicola Rylett Deputy advertising manager: Chris Thomas Listening for the music of gravity 17 Recruitment sales: Andrew Hardie and Jayne Purdy New gravity wave detectors begin operation Advertisement production: Katie Graham Product manager: So-Mui Cheung Advertising: Nicola Rylett, Chris Thomas, Giimpses of superhistory 19 Andrew Hardie or Jayne Purdy Looking back on 30 years of supersymmetry Tel. +44 (0)117 930 1027 E-mail [email protected] Fax +44 (0)117 930 1178 Strength in numbers: particie physics goes global 22 General distribution: Jacques Dallemagne, CERN, 1211 Geneva Planning major projects for the future 23, Switzerland. E-mail [email protected] In certain countries, to request copies or to make address changes, contact: Season of Higgs and melodrama 25 China: Chen Huaiwei, Institute of High-Energy Physics, P.O. Box A dramatic finish to the LEP era 918, Beijing, People's Republic of China Germany: Gabriela Heessel or Veronika Werschner, DESY, Notkestr. 85, 22603 Hamburg 52. E-mail [email protected] DESY tackles physics in a rarefied atmosphere 29 Italy: Loredana Rum or Anna Pennacchietti, INFN, Caselia Postale 56, 00044 Frascati, Roma Unravelling problems in rare physics United Kingdom: Su Lockley, Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Chilton, Didcot, Oxfordshire 0X11OQX. E-mail [email protected] USA/Canada: Janice Voss, Creative Mailing Services, P.O. Box 1147, People 34 St Charles, Illinois 60174. Tel. 630-377-1589. Fax 630-377-1569 Published by: European Laboratory for Particle Physics, CERN, Recruitment 40 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland. Tel. +41 (22) 767 6111 Telefax +41 (22) 767 65 55 USA: Controlled Circulation Periodicals postage paid at St Charles, Illinois Printed by: Warners (Midlands) pic, Bourne, Lincolnshire, UK ©2001 CERN ISSN 0304-288X Cover: Higgstogram- a candidate Higgs event seen by the L3 detector at CERN's LEP electron-positron collider. For the history of LEP's final year of operation, see p25. CERN Courier March 2001 3 Multichannel GS/s data acquisition systems used For more information, to be expensive. They also would fill up entire visit our Web site at www.acqiris.com instrument racks with power-hungry electronics. But no more. We have shrunk the size, lowered 1) Rackmount kit available the cost, reduced the power consumption and incorporated exceptional features such as clock synchronization and complete trigger distribution.1^ A single crate (no bigger than a desktop PC) can house up to 24 channels at 500MS/S or 1 GS/s when deploying an embedded processor, or up to It CCIl I' 28 channels (14 at 2GS/s) using a PCI interface. NEWS CERN Data Grid project gets EU funding Plans for the next genera­ queries on the data, includ­ tion of network-based ing the effect of dynamic information-handling sys­ usage patterns. A generic tems took a major step interface to various mass forward when the European storage management sys­ Union's Fifth Framework tems in use at different Grid Information Society sites will also be provided. Technologies programme The objective of the concluded negotiations to -fabric management work fund the Data Grid research package is to develop new and development project. automated system The project was submitted management techniques. to the EU by a consortium This will enable the deploy­ of 21 bodies involved in a ment of very large variety of sciences, from computing fabrics con­ high-energy physics to structed from tens of Earth observation and An initiative to build a prototype computer grid infrastructure for handling the thousands of mass-market biology, as well as data produced by experiments at CERN's LHC collider is well under way. Only components, with reduced computer sciences and one Tier 1 centre is shown here, but in fact there will be Tier 1 centres in systems administration and industry. CERN is the lead­ France, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK, with two or more Tier 2 regional operations costs. All ing and coordinating centres elsewhere in each country. A number of Tier 3 centres will be aspects of management partner in the project. implemented at university campus level, while Tier 4 centres will be located will be covered, from sys­ Starting from this year, inside research departments. tem installation and the Data Grid project will configuration through moni­ receive in excess of €9.8 million for three dedicated to data management and data toring, alarms and troubleshooting. years to develop middleware (software) to replication; WP 4, which will look at computing WP 8 aims to deploy and run distributed deploy applications on widely distributed fabric management; and WP 8, which will deal simulation, reconstruction and analysis computing systems. In addition to receiving with high-energy