Report on ECFA Activities

Transcription

1 CERN/SPC/1094 Original: English 14 September 2017 ORGANISATION EUROPÉENNE POUR LA RECHERCHE NUCLÉAIRE CERN EUROPEAN ORGANIZATION FOR NUCLEAR RESEARCH Action to be taken For information For information SCIENTIFIC POLICY COMMITTEE 305 th Meeting 25 and 26 September 2017 COUNCIL 186 th Session 28 and 29 September 2017 Voting Procedure - - Report on ECFA Activities

2 CERN/SPC/ Report on ECFA Activities September August Dates of Plenary and Restricted ECFA Meetings Since the last ECFA report in the European Strategy Session of Council in September 2016, only one Plenary ECFA (PECFA) meeting took place as listed below. Traditionally, the year that the European Physical Society (EPS) High Energy Physics (HEP) Conference takes place, instead of the summer PECFA meeting, ECFA and the High Energy and Particle Physics Panel (HEPP) of the EPS jointly organize a plenary session on an agreed upon topic. In 2017, the session was dedicated to Particle Physics and Society - Extending our Vision and Reach. The agenda and links to the presentations are provided below: th Plenary ECFA - CERN, 24 Nov November 2016, - Joint Plenary ECFA and EPS-HEPP session - Venice, 8 July 2017, During the same period, Restricted ECFA (RECFA) visited the following countries: Bulgaria March 2017, Belgium April 2017, Finland May 2017, The visit programmes and content of the open sessions are accessible through the provided links. Additional RECFA meetings took place on 30 September 2016, on 24 November 2016, prior to the PECFA meeting, and on 8 July 2017, prior to the ECFA and EPS-HEPP sessions. An exceptional RECFA meeting was called on 30 September 2016 in order to discuss the programme of the planned ECFA and EPS-HEPP sessions at the Vienna EPS Conference and to select members of the Detector R&D panel to be endorsed by the 100 th PECFA in November.

3 2 CERN/SPC/ The 100 th Plenary ECFA meeting The 100 th PECFA meeting in November 2016 covered the usual status reports by the directors of CERN, DESY and Frascati, reports on the activities of the International Particle Physics Outreach Group and the status of the ECFA linear collider physics and detector studies. The agenda also included the mid-term reports from the Netherlands and from Slovakia. The traditional physics session was dedicated to the status of neutrino studies at accelerators and prospects for future measurements (M. Lindner, MPI for Nuclear Physics, Heidelberg). The discussion centred on experimental challenges in achieving the full potential of long-baseline projects (D. Duchesneau, CNRS-LAPP, Annecy). The delicate interplay between the determination of cross sections for various neutrino interactions on nuclei and the oscillation parameters was highlighted (F. Sanchez, IFAE, Barcelona). Prospects for sterile neutrino searches were summarized by A. Vacheret (Oxford University). The usual report of the Detector R&D Panel was replaced by a fascinating report on the developments of high temperature superconducting coils and of the structural design of high field magnets for future colliders (Gijs de Rijk, CERN). This was followed by reports on two meetings, the 3 rd ECFA Workshop on High Luminosity LHC experiments (K. Einsweiler, LBNL, Berkeley) and The Physics Beyond Colliders kick-off meeting (C. Vallée, CPP, Marseille). The former took place October 3-6, 2016 in Aix-les-Bains and the report mainly focused on the design of detectors able to withstand the challenges of high pile-up and high radiation levels. The latter took place September 6-7, 2016 at CERN with the aim to generate new ideas to advance science with the existing CERN infrastructure. From the area of astroparticle physics, M. De Jong (Nikhef, Amsterdam) presented the status of preparations of the KM3NeT underwater neutrino telescope to be deployed in the deep waters of the Mediterranean Sea. Beyond the science of high energy neutrino sources in the Universe and neutrino mass hierarchy, the project has important synergies with Earth and Sea Science as a permanent observatory of deep-sea events. 1.2 ECFA and EPS-HEPP common session in Venice During the EPS-HEP conference in Venice, the plenary session jointly organized by ECFA and EPS-HEPP was dedicated to contributions of the HEP community to the well-being of society. The presentation on Medipix by M. Campbell (CERN and Glasgow) covered applications of pixel detectors in medical imaging, X-ray histology, space dosimetry, art, education and in research. J. Schippers from PSI discussed the progress in application of hadron therapy in cancer treatment. The number of facilities in the world increased by almost a factor two since the early 2000s and today almost half of them are hospital based. The tendency is to move towards smaller installations based on high magnetic field (8T to 10T) synchro-cyclotrons. I. Bird (CERN) and G. Stewart (Glasgow) covered the challenges of big data and the need for parallel processing in HEP. It is always staggering to realize anew the enormity of the challenges faced by the HEP community. It seems that we are not alone anymore and projects such as the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) face the same challenges. It is estimated that the science needs will exceed by a factor 10 the progress in technology. New computing models are being worked out, whereby clouds may turn into lakes! The role of the HEP Software Foundation (HSF) is to facilitate internationally coordination and common efforts in HEP software and computing. G. Bonomi (INFN, Pavia) discussed the use of cosmic radiation for muon tomography with applications in inspections of large volumes such as volcanoes and

