[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
INVESTIGATING THE NATURE OF
MATTER, ENERGY, SPACE, AND TIME
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND
ENVIRONMENT
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 1, 2009
__________
Serial No. 111-54
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Science and Technology
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.science.house.gov
______
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COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. BART GORDON, Tennessee, Chair
JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois RALPH M. HALL, Texas
EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER JR.,
LYNN C. WOOLSEY, California Wisconsin
DAVID WU, Oregon LAMAR S. SMITH, Texas
BRIAN BAIRD, Washington DANA ROHRABACHER, California
BRAD MILLER, North Carolina ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma
DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois
MARCIA L. FUDGE, Ohio W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
BEN R. LUJAN, New Mexico RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas
PAUL D. TONKO, New York BOB INGLIS, South Carolina
PARKER GRIFFITH, Alabama MICHAEL T. MCCAUL, Texas
STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
JIM MATHESON, Utah BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California
LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee ADRIAN SMITH, Nebraska
BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky PAUL C. BROUN, Georgia
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri PETE OLSON, Texas
BARON P. HILL, Indiana
HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona
CHARLES A. WILSON, Ohio
KATHLEEN DAHLKEMPER, Pennsylvania
ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
SUZANNE M. KOSMAS, Florida
GARY C. PETERS, Michigan
VACANCY
------
Subcommittee on Energy and Environment
HON. BRIAN BAIRD, Washington, Chair
JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois BOB INGLIS, South Carolina
EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas ROSCOE G. BARTLETT, Maryland
LYNN C. WOOLSEY, California VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois JUDY BIGGERT, Illinois
GABRIELLE GIFFORDS, Arizona W. TODD AKIN, Missouri
DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland RANDY NEUGEBAUER, Texas
BEN R. LUJAN, New Mexico MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
PAUL D. TONKO, New York
JIM MATHESON, Utah
LINCOLN DAVIS, Tennessee
BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky
BART GORDON, Tennessee RALPH M. HALL, Texas
CHRIS KING Democratic Staff Director
MICHELLE DALLAFIOR Democratic Professional Staff Member
SHIMERE WILLIAMS Democratic Professional Staff Member
ELAINE PAULIONIS PHELEN Democratic Professional Staff Member
ADAM ROSENBERG Democratic Professional Staff Member
JETTA WONG Democratic Professional Staff Member
ELIZABETH CHAPEL Republican Professional Staff Member
TARA ROTHSCHILD Republican Professional Staff Member
JANE WISE Research Assistant
C O N T E N T S
October 1, 2009
Page
Witness List..................................................... 2
Hearing Charter.................................................. 3
Opening Statements
Prepared Statement by Representative Brian Baird, Chairman,
Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science
and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.................. 10
Statement by Representative Paul Tonko, Vice Chairman,
Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science
and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.................. 9
Statement by Representative Bob Inglis, Ranking Minority Member,
Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science
and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.................. 9
Written Statement............................................ 10
Prepared Statement by Representative Jerry F. Costello, Member,
Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on Science
and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.................. 11
Prepared Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson,
Member, Subcommittee on Energy and Environment, Committee on
Science and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.......... 11
Witnesses:
Dr. Lisa Randall, Professor of Physics, Harvard University
Oral Statement............................................... 13
Written Statement............................................ 18
Biography.................................................... 19
Dr. Dennis Kovar, Associate Director for High Energy Physics,
Office of Science, U.S. Department of Energy
Oral Statement............................................... 20
Written Statement............................................ 21
Biography.................................................... 26
Dr. Piermaria J. Oddone, Director, Fermilab National Accelerator
Laboratory
Oral Statement............................................... 26
Written Statement............................................ 28
Biography.................................................... 48
Dr. Hugh E. Montgomery, President, Jefferson Science Associates,
LLC; Director, Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility
Oral Statement............................................... 48
Written Statement............................................ 50
Biography.................................................... 53
Discussion
Communicating With the Public.................................. 54
String Theory.................................................. 56
Next Generation Accelerators................................... 57
International Cooperation...................................... 57
Dark Energy and Matter......................................... 58
Realizing the Taxpayer Investment.............................. 60
International Collaboration and More on Next Generation
Accelerators................................................. 62
More on Best Use of Taxpayer Money............................. 64
Appendix: Additional Material for the Record
Letter to Chairman Brian Baird from Kenneth O. Olsen, President,
and Dr. John V. Dugan, Vice President, Superconducting Particle
Accelerator Forum of the Americas, dated Oct. 3, 2009.......... 70
Industrialization of Advanced Accelerator Technology, by Kenneth
O. Olsen, Superconducting Particle Accelerator Forum of the
Americas Industry Working Group................................ 71
INVESTIGATING THE NATURE OF MATTER, ENERGY, SPACE, AND TIME
----------
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2009
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Energy and Environment,
Committee on Science and Technology,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 11:04 a.m., in
Room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Paul Tonko
[Vice Chairman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
hearing charter
SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENT
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
Investigating the Nature of
Matter, Energy, Space, and Time
thursday, october 1, 2009
11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m.
2318 rayburn house office building
Purpose
On Thursday, October 1, 2009 the House Committee on Science &
Technology, Subcommittee on Energy and Environment will hold a hearing
entitled ``Investigating the Nature of Matter, Energy, Space, and
Time.''
The Subcommittee's hearing will receive testimony on the
fundamental physics research activities of the Department of Energy
(DOE) Office of Science conducted through the High Energy Physics (HEP)
and Nuclear Physics (NP) programs. It will also examine how these areas
are related to the work of other DOE program offices and other federal
agencies.
Witnesses
Dr. Lisa Randall is a Professor of Physics at Harvard
University. Dr. Randall will provide an overview of our current
level of understanding of matter, energy, and the origins of
the universe, as well as the major questions that remain.
Dr. Dennis Kovar is Director of HEP, and the former
Director of NP. Dr. Kovar will testify on DOE's current
research activities and future plans in these areas, as well as
HEP and NP's roles in advancing accelerator research and
development for a variety of applications relevant to industry
and other federal agencies.
Dr. Pier Oddone is Director of Fermi National
Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois. Dr.
Oddone will testify on his vision for Fermilab following the
expected shutdown of its primary research facility within the
next three years.
Dr. Hugh Montgomery is Director of Thomas Jefferson
National Accelerator Facility (JLab) in Newport News, VA. Dr.
Montgomery will testify on the capabilities that JLab provides
to the U.S. and international nuclear physics communities, as
well as JLab's accelerator technology development and science
education activities.
Background
On August 2, 1939, Albert Einstein wrote to then President Franklin
Roosevelt. Einstein told him of efforts in Nazi Germany to purify
uranium-235, which could be used to build an atomic bomb. It was
shortly thereafter that the U.S. Government began the Manhattan
Project, which expedited research to produce a viable nuclear weapon
before the Germans. This endeavor assembled several of the most
renowned physicists of the 20th century from all over the world,
including Robert Oppenheimer, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, and Edward
Teller. After the end of World War II, many of these physicists
remained in the U.S. and resumed research in the fundamental nature of
matter, energy, space, and time, otherwise known as particle physics.
The Department of Energy (DOE) and its predecessors have historically
supported significant programs of research and education in particle
physics from this point forward. Today, the DOE Office of Science's
High Energy Physics (HEP) and Nuclear Physics (NP) programs explore
this area of research at nine DOE national laboratories and over 100
U.S. universities, employing approximately 4,000 scientists.