physics applications. Most of programs using Grid technology.This EU support, the enterprise is being substan­ the resources for WP 8 will come from the four package is central to the project because it tially underwritten by funding agencies from a major LHC experimental collaborations: is among those that enable the large-scale number of CERN's member states. Due to the ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb. testing of the middleware being developed large volume of data that it will produce, Other work will cover areas such as work­ by the other work package groups and it CERN's LHC collider will be an important load management (coordinated by the INFN provides the user requirements that drive the component of the Data Grid (June 2000 pl7) in Italy), monitoring and mass storage (coor­ definition of the architecture of the project. As far as CERN is concerned, this dinated in the UK by the PPARC funding Dozens of physicists, mostly from Europe, will programme of work will integrate well
Recommended publications
  • CERN Courier–Digital Edition
    CERNMarch/April 2021 cerncourier.com COURIERReporting on international high-energy physics WELCOME CERN Courier – digital edition Welcome to the digital edition of the March/April 2021 issue of CERN Courier. Hadron colliders have contributed to a golden era of discovery in high-energy physics, hosting experiments that have enabled physicists to unearth the cornerstones of the Standard Model. This success story began 50 years ago with CERN’s Intersecting Storage Rings (featured on the cover of this issue) and culminated in the Large Hadron Collider (p38) – which has spawned thousands of papers in its first 10 years of operations alone (p47). It also bodes well for a potential future circular collider at CERN operating at a centre-of-mass energy of at least 100 TeV, a feasibility study for which is now in full swing. Even hadron colliders have their limits, however. To explore possible new physics at the highest energy scales, physicists are mounting a series of experiments to search for very weakly interacting “slim” particles that arise from extensions in the Standard Model (p25). Also celebrating a golden anniversary this year is the Institute for Nuclear Research in Moscow (p33), while, elsewhere in this issue: quantum sensors HADRON COLLIDERS target gravitational waves (p10); X-rays go behind the scenes of supernova 50 years of discovery 1987A (p12); a high-performance computing collaboration forms to handle the big-physics data onslaught (p22); Steven Weinberg talks about his latest work (p51); and much more. To sign up to the new-issue alert, please visit: http://comms.iop.org/k/iop/cerncourier To subscribe to the magazine, please visit: https://cerncourier.com/p/about-cern-courier EDITOR: MATTHEW CHALMERS, CERN DIGITAL EDITION CREATED BY IOP PUBLISHING ATLAS spots rare Higgs decay Weinberg on effective field theory Hunting for WISPs CCMarApr21_Cover_v1.indd 1 12/02/2021 09:24 CERNCOURIER www.
    [Show full text]
  • Supergravity and Its Legacy Prelude and the Play
    Supergravity and its Legacy Prelude and the Play Sergio FERRARA (CERN – LNF INFN) Celebrating Supegravity at 40 CERN, June 24 2016 S. Ferrara - CERN, 2016 1 Supergravity as carved on the Iconic Wall at the «Simons Center for Geometry and Physics», Stony Brook S. Ferrara - CERN, 2016 2 Prelude S. Ferrara - CERN, 2016 3 In the early 1970s I was a staff member at the Frascati National Laboratories of CNEN (then the National Nuclear Energy Agency), and with my colleagues Aurelio Grillo and Giorgio Parisi we were investigating, under the leadership of Raoul Gatto (later Professor at the University of Geneva) the consequences of the application of “Conformal Invariance” to Quantum Field Theory (QFT), stimulated by the ongoing Experiments at SLAC where an unexpected Bjorken Scaling was observed in inclusive electron- proton Cross sections, which was suggesting a larger space-time symmetry in processes dominated by short distance physics. In parallel with Alexander Polyakov, at the time in the Soviet Union, we formulated in those days Conformal invariant Operator Product Expansions (OPE) and proposed the “Conformal Bootstrap” as a non-perturbative approach to QFT. S. Ferrara - CERN, 2016 4 Conformal Invariance, OPEs and Conformal Bootstrap has become again a fashionable subject in recent times, because of the introduction of efficient new methods to solve the “Bootstrap Equations” (Riccardo Rattazzi, Slava Rychkov, Erik Tonni, Alessandro Vichi), and mostly because of their role in the AdS/CFT correspondence. The latter, pioneered by Juan Maldacena, Edward Witten, Steve Gubser, Igor Klebanov and Polyakov, can be regarded, to some extent, as one of the great legacies of higher dimensional Supergravity.
