by Malcolm H MacGregor, World Scientific. Hardback ISBN 9789812569615 £50 ($93).
This book focuses on the most pressing unsolved problem in elementary particle physics – the mass generation of particles. It contains physics that is not included in the Standard Model as it is now formulated but at the same time is in conformity with its major results (i.e. isotopic spins and interactions). It differs from the Standard Model in the treatment of masses and pseudoscalar mesons, and in the role assigned to the coupling constant, α. Presented in a careful and phenomenological way, the material can easily be followed by all physicists, both experimental and theoretical, and also by interested workers in other fields.
by Vladilen S Letokhov, Oxford University Press. Hardback ISBN 9780198528166 £55 ($110).
The general term “laser control of atoms and molecules” covers a variety of problems, including the laser selection of atomic and molecular velocities for the purpose of Doppler-free spectroscopy; laser trapping and cooling of atoms; and laser control of atomic and molecular processes (ionization, dissociation) with a view to detecting single atoms and molecules and, in particular, separating isotopes and nuclear isomers. During the past decade, the principal problems have been successfully solved, many evolving in subsequent research worldwide. The aim of this book by one of the acknowledged experts in the field is to review these topics from a unified point of view, providing a resource for researchers in the various different fields.
by Fritz Rohrlich, World Scientific. Hardback ISBN 9789812700049 £33 ($58).
Originally written in 1964, this text is a study of the classical theory of charged particles. Many applications treat electrons as point particles, but there is nevertheless a widespread belief that the theory is beset with various difficulties, such as an infinite electrostatic self-energy and an equation of motion that allows physically meaningless solutions. The classical theory of charged particles has meanwhile been largely ignored and left incomplete. Despite the efforts of great physicists such as Lorentz, Poincaré and Dirac, it is usually regarded as a “lost cause”. Thanks to more recent progress, however, the author has been able to resolve the various problems and to complete this unfinished theory successfully.
by Arthur Ashkin, World Scientific. Hardback ISBN 9789810240578 £102 ($187). Paperback ISBN 9789810240585 £58 ($106).
This volume by the pioneer of optical trapping and “optical tweezers” contains selected papers and extensive commentaries on laser trapping and the manipulation of neutral particles using radiation pressure forces. These optical methods have had a revolutionary impact on the fields of atomic and molecular physics, biophysics and many aspects of nanotechnology. With his colleagues, Ashkin first demonstrated optical levitation, the trapping of atoms, and “tweezer” trapping and manipulation of living cells and biological particles. This extensive review should be of interest to researchers and students in atomic physics, molecular physics, biophysics and nanotechnology.
by Hilegard Meyer-Ortmanns and Thomas Reisz, World Scientific. Hardback ISBN 9789810234416 £71 ($131).
The phase structure of particle physics shows up in matter at extremely high densities and/or temperatures as reached in the early universe or in heavy-ion collisions in modern laboratory experiments. This book cover the various analytical and numerical tools needed to study this phase structure. These include convergent and asymptotic expansions in strong and weak couplings, dimensional reduction, renormalization group studies, gap equations, Monte Carlo simulations with and without fermions, finite-size and finite-mass scaling analyses, and the approach of effective actions as a supplement to first-principle calculations.
The International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA) has issued a statement on the need for continuous and stable funding for large international science projects, such as the proposed International Linear Collider. This statement is a reaction to recent cuts in the science budgets of the UK and the US, and addresses governments and science funding agencies around the world.
In the statement, ICFA expresses its deep concern about the recent decisions in the UK and the US on spending for long-term international science projects. It points out that “frontier science relies increasingly on stable international partnerships, since the scientific and technical challenges can only be met by enabling outstanding men and women of science from around the world to collaborate, and by joining forces to provide the resources they need to succeed”.
The statement continues: “A good example is the proposed International Linear Collider. In order to advance the understanding of the innermost structure of matter and the early development of the universe, several thousand particle physicists and accelerator scientists around the world, during the past 15 years, have co-ordinated their work on developing the technologies necessary to make a linear collider feasible.