High Energy Physics
High energy physics is a branch of physics that studies the
fundamental building blocks of matter and energy, and the interactions
between them. It is called ``high energy'' because many of these
particles do not occur under normal circumstances in nature, but can be
created and detected during energetic collisions of other particles, as
is done in large research facilities known as particle accelerators.
Modern particle physics research is focused on subatomic particles,
which include atomic constituents such as electrons, protons, and
neutrons (protons and neutrons are actually made up of fundamental
particles called quarks), as well as a wide range of more exotic
particles. Research in high energy physics has led to a deep
understanding of the physical laws that govern matter, energy, space,
and time. This understanding has been formulated in what is called the
``Standard Model'' of particle physics, first established in the 1970s,
which successfully describes nearly all observable behavior of
particles and forces, often to very high precision. Nevertheless, the
Standard Model is understood to be incomplete. The model fails at
extremely high energies--energies just now being created in particle
accelerators--and describes only a small fraction of the matter and
energy filling the universe. Surprising new data reveal that only about
five percent of the universe is made of the normal, visible matter
described by the Standard Model. The remaining 95 percent of the
universe consists of matter and energy whose fundamental nature remains
a mystery.
A world-wide program of particle physics research is underway to
explore what lies beyond the Standard Model. To this end, HEP supports
theoretical and experimental studies by individual investigators and
large collaborative teams. Some of them gather and analyze data from
accelerator facilities in the U.S. and around the world while others
develop and deploy sensitive ground and space-based instruments to
detect particles from space and observe astrophysical phenomena that
advance our understanding of fundamental particle properties. Some of
the key questions the HEP program addresses include:
Do all the forces we are familiar with really come from just one?
All the basic forces found in the universe, such as gravity and
electromagnetism, could be various manifestations of a single unified
force. Unification was Einstein's great, unrealized dream, and recent
advances in a branch of physics known as string theory give hope of
achieving it. Most versions of string theory require at least seven
extra dimensions of space beyond the three we are used to. The most
advanced particle accelerators may find evidence for extra dimensions,
requiring a completely new model for thinking about the structure of
space and time.
How did the universe come to be?
Prevailing measurements and theory describe the universe as
beginning with a massive explosion known as the Big Bang, followed by a
burst of expansion of space itself. The universe then expanded more
slowly and cooled, which allowed the formation of stars, galaxies, and
ultimately life. Understanding the very early formation of the universe
will require a breakthrough in physics, which string theory may
provide.
What is dark matter? How can we make it in the laboratory?
Most of the matter in the universe is invisible to us, and we can
detect its existence only through its gravitational interactions with
normal matter. This ``dark matter,'' first identified in 1933, is
expected to at least partly account for what appears to be missing
matter in the universe, as evidenced by the calculated vs. the observed
rotational speeds of galaxies. This matter is thought to consist of
exotic particles that have survived since the Big Bang. Experiments are
currently being carried out to try to directly detect these exotic
particles in space as well as produce them in particle accelerators
that briefly recreate similar conditions to the Big Bang.
And what is dark energy?
The structure of the universe today is a result of two opposing
forces: gravitational attraction and cosmic expansion. In 1998, it was
discovered through cosmic observations that the universe has been
expanding at an accelerating rate for approximately six billion years.
The cause of this accelerating expansion which now appears to dominate
over gravitational attraction has been labeled ``dark energy'' by
scientists, though so little is known about it that even calling it a
form of energy may be misleading. More and other types of data along
with new theoretical ideas are necessary to make progress in
understanding its fundamental nature.
What is the origin of mass?
The only particle predicted by the Standard Model which has yet to
be found experimentally is called the Higgs boson, which would be
responsible for generating mass in other fundamental particles. The
current generation of particle accelerators is expected to either
confirm its existence or rule it out.
What happened to the antimatter?
The universe appears to contain very little antimatter. Antimatter
is made up of antiparticles, which have the same mass and opposite
charge of their associated ``normal matter'' particles. For example,
the antiparticle of the electron, which is negatively charged, is the
positively charged antielectron, also called the positron. Antimatter
is continually produced by naturally occurring nuclear reactions, but
its existence is brief because it undergoes near immediate annihilation
after coming into contact with its normal matter counterpart. The Big
Bang, however, is expected to have produced equal amounts of both
matter and antimatter. This is borne out by the study of high-energy
collisions in the laboratory. Precise accelerator-based measurements
may shed light on how the matter-antimatter asymmetry arose.
What are neutrinos telling us?
Of all the known particles, neutrinos are perhaps the least
understood and the most elusive. The three known varieties of neutrinos
were all discovered by HEP researchers working at U.S. facilities.
Trillions pass through the Earth every moment with little or no
interaction. Their detection requires intense neutrino sources and
large detectors. Their tiny masses may imply new physics and provide
important clues to the unification of forces. Naturally occurring
neutrinos are produced by cosmic ray interactions with the Earth's
atmosphere, by supernovae, and in the interior of stars. These can be
studied in space as well as on the ground using intense neutrino
sources such as nuclear reactors and advanced accelerators.
HEP Budget and Subprograms
HEP is divided into five subprograms that are organized around the
tools and facilities they use and the knowledge and technology they
develop. Details on current and proposed funding for HEP can be found
in Table 1.
The Proton Accelerator-Based Physics subprogram exploits two major
applications of proton accelerators. Due to the high energy of the
collisions at the Tevatron Collider (two trillion electronvolts, or
TeV) at Fermilab in Batavia, IL and the Large Hadron Collider (14 TeV
maximum) at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, and the fact that particles
interact differently at different energies, these facilities can be
used to study a wide variety of scientific issues. (CERN, the world's
largest particle physics laboratory, was formally a French acronym, but
is now officially the European Organization for Nuclear Research. It is
pronounced sern.) By colliding intense proton beams into fixed targets,
proton accelerators are also capable of producing large samples of
other particles which can be formed into beams for experiments. The
U.S. high energy physics community has recently proposed a new project
that would utilize the high-power proton beam at Fermilab to produce
intense secondary beams of neutrinos for unique new experiments after
the Tevatron shuts down within the next three years.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will be the world's
largest and highest-energy particle accelerator. DOE and the
National Science Foundation (NSF) invested a total of $531
million in the construction of the LHC and its detectors. This
U.S. contribution was delivered on budget and three months
ahead of schedule last year. DOE provided $200 million for the
construction of accelerator components, $250 million for the
design and construction of several major detectors, and
continues to support U.S. scientists' work on the detectors and
additional accelerator R&D. NSF has focused its $81 million of
support on funding university scientists who have contributed
to the design and construction of these detectors. The total
project cost of the LHC is expected to be approximately =3.7
billion, or $5.4 billion in today's U.S. dollars. More than
1,700 scientists, engineers, students and technicians from 94
U.S. universities and laboratories currently participate in the
LHC and its experiments.
The LHC began facility test operations on September 10th,
2008. Nine days later, these operations were halted due to a
serious electrical fault. Taking into account the time required
to repair the resulting damage and to add additional safety
features, the LHC is currently scheduled to be operational
again in mid-November 2009. The U.S. contributions to LHC have
met all performance goals to date, and CERN is taking full
financial and managerial responsibility for this repair.
The Electron Accelerator-Based Physics subprogram utilizes
accelerators with high-intensity and ultra-precise electron beams to
create and investigate matter at its most basic level. Since electrons
are small, fundamental point-like particles (unlike protons, which are
relatively heavy composites of quarks and force-carrying particles)
they are well-suited to precision measurements of particle properties
and precise beam control. The next generation of accelerator after the
LHC is likely to be a high-energy electron facility that can probe LHC
discoveries in detail.