    [Show full text]
  • CERN Celebrates Discoveries
    INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HIGH-ENERGY PHYSICS CERN COURIER VOLUME 43 NUMBER 10 DECEMBER 2003 CERN celebrates discoveries NEW PARTICLES NETWORKS SPAIN Protons make pentaquarks p5 Measuring the digital divide pl7 Particle physics thrives p30 16 KPH impact 113 KPH impact series VISyN High Voltage Power Supplies When the objective is to measure the almost immeasurable, the VISyN-Series is the detector power supply of choice. These multi-output, card based high voltage power supplies are stable, predictable, and versatile. VISyN is now manufactured by Universal High Voltage, a world leader in high voltage power supplies, whose products are in use in every national laboratory. For worldwide sales and service, contact the VISyN product group at Universal High Voltage. Universal High Voltage Your High Voltage Power Partner 57 Commerce Drive, Brookfield CT 06804 USA « (203) 740-8555 • Fax (203) 740-9555 www.universalhv.com Covering current developments in high- energy physics and related fields worldwide CERN Courier (ISSN 0304-288X) is distributed to member state governments, institutes and laboratories affiliated with CERN, and to their personnel. It is published monthly, except for January and August, in English and French editions. The views expressed are CERN not necessarily those of the CERN management. Editor Christine Sutton CERN, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland E-mail: [email protected] Fax:+41 (22) 782 1906 Web: cerncourier.com COURIER Advisory Board R Landua (Chairman), P Sphicas, K Potter, E Lillest0l, C Detraz, H Hoffmann, R Bailey
    [Show full text]
  • Sensitivity Study and First Prototype Tests for the CHIPS Neutrino
    Sensitivity study and first prototype tests for the CHIPS neutrino detector R&D program Maciej Marek Pfützner University College London Submitted to University College London in fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy July 20, 2018 1 2 Declaration I, Maciej Marek Pfützner confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. Maciej Pfützner 3 4 Abstract CHIPS (CHerenkov detectors In mine PitS) is an R&D project aiming to develop novel cost-effective detectors for long baseline neutrino oscillation experiments. Water Cherenkov detector modules will be submerged in an existing lake in the path of an accelerator neutrino beam, eliminating the need for expensive excavation. In a staged approach, the first detectors will be deployed in a flooded mine pit in northern Minnesota, 7 mrad off-axis from the existing NuMI beam. A small proof-of-principle model (CHIPS-M) has already been tested and the first stage of a fully functional 10 kt module (CHIPS-10) is planned for 2018. The main physics aim is to measure the CP-violating neutrino mixing phase (δCP). A sensitivity study was performed with the GLoBES package, using results from a dedicated detector simulation and a preliminary reconstruction algorithm. The predicted physics reach of CHIPS-10 and potential bigger modules is presented and compared with currently running experiments and future projects. One of the instruments submerged on board CHIPS-M in autumn 2015 was a prototype detection unit, constructed at Nikhef.