“In view of these tightly interlinked efforts, inspired and driven by the scientific potential of the linear collider, the sudden cuts implemented by two partner countries have devastating effects. ICFA feels an obligation to make policy makers aware of the need for stability in the support of major international science efforts. It is important for all governments to find ways to maintain the trust needed to move forward international scientific endeavours.”
Barry Barish likes a challenge. He admits to a complete tendency to go for the difficult in his research – in his view, life is an adventure. Some might say that his most recent challenge would fit well with a certain famous TV series: “Your mission, should you choose to accept it… is to produce a design for the International Linear Collider that includes a detailed design concept, performance assessments, reliable international costing, an industrialization plan, and siting analysis, as well as detector concepts and scope.”
Barish did indeed accept the challenge in March 2005, when he became director of the Global Design Effort (GDE) for a proposed International Linear Collider (ILC). He started in a directorate of one – himself – at the head of a “virtual” laboratory of hundreds of physicists and engineers around the globe. To run the “lab” he has set up a small executive committee, which includes three regional directors (for the Americas, Asia and Europe), three project managers and two leading accelerator experts. There are also boards for R&D, change control and design cost.
Barish operates from his base at Caltech, where he has been since 1962 and ultimately became Linde Professor of Physics (now emeritus). His taste for research challenges became evident in the 1970s, when he was co-spokesperson with Frank Sciulli (also at Caltech) of the “narrow band” neutrino experiment at Fermilab that studied weak neutral currents and the quark substructure of the nucleon. He later became US spokesperson of the collaboration behind the Monopole, Astrophysics and Cosmic Ray Observatory, which operated from 1989 to 2000 in the Gran Sasso National Laboratory (LNGS). The experiment did not find monopoles, but it set the most stringent upper limits so far on their existence.
In 1991 he also began to lead the design of the GEM detector for the Superconducting Super Collider project, together with Bill Willis of Columbia University. In October 1993, however, the US congress infamously shut down the project and Barish found himself in search of a new challenge. He did not have to look far, as Caltech was already involved in the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO), conceived to search for effects even more difficult to detect than neutrinos. The project was already approved and just beginning to receive funding. Barish became principal investigator in 1994 and director of the LIGO Laboratory in 1997.
Here was an incredibly challenging project, Barish explains, that was “making the audacious attempt to measure an effect of 1 in 1021“. It has indeed achieved this precision, but has not yet detected gravitational waves. “Now it’s down to nature,” says Barish, who found the work on LIGO very satisfying. “There is no way I would have left it except for an exciting new challenge – and the ILC is certainly challenging.” He says that it was hard to move on, “but I felt I could make a difference”. Moreover, he adds: “The likelihood is that the ILC will be important for particle physics.”
At 72 years old, Barish does not expect to participate in the ILC – the earliest it could start up would be in the 2020s. “The plan is short term. The question was whether I could pull together a worldwide team to conceive of a design that will do the job,” he says. With no background in accelerator physics, Barish may not seem the obvious choice for the task. However, he points out that “coming in from the outside, not being buried in the forest, can be very useful”. In addition he believes that he is a good student, and that a good student can be a good leader: “If you do your homework, if the people you work with respect you, then it’s possible.”
An important factor in building the team behind the GDE is that there is not as much history of collaboration in accelerator physics as there is in experimental particle physics. Barish points out that many of the members of the accelerator community have met only at conferences. There has never been real collaboration on accelerator design, so the GDE is a learning process in more than one sense. There are also interesting sociological issues, as the GDE has no physical central location, and meetings usually take place via video and tele-conferencing. Barish likens his job as director to “conducting the disparate instruments in an orchestra”.
In February 2007, the GDE reached a major milestone with the release of the Reference Design Report (RDR) for a 31 km long electron–positron linear collider, with a peak luminosity of about 2 × 1034 cm–2s–1, at a top centre-of-mass energy of 500 GeV, and the possibility of upgrading to 1 TeV. The report contains no detailed engineering; it might state, for example, that a magnet is needed for a certain task, but it does not describe how to build it. The report also contains a preliminary cost estimate, of some $6700 m plus 13,000 person-years of effort.
The final goal will be to produce a strong engineering design, and to optimize costing to form a serious proposal. An appealing deadline is the 2010 ICHEP meeting in Paris. By then there should be results from the LHC that could justify the project. “The main job,” says Barish “is to design a good machine and move once it’s justified.”