The Non-Accelerator Physics subprogram supports particle physics
research best examined by utilizing ground-based telescopes and
detectors typically in partnership with NSF, as well as space-based
telescopes in partnership with NASA. Scientists in this subprogram
investigate topics such as dark matter, dark energy, neutrino
properties, and primordial antimatter. Some of the non-accelerator
particle sources used in this research are cosmic rays, neutrinos from
commercial nuclear power reactors, the Sun, and galactic supernovae.
NSF has proposed to build the Deep Underground
Science and Engineering Laboratory (DUSEL) in Homestake Mine,
South Dakota, which closed its mining operations in 2002, and
DOE is currently considering becoming a significant partner in
this project. If completed, DUSEL would be the deepest
underground science facility in the world, 8,000 feet below
ground, which would enable unique experiments in neutrino
physics and dark matter, among other areas.
A Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM) has been proposed
as a joint NASA-DOE partnership. JDEM would make precise
measurements of the expansion rate of the universe to
understand how this rate has changed with time. These
measurements are expected to yield important clues about the
nature of dark energy. JDEM has rated among the top recommended
projects in reports on high energy physics research needs by
the National Academies since 2003, as well as reports by the
National Science and Technology Council and the
Administration's High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP). A
Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between DOE and NASA on
advancing JDEM was issued in November 2008.
The Theoretical Physics subprogram provides the vision and
mathematical framework for understanding and extending the knowledge of
high energy physics. This program supports activities that range from
detailed calculations of the predictions of the Standard Model to
advanced computation and simulations to solve otherwise intractable
problems. Theoretical physicists play key roles in determining which
experiments to perform and in explaining experimental results in terms
of underlying theories that describe the interactions of matter,
energy, space, and time.
The Advanced Technology R&D subprogram develops the next generation
of particle accelerator and detector technologies for the future
advancement of high-energy physics as well as other sciences. It
supports research in the physics of particle beams, fundamental
advances in particle detection, and R&D on new technologies and
research methods relevant to a broad range of scientific disciplines,
including accelerator technologies that can be used to investigate
materials for energy applications as well as biological processes for
medical applications. HEP has been designated the lead program within
the DOE Office of Science to develop a coordinated strategy for next
generation accelerators that can meet the Nation's wide variety of
basic and application-oriented research needs.
Nuclear Physics
The mission of the DOE Office of Science's Nuclear Physics (NP)
program is to discover, explore, and understand all forms of nuclear
matter. Nuclear matter consists of any number of clustered protons and
neutrons which makes up the core of an atom called its nucleus. The
fundamental particles that compose nuclear matter are each relatively
well understood, but exactly how they fit together and interact to
create different types of matter in the universe is still largely not
understood. To answer the many remaining questions in this field, NP
supports experimental and theoretical research--along with the
development and operation of specially designed particle accelerators
and other advanced technologies--to create, detect, and describe the
different forms of nuclear matter that can exist in the universe,
including those that are no longer found naturally.
Research has shown that protons, which are positively charged, and
neutrons, which are electrically neutral, are bound in the nucleus by a
fundamental force named the strong force because it is far stronger
than either gravity or electromagnetism, although it operates on
smaller distance scales. As scientists delved further into the
properties of the proton and neutron, they discovered that each proton
and neutron is composed of three tiny particles called quarks. Quarks
are bound together by yet other particles called gluons, which are
believed to be the generators of the strong force. One of the major
goals of nuclear physics is to understand precisely how quarks and
gluons bind together to create protons, neutrons, and other hadrons
(the generic name for particles composed of quarks) and, in turn, to
determine how all hadrons fit together to create nuclei and other types
of matter.
NP Budget and Subprograms
NP is organized into five subprograms. Details on current and
proposed funding for each can be found in Table 2.
The Medium Energy subprogram primarily utilizes two NP national
facilities in addition to several other facilities worldwide to examine
the behavior of quarks inside protons and neutrons. The Continuous
Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) at the Thomas Jefferson
National Accelerator Facility (JLab) in Newport News, VA provides high
quality beams of electrons that allow scientists to extract information
on the quark and gluon structure of nuclei. CEBAF also uses these
electrons to make precision measurements of processes that can provide
information on why the universe is primarily made up of matter rather
than antimatter, which is relevant to HEP as described above. The
Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National
Laboratory (BNL) in Upton, NY provides colliding beams of protons to
probe the proton's structure. This subprogram also supports one
university Center of Excellence at MIT to develop advanced
instrumentation and accelerator equipment.
The Heavy Ion subprogram tries to recreate and characterize new and
predicted forms of matter as well as other new phenomena that might
occur in extremely hot, dense nuclear matter, conditions which may not
have existed naturally since the Big Bang. Measurements are carried out
primarily using very energetic heavy ion collisions at RHIC.
Participation in the heavy ion program at the LHC also provides U.S.
researchers the opportunity to search for new states of matter under
substantially different conditions than those provided by RHIC, gaining
additional information regarding the matter that existed during the
infant universe.
The Low Energy subprogram primarily utilizes two NP national user
facilities to examine how protons and neutrons are bound into common
and stable nuclei vs. rare and unstable nuclei. The Argonne Tandem
Linac Accelerator System (ATLAS) at Argonne National Laboratory in
Argonne, Illinois is used to study questions of nuclear structure by
providing high-quality beams of all the stable elements up to uranium
as well as selected beams of short-lived nuclei. These allow for
experimental studies of nuclear properties under extreme conditions and
reactions of interest to nuclear astrophysics. The Holifield
Radioactive Ion Beam Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory provides
beams of short-lived radioactive nuclei that scientists use to study
exotic nuclei not normally found in nature. The future Facility for
Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), which Michigan State University has recently
been selected to host, is a next-generation machine that will further
advance the understanding of rare nuclei and the evolution of the
cosmos. The subprogram also supports four university Centers of
Excellence, three (at Duke University, Texas A&M University, and Yale
University) with unique low energy accelerator facilities and one (at
the University of Washington) with infrastructure capabilities for
developing advanced instrumentation. The subprogram also partners with
the Department of Defense's National Reconnaissance Office and the
United States Air Force to support limited operations of a small
facility at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that will help
advance improvements in radiation hardness of electronic circuit
components against damage caused due to cosmic rays.
The Nuclear Theory subprogram provides the theoretical underpinning
needed to support the interpretation of a wide range of data obtained
from all the other NP subprograms and to advance new ideas and
hypotheses that stimulate experimental investigations. This subprogram
supports the Institute for Nuclear Theory at the University of
Washington, where leading nuclear theorists are assembled from across
the Nation to focus on frontier areas in nuclear physics. The
subprogram also collects, evaluates, and disseminates nuclear physics
data for basic nuclear research and for applied nuclear technologies
with its support of the National Nuclear Data Center at BNL. These
databases are an international resource consisting of carefully
organized scientific information gathered from over 50 years of nuclear
physics research worldwide.
The Isotope Development and Production for Research and
Applications subprogram supports the production and development of
techniques to make isotopes that are in short supply for medical,
national security, environmental, and other research applications. This
subprogram is described in more detail in the Charter for the Committee
on Science and Technology, Subcommittee on Energy and Environment
hearing entitled ``Biological Research for Energy and Medical
Applications at the Department of Energy Office of Science'' held on
September 10th, 2009.
Mr. Tonko. This hearing will come to order.
Good morning. I am Paul Tonko, a Member of the
Subcommittee. Chair Brian Baird is unfortunately unable to join
us this morning because of circumstances beyond his control and
so I will be chairing the first portion of the hearing, which
will focus on Investigating the Nature of Matter, Energy,
Space, and Time.