4 CERN/SPC/ blast furnaces, geological inspections, monitoring of nuclear waste, detection of hidden nuclear materials, monitoring of stability and many others. He reminded the audience that in 1970 L. W. Alvarez made a cosmic-ray radiography of the Chephren pyramid looking for hidden chambers and finding none (Science 167 (1970) 832). The session ended with a presentation by P. Di Nezza (INFN, Frascati) on various educational programmes for highschool students conducted in Frascati, in particular with the use of the beam test facility, with similarities to programmes existing at other European laboratories. The impact of these efforts may be measured by the fact that throughout most of Western Europe more than 50% of the population expresses interest in science and technology. The session was going to be completed by a presentation on the use of light sources in advancing material science and microbiology; unfortunately the speaker had to cancel the trip to Venice due to medical emergency in the family. 2. Country visits of RECFA 2.1 Bulgaria March 2017 The meeting hosted by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Bulgaria took place in the Radisson Blu Grand Hotel in Sofia. There are 7.1 million inhabitants in Bulgaria, the GDP (PPP) per capita is 6 keur, 4% of the GDP is invested in education and about 1% of the GDP is dedicated to R&D. The organization of the Bulgarian particle physics community is based on two main pillars, the Institute of Nuclear Research and Nuclear Energy (INRNE) of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences and the Atomic Physics Department of the Faculty of Physics at the University of Sofia. The community is focused on activities within the CMS experiment. It has significant contributions to the hadron calorimeter system and the resistive plate chambers (RPC) of the muon system. The community also contributes to the fixed-target programme at CERN. There is a substantial number of physicists that, due to funding limitations, participate as individuals in various other experiments at CERN and elsewhere. The Committee felt that with an appropriate funding scheme and a well thought through road map, the community could concentrate on fewer projects and become a real powerhouse within the international community. The involvement of scientists in the ISOLDE collaboration is long standing but Bulgaria is not a member of the collaboration due to lack of funding and this involvement is mostly personal rather than institutional. Membership of Bulgaria in the ISOLDE collaboration would allow Bulgarian teams to assume more active roles and responsibilities in the experiments. The theoretical physics community is dominated by mathematical physicists, and its interaction with the experimental physics community appears limited. An increased focus on theoretical aspects relevant to the Bulgarian experimental programme could help to revitalize this community.

5 4 CERN/SPC/1094 Excellent technical skills are developed within the INRNE and the University of Sofia. The Committee recommended that these valuable technical skills be maintained and possibly even expanded. To attract new personnel, in particular young people, the modernization of the laboratory s equipment is of the utmost importance. The financial return from CERN to industry is excellent and Bulgaria has for a long time been among the CERN Member States with the highest return. There are plans to develop the RPC technology for medical applications such as positron emission tomography (PET). There is no direct accelerator research in Bulgaria. However, a cyclotron facility is under construction at INRNE to produce medical radioisotopes and radiopharmaceuticals. There are further plans to create a centre for hadron therapy using protons and ions. The Institute of Information and Communication Technologies of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences is providing an impressive computing infrastructure, hardware and software, for use by Bulgarian scientists. Long-term sustainable funding is a stumbling block in the community s research planning. At the ministerial level, there is a proposal for a National Programme for Collaboration with CERN, which would solve the legal issues around the payments associated with Memoranda of Understanding (MoU). The Programme could also promote the participation of Bulgaria in SCOAP3. The Committee recommended that calls by the National Research Agency for funding of individual projects on a competitive basis be issued as regularly as possible to ensure the continuity and stability required for basic research. A systematic decline in the number of PhD students is observed, in spite of a vigorous outreach programme. This can be traced back to unattractive salaries and PhD scholarship grants, as well as lack of funds to modernize the laboratory equipment. The Committee expressed its strong appreciation for the activities of the Bulgarian community and the hope that some of the remarks contained in the final report will help the community to prosper and achieve its ambitious goals. 2.2 Belgium April 2017 The meeting was hosted by the FWO and FNRS funding agencies and took place in the hotel Le Plaza in Brussels. There are 11.3 million inhabitants in Belgium, the GDP (PPP) per capita is 34.5 keur, 6.4% of the GDP is invested in education and almost 2.5% of the GDP is dedicated to R&D. The Committee was very impressed by the well-coordinated and focused experimental programme in Belgium, which has been markedly strengthened by the Interuniversity