In the meantime there is important R&D to be done. Two key areas concern the high-voltage gradient proposed in the machine – an average of 31.5 MV/m – and the effects of electron clouds. Electrons from the walls of the beam pipe cause the positron beam to blow up, thereby reducing the luminosity, and ultimately the number of events. The clouds decay naturally and cease to be a problem if there is sufficient time between bunches, but this reduces the collision rate. The conservative option to keep the rate high would be to have two positron rings to inject alternate pulses into the linac. However, this has huge cost implications so, as Barish says: “There is huge motivation to solve the problem.” One attractive possibility that needs further investigation involves grooving and coating the beam pipe, which could reduce the electron cloud a hundredfold.
However, just before the end of 2007, bad news on funding in both the US and the UK struck a major blow to the plan foreseen at the time that the RDR was released. The UK dealt the first strike, stating that it would “cease investment” in the project, while the US reduced funding for the ILC from $60 m to $15 m as part of a hastily agreed compromise budget for FY2008. Barish recalls the complete surprise of the congressional decision on a budget that President Bush had put forward in February 2007. “We went to bed as normal on Friday (14 December), and woke up on Monday to find the project axed out.”
The cuts in the two countries are both quantitatively and qualitatively different. In one sense the UK’s decision is more serious, as it appears to be a policy decision taken with no input from the community (see Particle physics in the UK is facing a severe funding crisis). Barish says that the main loss here to the GDE is in intellectual leadership. He hopes that continued funding in the UK for general accelerator R&D will mean that the project does not lose people that he says are irreplaceable. In contrast, he expects to see the R&D for the ILC revived in the US budget for FY2009 (starting October 2008), albeit at a level lower than the $60 m originally promised for FY2008. Here the problem is how to cope with the loss of people over the coming months, as there is no funding left to support them in the current budget. Where it hurts most, says Barish, is that the US will not be able to develop the same level of home-grown expertise in the technology required for the ILC, compared with Japan or Europe.
A revival of the ILC in the US budget was a key assumption when Barish and the GDE executive committee met for a relatively rare face-to-face meeting at DESY on 12 January to formulate a new plan. At least the collaboration that Barish has forged is “strong enough to give us the ability to adjust and move on, even with reduced goals”. The aim of the new plan that has emerged is to reduce the scope of the R&D work, but maintain the original schedule of completion by 2010 for items with the highest technical risk, while stretching other parts of the programme to 2012.
The work on high-gradients, underway globally, and tests at Cornell University on reducing the electron cloud will remain high priorities for part one of the newly defined Technical Design Phase, to be ready for 2010. Part two, which will focus on the detailed engineering and industrialization, should be ready by 2012.
Looking further ahead, Barish acknowledges that an ILC-like machine could be the end of the line for very high-energy accelerators, but he points out that accelerators for other applications have a promising future. The GDE itself is already providing an important role in teaching accelerator physics to a new generation. “There is no better way to train them than on something that is pushing the state of the art,” he says. In fact, he sees training as a limiting factor in breeding new experts – whether young people or “converts” from other areas of physics, as many accelerator physicists now are. One problem that he is aware of is that “accelerator people are not revered – but they should be!”.
Despite the recent setbacks with the GDE, Barish remains determined to achieve his mission. “In these ambitious, long-range projects you are going to hit huge bumps in the road, but you have to persevere,” he says. What is vital in his view, is that the agenda should remain driven by science, and that this alone should determine if and when the ILC is built on the firm foundations laid by the GDE. Let us hope that those who fund particle physics have the vision to ensure that one day he can say: “Mission accomplished.”
by Frank Close, Oxford University Press. Hardback ISBN 9780199225903, £9.99 ($19.50).
This is a small book – you can read it in an evening – about the intriguing subject of “nothing”. Close takes us through history from the earliest philosophers, who concluded that “Nature abhors a void”, through the period of arguments about the non-existent Ether, up to the present time, where the void is considered to be a seething quantum-mechanical foam. He describes how the concepts of space and time are linked to the different ideas of “the Void” and ends with current speculations: maybe our entire universe is a quantum fluctuation with near-zero total energy. I learnt that the different forces are influenced by the structure of the void and that some constants of nature may be the random result of spontaneous symmetry breaking, both of which added to my very tenuous non-grasping of the Higgs question.