Today's hearing will explore the Department of Energy (DOE)
Office of Science's research activities in high energy and
nuclear physics and their collaboration with related programs
and projects carried out by the National Science Foundation and
the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as
well as our international partners.
In 1939, Albert Einstein sent a letter to President
Franklin Roosevelt warning him of Germany's advances in
creating an atomic bomb. This spurred the President to begin
the Manhattan Project, which gathered many of the greatest
physicists of the 20th century from all over the world to
successfully beat the Germans in a race of scientific and
technological progress. After the end of the war, many of these
physicists remained in the United States to resume their
research in the basic nature of matter, energy, space, and
time, a field also known as particle physics. Our country has
historically supported significant research programs in these
areas from that point forward.
Today, DOE alone has proposed a 2010 budget of over $1.3
billion for particle physics research and related technology
development, which would continue to support about 4,000
scientists in over 100 universities and nine DOE national
laboratories. In this hearing I hope to get a better
understanding of what fundamental questions remain to be
answered, and what the American taxpayers are receiving in
return for this investment. This subcommittee certainly
supports exploring fundamental areas of science with uncertain
or even unknowable outcomes, but the level of that support
should always be well justified.
The Administration's High Energy Physics Advisory Panel
made important progress in this direction with the release of
its 10-year strategic plan, which set research and project
priorities under a series of realistic budget scenarios. I look
forward to learning more about whether and how this plan is
being implemented.
And with that I would like to thank this excellent panel of
witnesses for appearing before the Subcommittee this morning.
And I yield to our distinguished Ranking Member, Mr.
Inglis, for his opening statement.
Mr. Inglis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
holding this hearing. This subcommittee has held several
hearings over the last few months examining the diverse mission
of DOE's Office of Science. We have heard about their research
efforts in energy vehicle technologies and biological sciences.
Today we turn to perhaps the most fundamental research
activities in all of science, investigating the building blocks
of energy and matter. So we are here to learn at the Einstein
level and I feel somewhat unprepared for class, I must tell
you. I think I know this much, though: in the Manhattan
Project, we found a way to harness the energy of atoms for
weaponry of massive strength. Fifty years later we are
searching for the most basic understanding of the nature of the
universe. Out of this research we gain an understanding of
electricity, communication technology, X-rays and other
conveniences. We also delve into the fundamental nature of
matter, energy, space and time, inspiring our insatiable human
curiosity to answer large metaphysical questions about why and
how.
Current lines of investigation in this field are very
exciting. We are simultaneously exploring the edges of the
universe, matter we cannot directly observe and a particle that
lends mass to everything around us. While this research will
give us some interesting answers, it will certainly inspire
many more questions, and that is what science is all about.
I look forward to hearing from our distinguished panelists
about this fascinating course of research. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman, and I yield back the balance of my time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Inglis follows:]
Prepared Statement of Representative Bob Inglis
Good morning and thank you for holding this hearing, Mr. Chairman.
This subcommittee has held several hearings over the last few
months examining the diverse mission of DOE's Office of Science. We've
heard about their research efforts in energy, vehicle technologies, and
biological sciences. Today we turn to perhaps the most fundamental
research activities in all of science: investigating the building
blocks of energy and matter.
So we're here to learn at the Einstein level and I feel somewhat
unprepared for class.
I think I know this much, though: In the Manhattan Project we found
a way to harness the energy of atoms for weaponry of massive strength.
Fifty years later, we're searching for the most basic understanding of
the nature of the universe.
Out of this research, we gain an understanding of electricity,
communication technology, x-rays, and other conveniences. We also delve
into the fundamental nature of matter, energy, space and time,
inspiring our insatiable human curiosity to answer large metaphysical
questions about ``why'' and ``how''.
Current lines of investigation in this field are exciting. We're
simultaneously exploring the edges of the universe, matter we cannot
directly observe, and a particle that lends mass to everything around
us. While this research will give us some interesting answers, it will
certainly inspire many more questions. And that's what science is all
about.
I look forward to hearing from our distinguished panelists about
this fascinating course of research. Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, and
I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. Tonko. Thank you, Mr. Inglis.
If there are Members who wish to submit additional opening
statements, your statements will be added to the record at this
point.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Baird follows:]
Prepared Statement of Chairman Brian Baird
Today's hearing will explore the DOE Office of Science's research
activities in high energy and nuclear physics, and their collaboration
with related programs and projects carried out by the National Science
Foundation and NASA--as well as our international partners.
In 1939, Albert Einstein sent a letter to FDR warning him of
Germany's advances in creating an atomic bomb. This spurred the
President to begin the Manhattan Project, which gathered many of the
greatest physicists of the 20th century from all over the world to
successfully beat the Germans in a race of scientific and technological
progress. After the end of the war, many of these physicists remained
in the U.S. to resume their research in the basic nature of matter,
energy, space, and time, a field also known as particle physics. Our
country has historically supported significant research programs in
these areas from this point forward.
Today, DOE alone has proposed a 2010 budget of over $1.3 billion
for particle physics research and related technology development, which
would continue to support about 4,000 scientists in over 100
universities and nine DOE national laboratories. In this hearing I hope
to get a better understanding of what fundamental questions remain to
be answered, and what the American taxpayers are receiving in return
for this investment. This Subcommittee certainly supports exploring
fundamental areas of science with uncertain or even unknowable
outcomes, but the level of that support should always be well-
justified. The Administration's High Energy Physics Advisory Panel made
important progress in this direction with the release of its 10-year
strategic plan, which set research and project priorities under a
series of realistic budget scenarios. I look forward to learning more
about whether and how this plan is being implemented.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Costello follows:]
Prepared Statement of Representative Jerry F. Costello
Good morning. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding today's hearing
to receive testimony on the High Energy Physics (HEP) and Nuclear
Physics (NP) research conducted through the Department of Energy (DOE)
Office of Science.
This subcommittee has held several hearings to discuss the research
activities of the Office of Science, and I appreciate the opportunity
to hear from our witnesses today about current HEP and NP research
opportunities. In recent years, this research has uncovered new forms
of matter, and we now understand that our Standard Model of particles
and matter covers only five percent of the actual building blocks of
the universe.
For several decades, the U.S. was the world leader in HEP and NP
research. However, since the decision to delay the construction of the
International Linear Collider, several key research centers and labs
have shut down and become obsolete. At the same time, Europe and Japan
have continued to make major investments in constructing new
laboratories and developing new techniques for exploring particle
physics. With the construction of the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva,
European investment in HEP and NP is 150 percent higher than U.S.
investment. I would like to hear from the DOE what plans, if any, are
in place to revive HEP and NP research in the U.S. Further, how
Congress and this subcommittee can support efforts to return the U.S.
to its position of leadership.
Finally, I am pleased to welcome Dr. Pier Oddone, Director of
Fermilab in Batavia, IL. Dr. Oddone and his colleagues are at the
forefront of particle physics, and I applaud their work. Fermilab's
Tevatron is the second-largest particle accelerator in the world, and
in 1995 Fermilab scientists were the first to discover the top quark. I
was pleased to learn of Fermilab's receipt of $103 million in funding
from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. I would like
to hear from Dr. Oddone how Fermilab will use these funds to further
its research efforts.
I welcome our panel of witnesses, and I look forward to their
testimony. Thank you again, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Johnson follows:]
Prepared Statement of Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson
Good morning, Mr. Chairman. Welcome to the panelists, who are here
this morning to testify at a subcommittee hearing entitled
``Investigating the Nature of Matter, Energy, Space, and Time.''
It is valuable for Subcommittee Members to be informed of the
physics research activities of the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of
Science.