6 CERN/SPC/ Attraction Poles programme (IAP). Five Belgian universities are members of the CMS experiment, where their combined contribution has made a highly visible Belgian imprint. During its previous visit to Belgium, the Committee noted that some efforts could be diverted into the fields of flavour and neutrino physics. This has indeed happened, with a significant engagement in the CERN NA62 experiment and with an expanded activity in neutrino physics, including a major international neutrino experiment, SoLid, on Belgian soil. Theoretical activities are carried out in a highly collaborative spirit, both between the theoretical groups at the various universities, and between the theoretical and experimental communities. In the field of nuclear physics, Belgium has a large and well-organized community that is especially active at CERN s ISOLDE facility, where it is among the five largest contributors. The Committee was impressed by the activities on detector research and development work on technologies for particle and nuclear physics. Belgium is planning to build one full outer tracker end-cap for the LHC Phase-2 upgrade. In addition to clean-room infrastructure, this will require many skilled research engineers and technicians. The fact that there is no dedicated funding for permanent research engineers and technicians is worrying. Belgian HEP computing is working very well. While funding for infrastructure is adequate, the GRID membership fee, up to now paid by the abolished BelSpo, must be maintained. The Belgian particle physics community has a very active outreach programme. The Committee expressed appreciation for the training given to PhD students on communication with the public, and for the funding opportunities for innovative outreach programmes. The number of MSc and PhD students has increased in recent years (since the last RECFA visit), as have the number of completed theses. A general concern about future career opportunities in academia was expressed by the younger generation. However, there are many opportunities for graduates and post-graduates in industry, thus enabling knowledge transfer. The Committee was very impressed by the scientific organization and the high level of scientific activities. The community has derived great advantage from the IAP programme, which ends in The programme allowed to foster deeper collaboration among the laboratories. Since it is expected to be replaced by thematic collaborative projects, the Committee recommended considering the potential addition of a national umbrella organization for the community s research. This organization could efficiently address the problem of a dwindling technical staff at the universities by nurturing shared clusters of technical expertise.

7 6 CERN/SPC/ Finland May 2017 The meeting was hosted by the Helsinki Institute of Physics (HIP) and took place at the University of Helsinki. There are 5.5 million inhabitants in Finland, the GDP (PPP) per capita is 34.5 keur, the total public expenditure on education is 6.2% of GDP and 2.9% of the GDP is dedicated to R&D. The pillar of HEP in Finland is HIP that coordinates research at CERN and FAIR at the national level, and provides local laboratory infrastructure. HIP has five member universities (the Universities of Helsinki and Jyväskylä, Aalto University, and the Tampere and Lappeenranta Universities of Technology) and is hosted by the University of Helsinki. The HEP community is focused on three projects at the LHC, the CMS and TOTEM experiments (Helsinki), and the ALICE experiment (Jyväskylä), making important and highly visible contributions to the science and the detectors in each case. The Committee felt that, at this very positive stage of development in the HEP community, it might be advantageous to broaden the scope of the research. The upcoming update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics could be a good time to consider long-range planning for the Finnish HEP community. The overall quality of theoretical activities is broad and excellent. The cooperation between Finnish theorists and experimentalists could be expanded. Finland s nuclear physics activities are well balanced, with a focus on the international flagship projects ISOLDE at CERN and FAIR at Darmstadt, as well as on the national accelerator facility JYFL-ACCLAB at Jyväskylä. Finland plays a strong and internationally recognized role in instrumentation, with strong support from local industry. The instrumentation activities at HIP constitute a bridge between the activities of different universities. Furthermore, they show a remarkable gender balance, with women in the majority in senior positions, and they attract many PhD students from abroad. In the early days of Finland s membership of CERN, the technology transfer and industrial activation network was a strong, well-organized framework, which served as a model to other CERN Member States. The national support for technology transfer and industrial activation has unfortunately ceased, and the industrial return from CERN has declined. In accelerator science, Finland has a highly successful and internationally well positioned research facility at the Jyväskylä Accelerator Laboratory. In Helsinki, the work within the CLIC collaboration has successfully led to novel technologies for high-field acceleration. The Committee encouraged the development of accelerator education for graduate students, which could be jointly conducted by Jyväskylä and Helsinki Universities.