So far so good. Fortunately, I had already read a number of texts around the subject, for some passages are difficult to grasp because of the sometimes ungrammatical sentences – page 35 gets my all-time prize for totally confusing the reader.
It is unclear to me who the target audience is; the level required to understand the text ranges widely depending on the chapter. Close sometimes uses advanced concepts without explanation and has to rely on more than a little familiarity with the mysteries of quantum mechanics. As with most popular books of this type, those mysteries remain whole, although I must say in favour of The Void that it manages, for once, to leave out Schrödinger’s cat.
I also wonder if the text has been proof-read. Here are just two examples from too large a set: though Close was once head of communications and public education at CERN, he tells us that CERN started in 1955 (it was 1954) in a sentence that cannot be parsed in any language. I share some of his criticisms of CERN’s exhibition centre, but find it difficult to accept that for an entire page he uses “La Globe”, when the correct French is “le Globe” as can be read on CERN’s public website. Did no-one spot this? Fortunately for the author, but unfortunately for the publishing business, this book is not alone in being the victim of such sloppiness.
So, The Void is well worth reading; then send in your corrections.
A premature end to SLAC’s B-factory, a stop to UK investment in the International Linear Collider (ILC) project and more than 300 lay-offs at Fermilab and SLAC – 2007 ended on a bad note. Do these cuts in the US and the UK signal a general downturn for particle physics? No! In the UK they are the combined result of organizational changes and an emphasis on national facilities(see Particle physics in the UK is facing a severe funding crisis). In the US they arose from disputes in congress; and there at least, the US president’s budget for FY2009 looks more positive. The reasons for these cuts are thus too specific to call them a trend – all the more since, for example, KEK’s five-year plan strongly endorses ILC research and funding has increased recently in countries such as Germany.
We have seen frequent ups and downs in funding over the decades. So is it business as usual? Not quite. Nowadays, these ups and downs must be seen in the framework of global co-operation and the interdependence of projects in particle physics.
The size and cost of our facilities are so large that they can only be realized in a truly international context: a machine like the LHC will exist only once in the world. Equally, it would be inefficient to clone billion-euro projects for future neutrino physics, super B-factories or astroparticle physics. Moreover, the R&D necessary for high energies and intensities for future accelerators – and for future detectors – can only be performed in a stable and organized worldwide effort.
In theory, everyone agrees that a global distribution of responsibilities is the most cost-effective approach, allowing particle physics to make the best use of worldwide interests and expertise, and guaranteeing a broad and complementary exploration of our field. Making this a reality, however, is another business. It requires agreements at a transnational level and, in particular, reliability and continuity of support.
Here we evidently have a problem: although international in character, funding of high-energy physics projects is, and will be, largely national. There are few internationally binding treaties like the one for CERN, generating a stable financial situation. Most agreements are memoranda of understanding or even less formal. Common goals are subject to the “good will” of national funding and therefore to changing economical situations and national political and scientific priorities. Particularly vulnerable are the projects that require significant R&D without clearly defined financial contributions.
We can only progress if we repeatedly make it clear what it is we give back to society in return.
In addition there is the mere fact that supporting national facilities is politically easier than financing international ones. Which representative would lobby for a project that is not in their country or constituency? Surely it is better to cut the ILC than the local research facility.
Consider the example of the ILC more closely. The consensus is that it will be the next big machine, and that there will be only one machine. Even if the ILC is not imminent, R&D is mandatory to optimize costs and come to a technically sound proposal. Following this ideal, the worldwide community formed a global network and began to develop special expertise (see Barry Barish and the GDE: mission achievable). The UK, for example, was leading the effort on damping rings, beam delivery and positron sources. Ceasing support for ILC R&D in the UK therefore cuts a large hole in the international network. Who can take over – and at what cost? Yes, stopping R&D saves money in the short term, but in the long term it will cost more. Maybe even more damaging, a loss of confidence in pursuing projects internationally could result.