Today, we will specifically hear about research conducted through
the High Energy Physics (HEP) and Nuclear Physics (NP) programs.
Texas has a large contingency of universities whose research is
supported by these programs. The institutions include:
Baylor University
Prairie View A&M
Rice University
Southern Methodist University
Texas A&M
Texas Tech. University
University of Texas at Arlington
University of Texas at Austin
University of Texas at Dallas
I am proud that Texas takes advantage of competitive research grant
funding through the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science.
The work of particle physics research employs approximately 4,000
American scientists. It is done both by individual investigators and
large collaborative teams. Its foundation was laid by the likes of
Albert Einstein, Robert Oppenheimer, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, and
others. The research helps us understand the beginning, composition,
and organization of the universe.
Particle physics research has yielded so many public benefits, such
as cancer therapies. We have better diagnostic machines, more
sophisticated tools for national security, and more efficient
superconducting materials. We have improved drug development and better
understand global weather patterns.
The World Wide Web was developed to give particle physicists a tool
to communicate quickly and effectively with globally dispersed
colleagues around the Nation. The study of particle physics helps us to
understand matter's most basic forces and how they interact with one
another.
Yes, much of the research may be hard to understand or translate
into real life. When we ask only for translational research or real-
life linkages, we can stifle the creative thought process. As Dr.
Randall stated in her testimony, America is a land of opportunities for
creative, intelligent people. It is a place that invests in abstract,
basic research to enable creative thinkers to do their work,
unfettered. We attract people like Dr. Piermaria Oddone, who dreamed as
a child in Peru to be a part of the amazing discoveries occurring in
the United States. To continue to bring the world's talent to our
doorstep, we must provide opportunities to attract them.
Instruments to study particle physics include the Large Hadron
Collider, which cost about $5.4 billion in today's U.S. dollars and
involves more than 1,700 scientists, engineers, students and
technicians. It is disappointing that, nine days after commencing
operations, the Collider experienced a serious electrical fault.
However, the level of investment in this research should deliver the
clear message that Congress sees great value in particle physics
research.
The scientific community believes that, once in operation, the
Collider will help us understand more about what gives the most
elementary particles their mass. Dr. Oddone points out that education
in science, technology, engineering, and math is impacted by particle
physics research. Indeed it is.
Discoveries spark the imaginations of young people, who dream of
studying the origins of stars, the planets, and how mass and energy
relate. Those bright minds are our innovators of tomorrow. We must
reach out to them and somehow show them that this research is
occurring, and that it is valuable to them. Particularly for
disadvantaged students, we must show them that a career in nuclear
physics research is attainable. There is so little ethnic diversity in
the research workforce in this area of science. I would like to
challenge each of you to work at your laboratories and universities to
do the important outreach that is required for these students to see
the opportunities.
Again, I am grateful that distinguished scientists who are also
good communicators have come here today to share the state of our
understanding in this area.
Welcome. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back the remainder of my
time.
Mr. Tonko. I now will introduce the panel. It is my
pleasure to introduce who will be our first witness, Dr. Lisa
Randall, who is a Professor of Physics at Harvard University.
We welcome Dr. Randall, as do we Dr. Dennis Kovar, who is the
Director of the Office of High Energy Physics and former
Director of the Office of Nuclear Physics at DOE, and I believe
our colleague, Representative Lipinski, would like to introduce
our next panelist.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you, Chairman Tonko.
It is my pleasure to welcome Dr. Pier Oddone, the Director
of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois. Fermilab
is the largest accelerator in the United States, and under Dr.
Oddone's leadership it has been a vital tool in advancing our
understanding of the universe. Dr. Oddone's distinguished
career has been four decades, taking him from MIT to Princeton
to California, where he served as the Deputy Director of the
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and was a leading
researcher at Stanford's Linear Accelerator Center, or SLAC. As
a Stanford alumni, I would like to move from Berkeley to
Stanford. He is most celebrated for inventing a new kind of
particle accelerator, the Asymmetric B Factory, to help us
understand why there isn't more antimatter in the universe.
Thank you, Dr. Oddone, for being here and I look forward to his
testimony.
Mr. Tonko. And again, welcome, Dr. Oddone. And finally, we
have Dr. Hugh Montgomery, who is Director of Thomas Jefferson
National Accelerator Facility, the JLab, in Newport News,
Virginia. As we begin hearing from our witnesses, might I just
make a point of information available. We have just been
solicited to vote for what will be a series of three votes. I
am told that Dr. Randall's testimony is slightly longer than
her fellow witnesses, so what I think may work best here is to
hear the testimony of Dr. Randall and then allow for us to go
vote and then resume the hearing if you can bear with us,
please. It seems to be life in Washington. I am learning as I
go. So with that, please, Dr. Randall.
STATEMENT OF DR. LISA RANDALL, PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS, HARVARD
UNIVERSITY
Dr. Randall. Thank you for having us here today. This is
kind of amusing. It is a little bit like class on the first day
when everyone is sitting in the back here afraid to hear about
the physics.
But what we are going to tell you today, what we would like
to tell you is the kind of questions we are exploring today. We
are exploring the universe at larger and smaller scales than
ever before, and that is really important because that is the
way we find out new things. We get away from what we experience
in our everyday life. We go to these extremes of distances and
energy, which is why we have these extreme experiments that are
set up. Astrophysical probes let us see out into the universe
whereas particle physics experiments currently at Fermilab, and
hopefully soon LSC, we are going to look at smaller distances
and higher energies than we ever have before. And what we will
try to convince you very briefly is that we could be at the
verge of revolutionary discoveries.
And I just thought I would say a couple of words and I am
not going to read all this, but the questions are abstract, and
we heard about the Manhattan Project in the introductory
remarks. We hear about applications. I think it is always very
important to keep in mind that when these fundamental
discoveries are made, no one has ever predicted what their
applications would be yet they have revolutionized the
universe, and I think there are so many people out there who
just want to know the answers to these questions. That is one
of the reasons we are here. It is one of the reasons we are a
leader but it is also what gives us leadership at universities.
It is one of the reasons we have the best universities, the
smartest people here that go on to do physics and other things.
So I think we don't want to get too focused when we ask what is
the application of any particular project because in the end
the results seem to have worked out pretty well.
Our goals as particle physicists are to understand matter's
most basic elements and the forces through which they interact.
You all probably know about the atom but we are going inside
the atom. We are going inside the atom to explore what is
inside the nucleus. What is inside the nucleus seems to be
particles called quarks, pulled together through forces called
the strong nuclear force which is communicated through
particles called gluons. But in addition to those particles we
know about that are there in all matter we have seen, there
seems to be heavier quarks. We know that there are heavier
quarks. We don't know their purpose. We don't know why they
have the masses that they have. We know of four fundamental
forces. We don't know what the relationships among them are or
should be. And these are the kinds of questions we are trying
to answer. We really are on the verge of getting some insight
into questions about mass and fundamental particles very soon.
We would also like, of course, not just to have a list of
particles. The list isn't that extensive but we want to really
understand the connections. We want to understand what is the
underlying theoretical framework which connects them all,
because that gives us some deep understanding of what is
fundamentally out there. We are not just trying to enumerate
particles, we are trying to really see what is the fundamental
description? How does this work? That fundamental description
might be connected to something as exotic as string theory,
which is based on the idea that rather than particles, we have
fundamental oscillating strings. It could give us a deeper
understanding of space-time. This is quite remarkable but it
could be that understanding space better could actually explain
properties of fundamental particles. Particles could be
separated within a context of even extra dimensions in space,
and if I have a moment I will mention that possibility.
