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Shall we build new accelerators? This was discussed in Prague by the heads of CERN, Fermilab, IHEP and other laboratories

Advanced Tech & Materials
31.07. 2024
line-arrow Shall we build new accelerators? This was discussed in Prague by the heads of CERN, Fermilab, IHEP and other laboratories

The world’s largest accelerator laboratories, such as Europe’s CERN, the US Fermilab and Brookhaven, Japan’s KEK and China’s IHEP, are facing big projects for which they need to find funding. So they are presenting their visions to politicians and citizens and updating their particle physics strategies.

The directors of the accelerator laboratories also presented their big plans in a discussion at the International Conference on High Energy Physics ICHEP in Prague.

Apps that changed the world

The internet, proton therapy for tumours or X-ray detectors for healthcare or space flight. These are some of the life-changing applications developed at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, better known by its acronym CERN. But also, for example, superconducting cables to transmit energy with minimal loss, which CERN is working on with Airbus, or machine learning for automation in cars, which scientists are working on with Volvo. CERN Director Fabiola Gianotti presented these innovations at the discussion. CERN is now home to the world’s largest accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).

“CERN is in Switzerland, but it belongs to the countries that are members of this infrastructure. It belongs to you, too.” stressed Fabiola Gianotti. The Czech Republic has been a member of CERN since 1993 (or 1992, when it was still the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic), and CERN is made up of 23 member states. These states have special membership rights, but also obligations, including the payment of membership fees.

Czech scientists participate in the ATLAS, ALICE, CMS, TOTEM, COMPASS and other experiments. In 2023, they participated in 34 experiments involving 242 users from 14 institutions. These participants were from the following institutions: Charles University, Academy of Sciences(Institute of Physics, Institute of Nuclear Physics and Institute of Instrumentation), CTU, Palacký University in Olomouc, Technical University Liberec and University of West Bohemia in Pilsen (detailed numbers can be found in the report here).

But the opportunity to conduct experiments at the world’s largest accelerator also comes at a cost. CERN’s annual budget amounts to CHF 1.2 billion, of which the Czech contribution to CERN is CHF 14.5 million in 2024. ” This year we have already paid the membership fee, and in the autumn we will pay the contribution for internships, which are paid separately,” explains Marek Vyšinka, Head of the Research Infrastructure Department at the Ministry of Education and Science.

“The membership fee covers the running of the organisation itself (especially the operation of the accelerators, their maintenance and development, …), while participation in the experiments themselves is paid for separately, which is what the large research infrastructure of CERN-CZ is used for. CERN as an organisation tries to make the return for each member country correspond to the share of the member country in the CERN budget (i.e. it has some mechanisms to support weaker countries). In the case of the Czech Republic, we are achieving higher parameters in most categories (share of users from the Czech Republic, share of authors on publications from ATLAS and ALICE experiments, share of Czech Fellows, share of participants in CERN Student Programmes, share of contracts for Czech companies), except for the share of Czech employees, where we have significant reserves, and therefore a programme to support graduate traineeships has been prepared.” says Marek Vyšinka.

In the Czech Republic, the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports is responsible for the cooperation with CERN, which also provides the payment of the Czech membership fee to CERN. As its advisory and coordinating body, the Ministry of Education and Science has established the Committee for Cooperation between the Czech Republic and CERN, in which the main research organisations of the Czech Republic involved in cooperation with CERN, other state administration bodies of the Czech Republic and the liaison point for industrial supplies to CERN are represented. Among the Czech companies supplying technology and components to CERN, Fabiola Gianotti mentioned Vakuum Praha, Crytur, Printed and Pozemní stavby Jihlava.

The participation of the Czech research community in experiments at CERN is organised through the CERN-CZ Research Infrastructure Project at the Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences, which aims to develop, manufacture and operate scientific instruments for experiments at CERN. CERN-CZ has been awarded almost CZK 34 million in the latest investment call for the development of large research infrastructures included in the Roadmap for Large Research Infrastructures. The funds are currently being used to build a silicon detector laboratory at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of the UK, and to purchase equipment for laboratories at collaborating institutions. The Institute of Physics will also use the funds to purchase computing equipment for a computer centre that serves as a Tier-2 centre for processing data from the ALICE and ATLAS LHC experiments.

An even bigger accelerator than the world’s biggest accelerator

Fabiola Gianotti presented CERN’s development plans in a discussion. CERN wants to build a much larger accelerator with a circumference of 90 km, which it calls the Future Circular Collider (FCC). By comparison, the current world’s largest accelerator, the LHC, located at CERN, has a circumference of 27 km. The FCC would have collision energies of up to 100 teraelectron volts (TeV), while the current LHC has an energy of 13.6 TeV. The energy would therefore be approximately eight times higher. It would collide electron-positron in the first phase, then proton-protons and possibly proton-electrons in the last phase (the current LHC collides mainly protons, but also heavy ions such as lead ions).

“Unfortunately, during the construction of the FCC, the LHC will have to be shut down for several years, and two accelerators cannot run at the same time. If we want to make the shutdown as short as possible, the member states need to increase their payments to CERN,” Fabiola Gianotti appealed.

