U.S. and CERN Sign LHC Agreement

Volume 21 Friday, January 9, 1998 Number 1 f INSIDE U.S. and CERN 4 Near-Beam Physics Sign LHC Agreement 6 Dear Mr. Ellis 8 Profiles in Particle Physics: American scientists, Treaty Room, CERN Director- Chuck Marofske including many from General Chris Llewellyn Smith Fermilab, will help posed a question. 9 Electrical Accident “By ‘Large Event,’” he build the Large 10 Banners wondered, “do you think Hadron Collider they mean the Higgs?” in Europe. Whether or not the new Large Hadron By Judy Jackson, Office Collider to be built at of Public Affairs CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle As they cleared Physics in Geneva, security at the entrance to ultimately identifies the Old Executive Office an event containing Building across the street the putative mass- from the White House, guests conferring particle CERN Photo and dignitaries bound for the called the Higgs December 8 signing ceremony Simulation of a boson, the for the Large Hadron Collider Higgs boson decay. ceremony donned mandatory plastic ID tags confirming stamped with the words “Large U.S. participation Event.” Looking around at the tags in the project was adorning the veritable Who’s Who of definitely a Large Event. U.S. particle physics and Washington science hands filling the ornate Indian continued on page 2 NSF Director Neal Lane, Secretary of Energy Federico Peña, CERN Council President Luciano Maiani and CERN Director-General Chris Llewellyn Smith immediately after signing the LHC agreement in the Indian Treaty Room. DOE Photo be delivered to CERN, will total $531 million over eight years, with $450 million coming from the Department of Energy and the remaining $81 million from NSF. In fiscal year 1998, Congress appropriated $35 million for LHC work. When experiments begin in another decade, about 25 percent of American experimental particle physicists say they plan to collaborate on experiments at the LHC. Physics without borders Llewellyn Smith cited the universality and openness of science as a reason that scientific research should be carried out in international collaborations, not hemmed in by borders or cultures. “The signature today of the cooperation agreement between the United States of CERN Photo America and CERN is an historic event,” he said. “It is an important step towards the first- CERN’s Director-General LHC Signing Christopher Llewellyn ever global collaboration in a large scientific Smith in the tunnel that continued from page 1 construction project. American participation in will hold the LHC. the Large Hadron Collider will inject a wealth An unprecedented partnership of scientific experience, excellence and characteristic exuberance into the project.” In what they all described as an historic The LHC, whose total price tag will act of international scientific collaboration, equal about $6 billion, will occupy an existing U.S. Secretary of Energy Federico Peña, 16-mile tunnel that currently holds the Large “ American National Science Foundation Director Neal Electron-Positron Collider. The LHC’s collision Lane, CERN Council President Luciano energy of 14 TeV will be seven times higher participation in Maiani and Llewellyn Smith signed an than that currently achieved at the Tevatron. agreement under which the U.S. will help Its energy will reach a scale at which physicists the Large Hadron build the new accelerator and two of its believe they may find the answers to associated detectors. When it begins operating fundamental questions about the origins of Collider will sometime after the year 2005, the LHC will particle mass. They hope the LHC may also take over the energy frontier from Fermilab’s offer a pathway to physics beyond the well- inject a wealth Tevatron, currently the world’s highest-energy worn Standard Model, the current theoretical particle accelerator. picture of particle interactions. of scientific Although international collaboration has long been a hallmark of particle physics, with Fermilab, the LHC and experience, scientists from many nations getting together the future to build detectors and operate experiments, excellence and U.S. participation in the LHC will have the new agreement calls for unprecedented important consequences for Fermilab. The worldwide partnership in the construction of an characteristic Technical Division’s Jim Strait is the project accelerator itself, traditionally the responsibility manager for the U.S. contribution to the of the host country. exuberance into accelerator, leading a collaboration that includes “When we sign this agreement,” Peña said, Brookhaven, Lawrence Berkeley and Fermilab. “it will mark the first time the U.S. government the project.” Much of the R&D and fabrication for advanced has agreed to contribute significantly to the superconducting quadrupole magnets for the construction, through domestically produced- ~ Christopher accelerator’s interaction regions will take place hardware and technical resources, of an in Fermilab’s Technical