8 CERN/SPC/ The computing facilities available through CSC, the Nordic Grid and PRACE are instrumental in the experimental and theoretical research programmes and are highly visible internationally. The Committee was impressed by the scope of the outreach programme, in particular by the level of coverage of high schools and by the number of high-school pupils and teachers visiting CERN. The Committee greatly appreciated the vital support from the Finnish National Agency for Education for the national CERN high-school network. The community also plays a leading role in promoting open data access, making real data from CERN experiments available to students and to the general public. Future career possibilities are a source of concern to the students. A substantial fraction of young researchers has to leave the field upon completion of their PhD. The fraction of scientists with a doctoral degree conducting research in industry is unusually small. Dedicated activities would appear to be needed to enhance public awareness of the importance of PhD education for society. In conclusion, the Committee found a young and thriving community with a high international impact. The Committee was particularly impressed by the activities of HIP, which result in an excellent research programme with outstanding achievement. The highly positive impact of such a core organization provides a very good example for the organization of HEP in other countries. 3. Supported workshops, studies, schools, panels The third ECFA workshop on High Luminosity LHC Experiments was held 3-7 October 2016 in Aix-les-Bains, France. The organization of the meeting was coordinated by Didier Contardo (CMS, Univ. of Lyon) and Kevin Einsweiler (ATLAS, LBNL). The report from the workshop was presented at the 100 th PECFA meeting at CERN. The highlight of the workshop was the push towards four-dimensional detectors, by adding the timing information. Study on Future Circular Colliders - the third annual meeting of the Future Circular Collider Study took place in Berlin, 29 May - 2 June It was attended by 534 participants, a substantial increase from the previous meeting in Rome. A report is expected at the next PECFA meeting, in November at CERN. The ECFA Linear Collider Workshop - this year it was the turn of the Americas to organize the regional Linear Collider Workshop. It took place on June 2017, in SLAC. A report is expected at the next PECFA meeting, in November at CERN. The International Workshop on Future Linear Colliders took place earlier in the year, on 4-9 December 2016 in Marioka, Japan. The next International Workshop will be hosted by Strasbourg, October The discussion at these workshops is now centred around the physics case of Higgs factories in the linear collider mode. In the spirit of cost cutting, the nominal centre of mass energy for the ILC was lowered from 500 GeV to 250 GeV (ILC250), while CLIC is now considering the option

9 8 CERN/SPC/1094 of starting at 380 GeV. 4. ECFA and international relations ECFA is represented in several international and topical committees through its chairperson. The chairperson represents the interests of the European Particle Physics community and serves as a link between ECFA and a given committee. Within the reporting period the following is worth noting. 4.1 EPS-HEPP Since the last EPS conference in Vienna, the High Energy and Particle Physics Board of the EPS (EPS-HEPP) was chaired by Yves Sirois (Ecole polytechnique). Its main mandate is to coordinate views on research facilities, organize conferences including topical meetings and assist in the coordination of advanced education in the theoretical and experimental physics of elementary particles and fundamental interactions, including particle astrophysics and cosmology. This year the board's activities defined the scientific programme of the EPS conference and selected conveners and plenary speakers. During these series of conferences, there are a number of EPS prizes that are bestowed upon outstanding individuals in the HEP community. Particularly noteworthy this year was the 2017 High Energy and Particle Physics Prize of the EPS for an outstanding contribution to High Energy Physics, which was awarded to Erik H.M. Heijne, Robert Klanner, and Gerhard Lutz for their pioneering contributions to the development of silicon microstrip detectors that revolutionized high-precision tracking and vertexing in high energy physics experiments. The committee elected a new chair of the EPS-HEPP board, Barbara Erazmus from IN2P3, Nantes. 4.2 ICFA The International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA) has as its mission to facilitate international collaboration in the construction and use of accelerators for high energy physics. ICFA was created in 1976 by IUPAP. It is composed of directors of leading international particle physics laboratories and representatives of the world-wide particle physics community. In 2017, ICFA held meetings in Valencia on February 2017, and in Guangzhou, China, on 9 August 2017 during the Lepton-Photon Conference. In the following a selection of news from the ICFA meeting in Valencia is presented. Eleanora Cossi of INFN, Italy, gave a report on behalf of the InterActions collaboration. It has developed documentation by distilling best practices for science laboratories and facilities with advice geared towards directors, CEOs and communications managers. The 16-page document is available at

