US and CERN sign historic LHC agreement
In a significant international agreement, signed in Washington, DC, on 8 December, US scientists will contribute a total of $531 m towards the 27 km LHC now under construction and its physics experiments. This is the first time that the US will contribute significantly for an accelerator to be built outside the US, and it is the first agreement between CERN and the US government. About 25% of the US experimental high-energy physics community are expected to do research at the LHC.
Under the agreement, the US will provide goods and services for the LHC, scheduled to come into operation in 2005. Specifically, the Department of Energy will provide components and materials, costed at $200 m, for use in the accelerator. Three of the department's national laboratories, Brookhaven, Berkeley and Fermilab, will use $110 m to design and produce systems for the accelerator's interaction regions where the detectors are located. The remaining $90 m will be used for procurements from US industrial firms, including niobium and niobium–titanium for European production of superconducting cable, and for some of the superconducting cable supply.
The US will also provide an in-kind contribution of components, costed at $331 m, to the massive ATLAS and CMS detectors, with $250 m from the Department of Energy and $81 m from the National Science Foundation. More than 550 US scientists from nearly 60 universities and six national laboratories in 25 states are collaborating on designing and fabricating these components.
Further protocols were signed during the meetings of CERN's governing body, Council, at CERN at the end of December, when the US joined the growing ranks of CERN observer states.
• January/February 1998 p1 (extract).
Canada makes a TRIUMFant contribution
Since 1995 the TRIUMF Laboratory in Vancouver has been collaborating with CERN staff to provide a five-year $30 m Canadian contribution to CERN's LHC collider complex. This is in addition to contributions to the LHC detectors, and has involved activities in a variety of areas, not only on the LHC itself, but also on the machines in the injector chain, especially in this initial phase. In particular, the Proton Synchrotron (PS) and its Booster require major modifications to deliver proton beams with much higher brightness, more strictly controlled emittance, and a different bunch spacing.
As most of the equipment required for the PS and Booster had to be installed during the 1997–1998 winter shutdown, last year was an especially challenging period for TRIUMF staff and for the many companies manufacturing the components. Happily, the commitments were all met, though not without special efforts and some use of air freight!
Although the majority of the Canadian contributions have been directed to the PS complex, others have involved the SPS and LHC. For the LHC itself, Canada is contributing to the injection kickers, the cleaning-insertion quadrupoles, and the current calibration equipment. Besides all these hardware contributions, CERN and TRIUMF staff have been collaborating on a variety of beam dynamics studies.
• April 1998 p5 (extract).
India gains observer status
With the activities surrounding the LHC, CERN’s community of scientific users has grown to comprise about half of the world’s experimental particle physicists, with nearly a third coming from outside the CERN member states. India has been an active partner for many years, and in the December meeting, Council granted the country observer status.
In the past, India has contributed equipment and technical teams to LEP, the PS injector complex and fixed-target experiments. This effort was formalized in a cooperation agreement in 1991, extended in 2001 for a further decade. Then, in the framework of the 1996 protocol signed with the Indian Department of Atomic Energy, India is one of the first nonmember states to contribute significantly to the LHC: Indian scientists work on the ALICE and CMS collaborations, and Indian IT expertise is used in Grid computing projects.
• January/February 2003 p5 (extract).