Division. Llewellyn Smith accelerator outside of our borders.” In addition, in 1997, officials of DOE Besides CERN’s 19 European member and NSF asked Fermilab to oversee project states, which for over 40 years have chipped in management for the CMS detector, one of the to build and operate the high-energy physics LHC’s two major detectors. Fermilab is the facilities at the laboratory, several non-member host laboratory for U.S. CMS, for which states—including the U.S., Canada, Japan, Fermilab physicist Dan Green is technical India and Israel—have agreed to contribute to director. the new LHC collider and detectors. The U.S. “Physics is a discipline without national contribution, largely in the form of accelerator borders,” Green said. “Since the possibility of and detector components built in the U.S. to basic discoveries in particle physics is large at 2 FermiNews January 9, 1998 CERN Photo the energy frontier, it is vitally important that Computer simulation of the LHC as it will appear in the tunnel that currently U.S. physicists have the opportunity to houses CERN’s Large Electron-Positron Collider. participate as full partners in the LHC adventure. The recent agreement between CERN and the U.S. ensures that partnership.” At Fermilab’s Technical Although it might seem puzzling that Division, Fermilab Fermilab would welcome the opportunity to engineer Jim Kerby help build the accelerator that will one day explains the progress of supersede the Tevatron, Laboratory scientists work on high-gradient LHC quadrupole #1 to hailed the signing ceremony as a landmark in CERN’s Win Middelkoop international cooperation that will benefit not and Lyn Evans, and only particle physics research but Fermilab itself. Brookhaven’s Mike “Collaborating with CERN on LHC is Harrison. U.S. LHC good for Fermilab because it is good for accelerator Project science,” Strait said. “The science of LHC is Manager Jim Strait compelling, and we can help ensure that it is looks on. done more quickly, through our work on the accelerator, and better, through our work on CMS. Our work on LHC keeps Fermilab and the U.S. high-energy physics community deeply involved in the physics at the energy frontier, Photo by Fred Ullrich and our work on the detector and accelerator Purdue University will help keep our technological abilities at the physicist Sergei Medved forefront. This will help make us a credible host works on a piece of a for the construction of a future higher-energy piece of the CMS collider. The only way such large facilities can be detector in Fermilab’s built is by worldwide collaboration, and our Lab 7. contribution to the construction of the LHC will help establish the principle and habit of accelerator builders working together across international boundaries.” However, the path to a future U.S. accelerator is by no means certain. Although they repeatedly cited the LHC agreement as an excellent precedent in global collaboration and a model for other fields, both European and U.S. officials were careful to avoid establishing any quid pro quo for future accelerator construction. In response to a reporter’s question whether Europe is now committed to support U.S. high-energy physics facilities in the future, Photo by Reidar Hahn continued on page 11 FermiNews January 9, 1998 3 George Matthiae, of the University of Rome, was a pioneer in the development of the Roman pot, one of the first devices to be used in detecting events near circulating beams. Photo by Reidar Hahn A recent symposium brought together accelerator experts and experimenters to start talking about Near-Beam Physics by Sharon Butler, Office of Public Affairs “ Near-beam” Close to the beam lie physical events Close by that scientists are eager to probe—like events Carrigan says that the term “near-beam refers to involving b quarks and the bound states of physics” was just a phrase the organizers of the b quarks and antiquarks called B mesons. Here, symposium “pulled out of a hat.” It refers to the domain scientists are exploring a fundamental question: the domain of high-energy physics experiments why the universe holds more matter than where particle detectors work only fractions of of high-energy antimatter. an inch from a circulating accelerator beam. Close to the beam, too, physicists also In recent years, the pursuit of this kind of physics explore the collisions of proton and antiprotons physics took off when silicon vertex detectors slightly nudged out of line, as little pieces of were introduced. With a particle beam shooting experiments protons called pomerons bump into quarks and by only an inch or so from these detectors, gluons. physicists have been able to measure the where particle But cozying up to the beam can be displaced vertex associated with b quark decays. hazardous. Stick a precious silicon vertex “People got more and more interested in detectors work detector too close and it might just get blasted, seeing how close to the beam they could get,” suffering irreversible radiation damage.

Load more