10 CERN/SPC/ Ariella Cattai reported on the activities of the ICFA instrumentation panel (IP). A similar panel has been created under ECFA and the chair of the ICFA panel will be an ex-officio member. The panel s primary mission has been to educate young people in underprivileged countries as well as those in large experiments through Detector and Instrumentation Schools, in particular in underprivileged or developing countries. A survey conducted among participants of the ICFA schools reveals that the schools are having very good impact in inspiring participating students and on their career decisions. The panel has recently extended its mission to fostering initiation of new consortia on topical R&D using successful examples of RD50 and RD51 at CERN. Cristinel Diaconu reported on the Data Preservation in High Energy Physics (DPHEP) panel activities. Diaconu first summarized the pre-lhc experiments data preservation from various HEP labs in the world and then discussed the LHC data preservation, which is now a specification in the computing models for Phase-1 and Phase-2 upgrades. The LHC open data service was launched in Nov with the first large-scale release of CMS data. A major update is planned for In addition, CERN analysis preservation (CAP) will save the materials and knowledge produced during analysis for future use. A status report by DPHEP collaboration is available at Harvey Newman reported on the Standing Committee on Interregional Connectivity (SCIC) activities. SCIC is working in many countries to close the Digital Divide, and investigates new network concepts and architectures. He showed the anticipated LHC data volumes, challenges that increase with HL-LHC and the need for a common project/vision to develop the next generation computing models for HEP in the context of emerging paradigm of intelligent software defined networks and Exascale science. As reported by the neutrino panel chair, Kenneth Long, the document Roadmap for the international, accelerator-based neutrino programme has been finalized and is available at Jonathan Bagger reported on the planning for the 2017 ICFA seminar to be held in Canada on 6-9 November 2017 at the Shaw Centre in Ottawa. ICFA seminars take place every three years with the aim of bringing together government officials involved in strategic decisions for HEP, representatives of the major funding agencies, the directors of major HEP laboratories, and leading scientists from all of the regions with HEP activity. 4.3 ICFA and LCB matters In Valencia, Tatsuya Nakada, the new Chair of the Linear Collider Board (LCB) summarized the LCB meeting held prior to the ICFA sessions. The working assumption of the LCB is that for any linear collider to be relevant, given the timeline of other projects, the decision should be taken around 2020 so that construction could start around 2025 with first results possibly emerging by 2035, before the end of HL-LHC programme. After presenting a summary of the present proposals for CLIC and ILC and the cost reduction activities on the accelerators side,

11 10 CERN/SPC/1094 Nakada emphasized that in order for the ILC to be discussed during the upcoming update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics, a decision by the Japanese government would be needed by The central goal of the LCB in the near future is to assess the physics case of a 250 GeV Higgs factory, to initiate a dialogue with the community about a staged approach and to understand what would make a phase-one machine affordable. Similar issues were further discussed during the LCB and ICFA meetings in Guangzhou. Jim Brau, the new associate director for Physics and Detectors of the linear collider collaboration, gave an update on the physics case study for the ILC250. Recent emphasis has been on the studies of ILC staging and LHC complementarity. The study explored precision in Higgs coupling measurements, sensitivity to polarization and sensitivity to several new physics models. The conclusions of the study were that the ILC250 does offer excellent science, while full science reach needs 500 GeV, and in all scenarios of future LHC outcomes, the ILC has a compelling discovery potential. For CLIC there is no cost gain by lowering the energy to 250 GeV, therefore the baseline remains at 380 GeV. A summary of the discussion and conclusions on the status of the ILC project during the Guangzhou meeting is being prepared in order to facilitate an ICFA statement endorsing the ILC Membership in ECFA Traditionally, all countries that formally joined CERN were invited to also join ECFA. With the rapid expansion of CERN with membership from beyond the European continent the rules of membership in ECFA were reviewed. There is a draft of proposed changes that will be presented for endorsement at the upcoming PECFA meeting in November. 5. Schedule of ECFA meetings The schedule of ECFA meetings for the coming academic year is as follows. PECFA meetings CERN, November 2017 Synchrotron Light facility ALBA, Barcelona, July 2018 CERN, November 2018 RECFA country visits Turkey, Istanbul, 6-7 October 2017 Austria, Vienna, 6-7 April 2018 Romania, Bucharest, March 2018 Slovakia, Bratislava, May 2018 The elections of the next ECFA chair will take place during the RECFA meeting in Istanbul.