What can we conclude? Well, the first point is rather trivial: particle physics is part of society. We are not free from general economic constraints and we have to compete with important social, political, ecological and scientific goals. We can only progress if we repeatedly make it clear what it is we give back to society in return.
However, we really need a more organized way of setting internationally agreed priorities, with more binding definitions of national responsibilities and financial commitments for large-scale projects, including their R&D phase. The CERN Council strategy group, together with the funding agencies in the CERN council, is an important tool and should be a step towards a transcontinental equivalent. Note however: even this is no guarantee for reliability, as is evident from the termination of US contributions to the ITER project.
CERN, as any other laboratory hosting a large-scale facility, should see itself as an important part of a large network, serving the interests of its members and contributing states. Universities and national laboratories should not be seen as an appendix, but as key participants. We should work actively to make it evident in all countries that contributing to CERN eventually feeds back into domestic technological and scientific progress.
An excellent and successful LHC project is key to further international co-operation in particle physics. If nature reveals new effects and causes public excitement, many problems we face now will be easier to solve.
When the UK announced its science budget for 2008–2011 on 11 December, it looked like good news. An additional £1200 m was to be spent on science, and at the end of the period the budget would be 19% higher than at the start – an increase of more than 11% after inflation. The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), which is responsible for the CERN budget as well as for UK particle and nuclear physics, astronomy, space science, the Rutherford Appleton and Daresbury Laboratories, ESA, ESO, ILL, ESRF and much else, received an extra £185 m, representing an increase of 13.6% (6% after inflation).
However, the headlines hid a darker truth. Once the accounting was done correctly, this increase to STFC translated into a deficit of £80 m. Later the same week, Richard Wade, the UK delegate to the CERN Council, was obliged to make the following statement “whilst we strongly support CERN and the consolidation programme, under the circumstances I cannot vote in favour of the increased budget at this meeting”.
The problem arises because much of the increase is directed to issues such as capital depreciation of STFC facilities and maintenance in the UK’s universities. Of the £185 m, nearly half (£82 m) is in so-called “non-cash”, which is a balance-sheet adjustment to take account, for example, of the cost of capital and depreciation; this is not available for spending on the research programme. Most of the rest goes straight to the universities as a supplement to research grants to pay much of the “full economic cost” of research. What remains is the “flat cash” to pay for the science that STFC does, and this is eaten away as inflation bites.
To make matters worse, STFC has inherited liabilities of about £40 m from previous decisions by ministers to run the Synchrotron Radiation Source (SRS) at Daresbury for a while in parallel with the new Diamond third-generation synchrotron source. The SRS now has to be decommissioned, and there was an unexpected VAT bill from the Treasury on the operation of the new facility by Diamond Light Source Ltd. There are also increased costs for running Diamond and the second target stations for the ISIS spallation neutron source, which have been known about for some four years, but which were not yet fully funded. As a result, STFC has an £80 m hole in its budget, just to continue with what it does now.
The decisions STFC has made to accommodate the hole are severe: withdrawal from major international programmes, job losses estimated to lie in the hundreds (including probably some compulsory redundancies) and cut-backs across exploitation grants for almost all projects. As a result the UK is withdrawing from important international commitments – the Gemini telescopes, the International Linear Collider and ground-based solar-terrestrial physics. Other programmes are also likely to be affected.
There is widespread anger and dismay in the UK, as these decisions were taken with no proper peer review and no consultation with the community. Concerns are shared not only by the particle physicists and astronomers directly affected by the cuts. The Royal Society, the Institute of Physics and the Royal Astronomical Society have all expressed concern, as have university vice-chancellors.
Members of parliament (MPs) are also concerned. Many have received letters pointing out the damage that the cuts will do to the country’s international reputation, and to the image of physics and astronomy in the eyes of those considering what to study at university – there had been fragile signs of a recovery in the number of UK students wishing to study physics. There have been debates and questions in parliament ,and a committee of MPs is now looking into the matter. More than 15,000 people, including Stephen Hawking, Peter Higgs, Sir Patrick Moore and Nobel laureates Sir Paul Nurse, and Sir Harry Kroto, have signed a petition calling on the Prime Minister to reverse the decision to cut vital UK contributions to particle physics and astronomy.
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