Really, trying to answer these questions has led us to some
very exotic scenarios, but they are not just out there as crazy
ideas. Really, it is following through. It is not just
metaphysics. It really is trying to follow through, what are
the consequences of what we have seen? And what are the ways
within the context of theories we do understand that we can
actually solve these questions?
We also are working on connections to cosmology particle
physics. Of course, we know what is out there. We know how the
universe has evolved. Knowing how the universe has evolved
tells us about fundamental particles, and that has given rise
to some very interesting connections to, for example, dark
matter studies.
This is probably hard to see but basically this is just
stating that there are some pretty big questions out there in
cosmology; primarily, what is out there in the universe? What
constitutes the 25 percent of matter that we haven't seen yet?
What constitutes the 70 percent of the energy that seems to out
there that we don't yet understand?
One of the questions that we really do hope to address--
--this looks more complicated than I intended but one of the
questions that we want to address now is the question of what
is the origin of the mass scale that we know about. We know
right now, right now experiments are exploring something called
the weak energy scale. It is a particular energy scale. It is
about 100 to 1,000 times the mass of a proton when we relate
energy and mass through E = mc2, and at that energy
scale we really will answer some of the questions we have had
as particle physicists for the last 30 years or so--questions
like, why do particles have mass? Why do fundamental particles
have mass? Questions like, why is that mass scale what it is?
And the interesting thing is that quantum mechanics and special
relativity tell us that the mass scale just doesn't make sense
unless there is something else very interesting happening at
that energy scale. That is to say, we expect to find some
indications of some new underlying physics that could be as
exotic as extensions of symmetries of space and time, extension
of space itself. It is almost inevitably going to be something
profound.
I am sure that my fellow panelists will talk more about
this, but it is really a particularly interesting time because
the Large Hadron Collider is about to turn on and really we do
hope to see some answers to this question. And this is just to
stay that it could be that it could discover evidence, it could
just discover new particles, it could discover--you have
probably heard of what is called the Higgs particle, but it
could discover particles that even travel in extra dimensions.
We really do have reasons to believe that there is very
interesting new physics that is really right around the corner
if we can explore these higher energy scales. And just to give
a simple example, it could be that when we collide together
protons we make this new particle that travels in extra
dimensions. What is so interesting is that these particles,
even though they are involved in extra dimensions--and I know I
haven't told you what extra dimensions are, but it is the idea
that we have dimensions beyond the three we see. But it could
be that even though those particles are there, they still can
decay back into our universe so that we can see them in these
elaborate detectors that have been built that I am not going to
have time to tell you about but I am sure my fellow panelists
will.
It seems I have actually stuck to time, which is kind of
amazing, mostly because I am from New York and talk really
fast. But we really do have a new world view at this point.
That is to say, we are about to embark on investigation of
scales of which we are fairly confident we should be able to
find out what is happening, and what is so interesting is that
that same energy scale could be connected to the dark matter of
the universe for reasons I don't have time to explain but feel
free to ask. And it could be connected to the scales that will
be explored with gravity wave detectors. It is very
interesting. The scale has appeared in several different
contexts. There are many new results in theoretical physics.
There are intriguing possibilities for our universe. We have
seen how the theories can connect together the ideas, but it is
very important for us to really have the experiments to tell us
which are the right directions. These are all very nice ideas,
at least we think so, but we would like to know which are
really out there in the universe. We are not just doing
abstract mathematics. We really want to know what is it. And
any of these discoveries would be things that would make us
really change fundamentally our view of what the universe is
made of.
Some of the most exciting physics that we know should have
answers is involved at this weak scale that we are exploring.
There are many questions at many energy scales but we are at
the cusp of exploring an energy scale which we know is
interesting, and as I said, it is also involved in dark matter
experiments. So this is wonderful overlap of experimental
cosmology and theoretical developments and this could be a
revolutionary discovery. How can we choose not to explore?
So I am just going to close with my favorite picture, which
shows that there could be a lot more out there in the universe.
An amusing fact was when I put this picture in I didn't realize
it was the Chateau de Sion, the painting that is there, which
is right near CERN. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Randall follows:]
Prepared Statement of Lisa Randall
It's an exciting time for physics. We are currently exploring the
universe at larger and smaller scales than ever before. Astrophysical
probes let us see out into the Universe at the largest observable
scales. Particle experiments set to investigate the fundamental nature
of matter smaller distances and higher energies than ever before.
Admittedly, the questions we ask can be very abstract in their
detailed formulation--so much so that people sometimes question the
merit of our enterprise, which doesn't have the obvious and immediate
impact of other more applied or more people-oriented research. But at
the root of what we explore are questions as basic as what are the
fundamental building blocks of matter? What is out there in the
universe that we cannot yet see? And how did the universe evolve into
its current state? The ability to ask--and to answer these questions--
and to formulate them precisely enough that we know answers should
exists--is what makes people, and up to this point Americans, special.
Some of the very features that make the field so esoteric and so
challenging are also what makes it critical as a way of maintaining
leadership in scientific, technical, and creative fields. If you want
to attract the best people to do the most creative things, challenges
are vital. We've maintained the best universities and had the most
innovative companies for the last half century for a reason.
So what are the questions we ask and what will it take to answer
them? We want to understand matter's most basic elements and the forces
through which they interact. We'd like to connect observed particles,
interactions, and phenomena to underlying theoretical frameworks. That
might be string theory, which posits fundamental underlying vibrating
strings at the heart of all matter. Or these studies might yield a
deeper understanding of space time. Are the three dimensions of space
that we see all there are? Or are there dimensions to the universe that
are different and so far completely hidden from view? It could be that
there are parallel universes less than a centimeter away that we have
not yet seen. It would be revolutionary to discover that the Universe
is so much richer than we have so far observed.
We want to connect what we learn about fundamental particles to how
the universe has evolved. And we'd like to understand the implications
of cosmological observations for particle physics. Can we understanding
the origin of the universe and structures that we see?
The chief particle physics questions today center around the origin
of the masses of fundamental particles and why they are at the scale we
have observed them to be. This is no small questions since quantum
mechanics and special relativity tell us that it is extremely unlikely
without something very interesting going on to maintain the hierarchy
of mass scales that is necessary to develop interesting physical
theories--and the world as we know it. Without what we call ``fine-
tuning'' of parameters--or something new and profound--it seems that
masses would be nothing like what we have seen. We want to understand
both where mass comes from and what protects the mass scale.
That latter question has led to explorations as profound and
admittedly speculative as the search for additional dimensions of
space. It could be that space time is distorted in a way that keeps
gravity weak and masses as they should be.
And most remarkably we should soon be able to test these ideas. The
Large Hadron Collider, the giant machine colliding together two beams
of protons at seven times higher energy than has yet been achieved on
Earth, should be able to explore what physical theory accounts for the
phenomena we have observed. For example, when protons collide they can
turn into energy, and that energy (through E = mc2) can turn
into particles that travel in the extra dimensions. Those particles
might escape, or they might decay into the detectors which are
specially designed to identify these decay products and piece together
what was originally there.
By studying the energy scales that the LHC will explore, we might
also understand what accounts for dark matter, the matter in the
universe whose gravitational effects we observe but which don't emit or
absorb light. In addition to the LHC, this is an interesting
experimental era for the study of cosmology and dark matter in
particular. Many particle theorists currently explore the cosmological
implications of physical theories that might underlie the Standard
Model. Dark matter will be tested directly, in experiments on Earth
where the small probability that dark matter will interact is enhanced
by providing big vats of target material. Dark matter will also be
tested through the possibility that dark matter particles can
annihilate with each other and give rise to photons or antiparticles
that we can measure astronomically.
