The UK Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) has approved a £21 million (~€31 million) programme of accelerator R&D for future facilities in particle physics, including a linear collider and a possible neutrino factory. This will develop the UK’s academic base in these important areas. PPARC’s investment, in partnership with the Council for the Central Laboratory of the Research Councils (CCLRC), will fund a research programme and create two new university research centres. The aim is to build on existing academic expertise and develop a strong research base in accelerator R&D, in order to enhance the UK’s position in experimental particle physics.
The two centres that are being created are the Cockcroft Institute: National Centre for Accelerator Science and the Oxford/Royal Holloway Centre. The Cockcroft Institute is being established with £7.03 million (~€10.50 million) from PPARC, in partnership with the Northwest Development Agency, and the universities of Liverpool, Lancaster and Manchester. The second centre, which will receive £2 million (~€3 million) from PPARC, is a partnership with the University of Oxford and Royal Holloway, University of London. The centres will work closely with CCLRC’s Accelerator Science and Technology Centre to create a leading capability in accelerator science in the UK.
An electron-positron linear collider has been accepted by the international particle-physics community as the next large facility that is needed, and construction could start as early as 2009. UK scientists are focusing on developing the beam delivery system, which will take the accelerated particles to the collision point.
The neutrino factory is a proposed international experiment to study neutrinos, and will rely on a beam of muons to create the neutrinos. To achieve this, a new mechanism has been proposed for cooling the muons, and the Muon Ionisation Cooling Experiment (MICE) is designed to test this principle. A collaboration of more than 150 physicists and engineers from Europe, the US and Japan would like to build and test a section of a realistic cooling channel on a beamline, which could be constructed on the ISIS accelerator at CCLRC’s Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. The funding for MICE is at present only provisional, and depends on the project passing through some further review procedures.