    [Show full text]
  • A Mislivec, Minerva Coherent
    Charged Current Coherent Pion Production in MINERνA Aaron Mislivec University of Rochester w/ Aaron Higuera Outline • Motivation • MINERνA Detector and Kinematics Reconstruction • Event Selection • Background Tuning • Contribution from Diffractive Scattering off Hydrogen • Systematics • Cross Sections Aaron Mislivec, University of Rochester NuInt14 2 K. HIRAIDE et al. PHYSICAL REVIEW D 78, 112004 (2008) 100 TABLE III. Event selection summary for the MRD-stopped DATA charged current coherent pion sample. CC coherent π Event selection Data MC Coherent % CC resonant π Signal BG Efficiency Other Generated in SciBar fid.vol. 1939 156 766 100% CC QE 50 SciBar-MRD matched 30 337 978 29 359 50.4% MRD-stopped 21 762 715 20 437 36.9% two-track 5939 358 6073 18.5% Entries / 5 degrees Particle ID (" %) 2255 292 2336 15.1% Vertex activityþ cut 887 264 961 13.6% CCQE rejection 682 241 709 12.4% 0 0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180 Pion track direction cut 425 233 451 12.0% Reconstructed Q2 cut 247 201 228 10.4% ∆θp (degrees) FIG. 11 (color online). Á for the " % events in the MRD p þ stopped sample after fitting. which the track angle of the pion candidate with respect to the beam direction is less than 90 degrees are selected. Figure 13 shows the reconstructed Q2 distribution for the " % events after the pion track direction cut. Althoughþ a charged current quasielastic interaction is as- DATA 80 sumed, the Q2 of charged current coherent pion events is CC coherent π reconstructed with a resolution of 0:016 GeV=c 2 and a CC resonant π 2 ð Þ 60 shift of 0:024 GeV=c according to the MC simulation.
    [Show full text]
  • A Time of Great Growth
    Newsletter | Spring 2019 A Time of Great Growth Heartfelt greetings from the UC Riverside Department of Physics and Astronomy. This is our annual newsletter, sent out each Spring to stay connected with our former students, retired faculty, and friends in the wider community. The Department continues to grow, not merely in size but also in stature and reputation. For the 2018-2019 academic year, we were pleased to welcome two new faculty: Professors Thomas Kuhlman and Barry Barish. Professor Kuhlman was previously on the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He joins our efforts in the emerging field of biophysics. His research lies in the quantitative imaging and theoretical modeling of biological systems. He works on genome dynamics, quantification of the activity of transposable elements in living cells, and applications to the engineering of genome editing. Professor Barry Barish, who joins us from Caltech, is the winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics. He brings great prestige to our Department. Along with Professor Richard Schrock of the Department of Chemistry, who also joined UCR in 2018, UCR now has two Nobel Prize winners on its faculty. Professor Barish is an expert on the detection and physics of gravitational waves. He has been one of the key figures in the conception, construction, and operation of the LIGO detector, where gravitational waves were first discovered in 2015, and which led to his Nobel Prize. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the winner of many other prestigious awards. The discovery of gravitational waves is one of the most exciting developments in physics so far this century.
    [Show full text]
  • The WITCH Experiment: Towards Weak Interactions Studies. Status And
    Noname manuscript No. (will be inserted by the editor) V.Yu. Kozlov⋆ · M. Beck · S. Coeck · M. Herbane · I.S. Kraev · N. Severijns · F. Wauters · P. Delahaye · A. Herlert · F. Wenander · D. Z´akouck´y · (ISOLDE, NIPNET and TRAPSPEC collaborations) The WITCH Experiment: towards weak interactions studies. Status and prospects Received: date / Accepted: date Abstract Primary goal of the WITCH experiment is to test the Standard Model for a possible ad- mixture of a scalar or tensor type interaction in β-decay. This information will be inferred from the shape of the recoil energy spectrum. The experimental set-up was completed and is under intensive commissioning at ISOLDE (CERN). It combines a Penning trap to store the ions and a retardation spectrometer to probe the recoil ion energy. A brief overview of the WITCH set-up and the results of commissioning tests performed until now are presented. Finally, perspectives of the physics program are reviewed. Keywords Weak interactions · Penning trap · Retardation spectrometer PACS 23.40.Bw · 24.80.+y · 29.25.Rm · 29.30.Ep 1 Introduction The most general interaction Hamiltonian for nuclear β-decay which includes all possible interaction types consistent with Lorentz-invariance [1,2] contains 5 different terms, so-called Scalar (S), Vector (V), Tensor (T), Axial-Vector (A) and Pseudoscalar (P) contributions. The Standard Model (SM) of the weak interaction excepts only V and A interactions which leads to the well-known V − A structure arXiv:nucl-ex/0701007v1 4 Jan 2007 of the weak interaction. However, the presence of scalar and tensor types of weak interaction is today ruled out only to the level of about 8% of the V- and A-interactions [3].