From left: Shoji Asai (KEK, Japan), Fabiola Gianotti (CERN), Joachim Mnich (CERN), Lia Merminga (Fermilab, USA)

Gianotti also highlighted other roles of CERN: improving the skills of scientists, career development opportunities for young scientists (17,000 people work at CERN, 4,500 of them are young people under 30, see CERN data ), opportunities for technology companies. At CERN, for example, they are helping a company that prints banknotes, including euro banknotes, to improve identification and security. They are also helping to test vaccines or to develop the reliable White Rabbit time and frequency distribution system, which is used in stock market trading and is also used by the ELI-Beamlines laser infrastructure, as pointed out by Jan Řídký, Vice-President of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

Czech companies also have access to CERN. “CzechInvest has launched the CERN Venture Connect programme in close cooperation with CERN. The programme opens the door to the world of high technology and offers Czech startups a unique opportunity to capitalise on the knowledge and know-how from CERN for commercial applications and is a great complement to our Technology Incubation project. Experience from Europe shows that startups with CERN technologies are very successful. That’s why we support this programme at a number of events to inspire young talent to take on innovative projects and entrepreneurship in challenging high-tech sectors,” says Kristina Lišková, Director of the Advanced Tech & Materials Hub of the Technology Incubation Project at the CzechInvest agency and CERN Venture Connect Manager for the Czech Republic.

The application potential of nuclear technology was also highlighted by Lia Merminga, Director of Fermilab in the United States. “Today, most of the world’s accelerators are not for research purposes, but for cancer treatment,” Merminga said. “But we also see great benefits in the development of detectors and quantum technologies,” Merminga says. This is underlined by physicist Joachim Monk, director of research and computing at CERN, who previously worked on the accelerator at the DESY laboratory in Hamburg.

At the Fermilab accelerator, they are mainly studying particles called neutrinos, which may shed light on the origin of the Universe or understand dark matter. The Czechs are also present at Fermilab through the Czech large research infrastructure Fermilab-CZ at the Institute of Physics of the CAS and the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University. However, this research infrastructure did not receive any investment funds for its development in the last call for large research infrastructures. It planned to buy new servers to run the calculations from the DUNE and NOvA experiments, as well as new detectors.

“No one knows where the biggest breakthroughs will come and what will become a trend. That’s why I think it’s important to participate not only in the CERN experiments, but to maintain diversity and contribute to other particle experiments in the world,” says physicist Oldřich Kepka from the Institute of Physics, who works at CERN.

Asia is not lagging behind

The next speaker was Dmitri Denisov from Brookhaven Laboratory in New York, which has a 4 km accelerator for heavy ion collisions. Denisov pointed out that five Nobel Prize winners have come from this infrastructure. Brookhaven Laboratory also has a linear accelerator in which they test various isotopes. The Czech participation is provided by the large research infrastructure BNL-CZ at the Czech Technical University in Prague. It has been awarded almost CZK 8 million in an investment call for further development.

However, accelerator laboratories from Japan – KEK and China – IHEP were also presented at the discussion. The Japanese accelerator laboratory KEK was presented by Shoji Asai, the Chinese IHEP was presented by Yifang Wang. He pointed out that IHEP is China’s largest basic research project with a budget of almost half a billion dollars a year. IHEP is located in Beijing, has 1,500 employees, two space satellites (HXMT and GECAM) and plans to launch two more. IHEP also plans to build a new large accelerator called CEPC (Circular Electron Positron Collider). Although CERN and IHEP are working together on accelerator technology, this project is essentially in competition with the planned Future Circular Collider (FCC-ee) at CERN. Thus, in order to realise the FCC, the CERN member states need to take a clear position soon. The possible approval of the construction of the CEPC in China would lead to the abandonment of the construction of the FCC accelerator at CERN and, conversely, for the construction of the FCC in Europe, the IHEP would abandon the construction of the CEPC.

A third update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics, adopted in 2005, is now under preparation. By 31. March 2025, national and individual contributions to this strategy are expected, which will then be discussed at an open symposium on 30 March 2025. June 2025. Subsequently, they will be elaborated and 25. December 2025 the new strategy should be submitted to the CERN Board. The US P5 Panel has similarly updated its particle physics strategy.

Physicist Karl Jakobs, who is responsible for the European particle strategy, stressed the need for international cooperation in this field: ‘You cannot build an accelerator in every country.’

The discussion of directors, directors and representatives of the world’s leading accelerators took place in the framework of the International Conference on High Energy Physics ICHEP, which took place 18-24. July 2024 in Prague. The most prominent guests included Fabiola Gianotti (CERN), Lia Merminga (Fermilab, USA), Yifang Wang (IHEP, China), Shoji Asai (KEK, Japan) and Dmitri Denisov (BNL, USA).

In the audience of the discussion were also high-ranking state officials such as Pavel Doleček, Deputy Minister for Science, Research and Innovation, and Marek Vyšinka, Head of the Research Infrastructure Department at the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports. The discussion was moderated by Zdeněk Doležal, Vice Dean for Scientific Activities and International Relations of the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Charles University and Chairman of the ICHEP Conference Organizing Committee.

“ICHEP, the largest particle physics conference in the world, was held in the Czech Republic for the first time in its 70-year history and brought 1400 participants from 55 countries to Prague to listen to thousands of lectures. The discussion panels on the future of particle physics, its benefits for society and the importance of education and popularisation of science also attracted great attention. The accompanying programme was also rich: from visits to ELI, AV and CTU laboratories to an exhibition of students’ artworks and the exhibition Particles and Arnošt Lustig. The organisation of such a conference required a great deal of work, but on the other hand it allowed Czech physicists to participate significantly in the development of the programme and to collaborate with many personalities in the field. New contacts and collaborations were undoubtedly established. Several dozen of our students acted as organizers, which gave them an invaluable opportunity to participate in the conference proceedings.” Zdeněk Doležal evaluates the conference.

The organisation of ICHEP 2024 was provided by key Czech institutions involved in particle research, namely Charles University, Czech Technical University in Prague, Institute of Physics of the CAS, Institute of Nuclear Physics of the CAS, Palacký University in Olomouc, Technical University Liberec and University of West Bohemia in Pilsen.

Author Vladislava Vojtíšková(Vědavýzkum.cz)

Photo: René Volfík

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