Our job as theorists is to understand experimental implications and
suggest what might be present so that we won't miss it when it is
produced in the laboratory or in space. Experiments are complicated and
the many subtle ways to find what lies beyond the Standard Model
challenges us all to rise to the occasion.
There are many new ideas and results in theoretical physics that
follow from our better understanding of the implications of Einstein's
theory of gravity and our particle physics models. There are intriguing
possibilities to explore and test, both with theory and experiments.
Many of these ideas center on the scales that the LHC will explore.
These ideas--ones as exotic as extra dimensions or as relatively
straightforward as the so-called Higgs mechanism for generating msas--
could soon be tested. Given that we are at the cusp of this new
understanding of the nature of the universe, how can we choose not to
explore?
Biography for Lisa Randall
Lisa Randall is Professor of Theoretical Physics and Studies
Particle Physics and Cosmology. Her research concerns elementary
particles and fundamental forces and has involved the development and
study of a wide variety of models, the most recent involving extra
dimensions of space. She has made advances in understanding and testing
the Standard Model of particle physics, supersymmetry, models of extra
dimensions, resolutions to the hierarchy problem concerning the
weakness of gravity and experimental tests of these ideas, cosmology of
extra dimensions, baryogenesis, cosmological inflation, and dark
matter. Professor Randall earned her Ph.D. from Harvard University and
held professorships at MIT and Princeton University before returning to
Harvard in 2001. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences,
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a fellow of the American
Physical Society, and is a past winner of an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
Research Fellowship, a National Science Foundation Young Investigator
Award, a DOE Outstanding Junior Investigator Award, and the
Westinghouse Science Talent Search. In 2003, she received the Premio
Caterina Tomassoni e Felice Pietro Chisesi Award, from the University
of Rome, La Sapienza. In autumn, 2004, she was the most cited
theoretical physicist of the previous five years. In 2006, she received
the Klopsted Award from the American Society of Physics Teachers
(AAPT). In 2007, she received the Julius Lilienfeld Prize from the
American Physical Society for her work on elementary particle physics
and cosmology and for communicating this work to the public. Professor
Randall's book, Warped Passages: Unraveling the Mysteries of the
Universe's Hidden Dimensions, was included in the New York Times' 100
notable books of 2005.
In 2008, Prof. Randall was among Esquire Magazine's ``75 Most
Influential People of the 21st Century''. Randall was included in Time
Magazine's ``100 Most Influential People'' of 2007 and was one of 40
people featured in The Rolling Stone 40th Anniversary issue that year.
Prof. Randall was featured in Newsweek's ``Who's Next in 2006'' as
``one of the most promising theoretical physicists of her generation''
and in Seed Magazine's ``2005 Year in Science Icons''.
Mr. Tonko. Thank you very much, Dr. Randall, and very
interesting testimony and thank you for the sidebar compliment
regarding New Yorkers. We appreciate that.
We are now going to recess for about 20 minutes, and Dr.
Kovar, we will resume with you leading off with your testimony.
That allows us then to cast our three votes and return. So we
can recess for 20 minutes.
[Recess.]
Mr. Lipinski. [Presiding] I call the hearing back to order.
We heard--before the votes we heard the testimony of Dr.
Randall, so I hope we won't be interrupted again by votes but
it is possible we will be, but right now we will move on to Dr.
Kovar. So Dr. Kovar, you are recognized.
STATEMENT OF DR. DENNIS KOVAR, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR FOR HIGH
ENERGY PHYSICS, OFFICE OF SCIENCE, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Dr. Kovar. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Inglis and Members
of the Committee, thank you very much for the opportunity to
testify on the High Energy and Nuclear Physics Program at the
Department of Energy at the Office of Science. I am Dennis
Kovar. I served as Director of the Nuclear Physics Program for
nine years and since October 2007 I have been serving as
Director of the Office of High Energy Physics. I am very
pleased to be here today to share with you my perspectives on
these programs.
The scientific fields of high energy and nuclear physics
emerged in the first half of the 20th century as physicists
began to study the fundamental constituents of matter and their
interaction. In the 1950s because of the great activity and the
interest in these areas, the Department of Energy's predecessor
agency, the Atomic Energy Commission, established research
programs in these scientific fields. These research programs
are now in the Department of Energy's Office of Science. Their
mission is to deliver discovery science. They do this by
nurturing, developing and supporting the research capabilities
needed to position the United States at the scientific
frontiers of these fields, to make significant discoveries and
advance our knowledge. High energy physics, or particle
physics, focuses on discovering and characterizing the
fundamental building blocks of matter, while nuclear physics
focuses on understanding how these fundamental building blocks
combine to give rise to matter as observed in nature and the
laboratory. Over the last half century the Department of Energy
programs have delivered outstanding discovery science. The
United States has emerged as a global leader in the major
scientific success of both fields. The results have been
impressive. Twenty-six Nobel Prizes awarded in high energy and
nuclear physics over the past 58 years went to physicists in
the United States, supported primarily by DOE. These programs
have over this period had an enormous impact on society through
the new knowledge and technologies that emerged from their
research. These have enabled applications in industry,
computing, medicine and pharmaceuticals, national security and
other scientific fields. Both programs have now developed
strategic plans for maintaining the U.S. leadership roles and
participating in major discoveries in these scientific fields
in the future. These plans have been developed with the input
of their respective federal advisory committees and the broad
national and international scientific communities. They have
been formulated to address the most promising scientific
opportunities in a manner that will complement and enhance
international efforts so as to optimize the science that will
emerge globally.
The Department of Energy's High Energy Physics and Nuclear
Physics Programs also have important stewardship components
that serve the Department and national needs beyond the scope
of research. For the High Energy Physics Program, it is
fundamental and long-term accelerator science relevant to next-
generation accelerators, and for nuclear physics, it is isotope
development and production. U.S. scientific leadership and the
associated benefits to the Nation are realized through
sustained federal support and by federal investments in
scientific infrastructure and research facilities. Our
understanding of the laws of nature and the physical universe
have been profoundly altered by these discoveries made at U.S.
facilities by U.S. scientists. These discoveries reveal new
behaviors that raise new questions and in some cases totally
unexpected questions. These questions inspire curiosity and
wonder. They inspire ingenuity, pride and innovation and
motivate discovery. The resulting advances in technology and
knowledge serve both science and society.
That concludes my testimony. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for
providing this opportunity to discuss high energy physics
research programs and our plans for the future. I would be
pleased to answer any questions you might have. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Kovar follows:]
Prepared Statement of Dennis Kovar
Thank you Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Inglis, and Members of the
Committee for the opportunity to appear before you to provide testimony
on the High Energy Physics and Nuclear Physics programs in the
Department of Energy's (DOE's) Office of Science (SC). I served as
Director of the Nuclear Physics program for nine years, from 1998 to
October 2007, and I have been Director of the Office of High Energy
Physics since October 2007. I am pleased to be here today to share with
you my perspectives on these programs.
Introduction
The fields of high energy physics (also known as particle physics)
and nuclear physics, seek to understand and explain the physical world
all around us--from the sub-atomic to the astronomical. Particle
physics focuses on discovering and characterizing the fundamental
building blocks of matter. Nuclear physics focuses on understanding how
these fundamental building blocks combine to give rise to matter as
observed in nature and in the laboratory.