    [Show full text]
  • Dual Fields and E {11}
    KCL-MTH-06-14 hep-th/0612001 Dual fields and E11 Fabio Riccioni and Peter West Department of Mathematics King’s College, London WC2R 2LS, UK Abstract We show that the adjoint representation of E11 contains generators corresponding to the infinite possible dual descriptions of the bosonic on-shell degrees of freedom of eleven dimensional supergravity. We also give an interpretation for the fields corresponding to many of the other generators in the adjoint representation. arXiv:hep-th/0612001v1 1 Dec 2006 1 A few years ago it was conjectured [1] that a rank eleven Kac-Moody algebra, which was called E11, was a symmetry of M theory. The non-linear realisation of this algebra at its lowest levels was shown to contain the fields of eleven dimensional supergravity and to have the equations of motion of this theory [1] when one made use of the earlier results of reference [2]. The physical field content is extracted by decomposing the adjoint representation of E11 into the representations of its A10, or Sl(11), sub-algebra which is associated in the non-linear realisation with eleven dimensional gravity. Non-linear realisations of E11 can also be used to describe ten dimensional theories, but in this case the adjoint representation is decomposed into representations of A9, or Sl(10), associated with ten dimensional gravity. There are only two such A9 subalgebras and the two different choices were found to lead to non-linear realisations which at low levels are the IIA and IIB supergravity theories in references [1] and [3] respectively. It is striking to examine tables of the generators [4] listed in terms of increasing level and see how the generators associated with the field content of the IIA and IIB supergravity theories occupy precisely all the lower levels before an infinite sea of generators whose physical significance was unknown at the time the tables of reference [4] were constructed.
    [Show full text]
  • The History of Neutrinos, 1930 − 1985
    The History of Neutrinos, 1930 − 1985. What have we Learned About Neutrinos? What have we Learned Using Neutrinos? J. Steinberger Prepared for “25th International Conference On Neutrino Physics and Astrophysics”, Kyoto (Japan), June 2012 1 2 3 4 The detector of the experiment of Conversi, Pancini and Piccioni, 1946, 5 which showed that the mesotron is not the Yukawa particle. Detector with 80 Geiger counters. The muon decay spectrum is continuous. My thesis experiment, under Fermi, which showed that the muon decays into two neutral particles, plus the electron. Fermi, myself and others, in 1954, at a summer school in Varenna, lake Como, a few months before Fermi’s untimely disappearance. 6 Demonstration of the Neutrino In 1956 Cowan and Reines detected antineutrinos from a nuclear reactor, reacting with protons in liquid scintillator which also contained cadmium, observing the positron as well as the scattering of the neutron on cadmium. 7 The Electron and Muon Neutrinos are Different. 1. G. Feinberg, 1958. 2. B. Pontecorvo, 1959. 3. M. Schwartz (T.D. Lee), 1959 4. Higher energy accelerators, Courant, Livingston and Snyder. Pontecorvo 8 9 A C B D Spark chamber and counter arrangement. A are triggering counters, Energy spectra of neutrinos B, C and D are anticoincidence counters from pion and kaon decays. 10 Event with penetrating muon and hadron shower 11 The group of the 2nd neutrino experiment in 1962: J.S., Goulianos, Gaillard, Mistry, Danby, technician whose name I have forgotten, Lederman and Schwartz. 12 Same group, 26 years later, at Nobel ceremony in Stockholm. 13 Discovery of partons, nucleon structure, scaling, in deep inelastic scattering of electrons on protons at SLAC in 1969.
    [Show full text]
  • Lectures on D-Branes
    CPHT/CL-615-0698 hep-th/9806199 Lectures on D-branes Constantin P. Bachas1 Centre de Physique Th´eorique, Ecole Polytechnique 91128 Palaiseau, FRANCE [email protected] ABSTRACT This is an introduction to the physics of D-branes. Topics cov- ered include Polchinski’s original calculation, a critical assessment of some duality checks, D-brane scattering, and effective worldvol- ume actions. Based on lectures given in 1997 at the Isaac Newton Institute, Cambridge, at the Trieste Spring School on String The- ory, and at the 31rst International Symposium Ahrenshoop in Buckow. arXiv:hep-th/9806199v2 17 Jan 1999 June 1998 1Address after Sept. 1: Laboratoire de Physique Th´eorique, Ecole Normale Sup´erieure, 24 rue Lhomond, 75231 Paris, FRANCE, email : [email protected] Lectures on D-branes Constantin Bachas 1 Foreword Referring in his ‘Republic’ to stereography – the study of solid forms – Plato was saying : ... for even now, neglected and curtailed as it is, not only by the many but even by professed students, who can suggest no use for it, never- theless in the face of all these obstacles it makes progress on account of its elegance, and it would not be astonishing if it were unravelled. 2 Two and a half millenia later, much of this could have been said for string theory. The subject has progressed over the years by leaps and bounds, despite periods of neglect and (understandable) criticism for lack of direct experimental in- put. To be sure, the construction and key ingredients of the theory – gravity, gauge invariance, chirality – have a firm empirical basis, yet what has often catalyzed progress is the power and elegance of the underlying ideas, which look (at least a posteriori) inevitable.
    [Show full text]
  • Cornell Gets a New Chair
    PEOPLE APPOINTMENTS & AWARDS Cornell gets a new chair Two prominent accelerator physicists and Cornell alumni, Helen T Edwards and her husband, Donald A Edwards, have endowed a chair in accelerator physics at Cornell.The chair is named after Boyce D McDaniel, pro­ fessor emeritus at Cornell. The first holder of the new chair is David L Rubin, professor of physics and director of accelerator physics at Cornell.The donors David Rubin is the first incumbent of the new Boyce McDaniel Chair of Physics at Cornell, asked that the new professorship should be endowed by Helen and Donald Edwards. The chair is named after Boyce D McDaniel. Left awarded to a Cornell faculty member whose to right: Boyce McDaniel, Donald Edwards, David Rubin, Helen Edwards and Maury Tigner, discipline is particle-beam physics and who director of Cornell's Laboratory of Nuclear Studies. would teach both graduate and undergradu­ ate students in addition to doing research. McDaniel, a previous director of nuclear ingthe commissioning of the Main Ring at Helen Edwards is a 1957 graduate of science at Cornell, was Helen Edwards' thesis Fermilab and providing advice for numerous Cornell, where she also earned her PhD in adviser. Initially a graduate student at Cornell, accelerator projects throughout the US, in 1966. She works at Fermilab and at DESY in he left during the Second World War to join the addition to his notable contributions to the Germany. She played a prominent role in the Manhattan Project and returned to complete accelerator and elementary particle physics construction of Fermilab'sTevatron and has his PhD, joining the faculty in 1946.
    [Show full text]
  • Vol25-Issue6.Pdf
    Vancouver Accelerator Conference Michael Craddock, Chairman of the Conference, and Accelerator Research Division Head at the TRIUMF Laboratory gives the opening address at the 1985 Particle Accelerator Conference in Vancouver. He and his colleagues are to be congratulated on the very smooth organization of such a large gathering. Anyone who contends that particle physics is conducted in an ivory tower, not contributing to other fields of science or to humanity at large, should have attended the 1985 Particle Accelerator Confer­ ence in Vancouver. Over a thou­ sand participants contributed 781 papers and only a fraction were actually related to accelerators for nigh energy physics. The majority of present developments are in the service of other fields of science, for alternative power sources, for medicine, for industrial applica­ tions, etc. Nevertheless, it is the spur of high energy physics that has dri­ ven accelerator technology along. As Burt Richter pointed out, in some fifty years since the first Cockcroft-Walton accelerators were built, accelerator physicists have increased peak machine energies by a factor of a million and have reduced the cost per GeV by a factor of over ten thou­ larly the machine diameter. ing problems, good cooling and sand. Conference Chairman Mike Though there are variants - with straightforward \)raddock rejoiced in his opening such as two-in-one (both beam ap­ manufacturing processes. Address that the contributions of ertures in a single yoke) or one-in- Paul Reardon reported on the al­ the accelerator community had one designs - there are essentially ternative high field type for which been so significantly recognized at two basic magnet types now un­ the initially separate proposals of the end of the last year with the der consideration.
    [Show full text]