Both fields address questions that seem intractable: What is the
origin of mass? What do the stars tell us about the fate of the
Universe? Can we discover and create novel forms of matter? What if an
understanding of the fundamental building blocks of matter at the
smallest scales is not enough to explain the character of the atomic
nucleus, the elements, or materials? Later in this testimony, I hope to
explain how experiments with neutrinos, fundamental particles
associated with some forms of nuclear decay, aim to reveal missing
components of a theoretical model that could explain why most particles
have mass while others do not. I will describe astronomical
measurements that could answer some of our questions about dark
energy--a form of energy hypothesized to account for anomalous
observations about the rate of expansion and ultimate fate of the
Universe. I will explain how particle colliders exploit the duality of
mass and energy to produce, detect, and ultimately characterize novel
particles of matter. I will also mention how ongoing studies of Quantum
Chromodynamics (QCD) are helping to explain why some composite, but
still sub-atomic, particles are more than the sum of their fundamental
particle constituents.
These questions inspire curiosity and wonder. Among the skilled
scientists engaged in high energy and nuclear physics research, they
also inspire ingenuity and motivate discovery. The resulting advances
in technology and knowledge serve both science and society. For
example, the desire for a deeper understanding of the fundamental
constituents of matter has revealed a hierarchy of matter's building
blocks: protons and neutrons bind together to form the atomic nucleus;
quarks, in turn, are the components of protons and neutrons. Along the
way, discoveries were made about radioactive decay--a process exploited
by, for example, medical imaging technologies--and nuclear fission.
Many of these discoveries were made possible by purpose-built research
facilities supported by DOE--for example, particle accelerators. In
many cases, breakthroughs in technology and design in these facilities
have led to advances in diverse areas, such as light sources for
materials research and tools for homeland security.
In this testimony, I describe the current frontiers for both high
energy physics research and nuclear physics research and describe how
the research programs of the Office of Science contribute to scientific
advances in these areas. I also discuss each program's relationship to
U.S. and international partners and the anticipated benefits of
continued U.S. leadership, including benefits to science and to the
Nation. To begin, however, I would like to describe the origins and
scientific breadth of the programs.
The Origins of the High Energy and Nuclear Physics Programs
The scientific study of high energy physics and nuclear physics
emerged in the first half of the 20th century as physicists began to
study the fundamental constituents of matter and their interactions.
This began in 1909 with a famous experiment by physicist Ernest
Rutherford. The experiment involved firing a beam of helium ions at a
thin sheet of gold foil and measuring how the ions scattered. The
scattering pattern suggested that each atom has at its center a small,
dense, positively charged core, which Rutherford named the nucleus.
Over the next decades physicists learned that all matter on Earth is
built of subatomic particles, now known as electrons, protons, and
neutrons.
Following the invention of particle accelerators, the second half
of the 20th century witnessed a rapid progression of new discoveries.
Accelerators enable physicists to propel charged particles to high
speeds, focus them into beams, and collide them with stationary targets
or other beams. The products of the collisions of common particles of
matter enable the observation of their constituent subatomic particles
and new short-lived particles. These collisions can convert matter into
energy as described by Albert Einstein's equation, E = mc2.
With these experiments physicists discovered that protons and neutrons
from the atomic nucleus are composed of more fundamental particles
known as quarks. The quarks and electrons that constitute everyday
matter belong to families of particles that include other, much rarer
particles. They also learned that particles interact through just four
forces: gravity, electromagnetism, and two less familiar forces known
as the strong force and weak force.
In the 1950s, the Department of Energy's predecessor agency, The
Atomic Energy Commission, established research programs supporting high
energy and nuclear physics to take advantage of the scientific
opportunities identified by early atomic science and made possible by
technology and accelerator-based research. Over the last half century
these programs delivered outstanding discovery science, and the United
States emerged as a global leader in the major scientific thrusts of
both fields. U.S. leadership was made possible by sustained support for
researchers at both universities and national laboratories and by
federal investment in scientific infrastructure for new or upgraded
accelerator facilities. These facilities positioned the U.S. to do
experiments at the scientific frontier. Our understanding of the laws
of nature and the physical universe was profoundly altered by the
discoveries made at these facilities by our scientists. These
discoveries revealed behaviors that sparked new, and in some cases,
totally unexpected questions.
The increase in the energy of particle accelerator beams enabled
particle physicists to discover the creation of many new unexpected
short-lived particles. A theoretical framework known as the Standard
Model was developed to describe and predict the behavior of these
particles with extremely high levels of precision. The Standard Model
is currently the best theory for explaining the relationship between
matter and the fundamental forces that govern particle interactions.
The development and precise testing of the Standard Model rank among
the crowning achievements of 20th century science.
DOE-supported physicists have played leading roles in the
development of the theoretical foundations and in many of the major
experimental discoveries in particle physics. For example, all six
quarks and three of the six elementary particles known as leptons were
discovered at DOE accelerator laboratories. DOE-supported physicists
also played leading roles in the theoretical development of the Nuclear
Shell Model, Nuclear Collective Model, and the models for stellar
burning and nucleosynthesis--the process of creating new atomic nuclei
from preexisting neutrons and protons--all of which form the
foundations of nuclear physics today. DOE laboratories and experiments
played major roles in verifying these nuclear physics models. Twenty of
the 26 Nobel Prizes awarded in high energy and nuclear physics over the
past 58 years were to physicists in the United States supported
primarily by DOE.
The DOE High Energy and Nuclear Physics Programs
Like other programs in the Office of Science, the Office of High
Energy Physics (HEP) and the Office of Nuclear Physics (NP) have two
signature components to their respective programs. First, both programs
support a robust portfolio of fundamental research at universities and
national laboratories strategically structured to serve the DOE mission
in discovery science. This includes the development of advanced
accelerator and detector technology that is important to the
advancement of their fields and relevant to other scientific
disciplines and applications. Second, both programs support the design,
construction, and operation of world-class scientific user facilities
that position the U.S. at the scientific frontiers of high energy and
nuclear physics. The HEP and NP programs also have important
stewardship components that serve DOE and national needs beyond the
scope of high energy or nuclear physics research. For HEP, it is
fundamental and long-term accelerator science relevant to next-
generation accelerators, and, for NP, it is the national isotope
development and production program.
Both programs have developed strategic plans with the input of
their respective Federal Advisory Committees and the broad national and
international scientific communities.
The HEP program supports a range of research and scientific tools
focused on three interrelated scientific frontiers:
The Energy Frontier, where powerful accelerators are
used to create new particles, reveal their interactions, and
investigate fundamental forces.
The Intensity Frontier, where intense particle beams
and highly sensitive detectors are used to pursue alternative
pathways to investigate fundamental forces and particle
interactions by studying events that occur rarely in nature.
The Cosmic Frontier, where ground-based and space-
based experiments and telescopes are used to make measurements
that will offer new insight and information about the nature of
dark matter and dark energy to understand fundamental particle
properties and discover new phenomena.
The NP program has come to focus on three broad yet interrelated
scientific frontiers:
The Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) Frontier, where
predictions are sought for the properties of strongly
interacting matter, and questions about what governs the
transition of quarks and gluons into pions and nucleons\1\ are
asked.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Pions are the lightest mesons, which are composed of one quark
and one antiquark. The term nucleon refers to either a neutron or a
proton, as both can be found in the atomic nucleus.
The Nuclei and Nuclear Astrophysics Frontier, which
focuses on understanding how protons and neutrons (themselves
combinations of quarks and gluons) combine to form atomic
nuclei and how those nuclei have arisen during the 13.7 billion
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
years since the birth of the cosmos.
The Fundamental Symmetries and Neutrinos Frontier,
which focuses on developing a better understanding of the
neutron and the neutrino--the nearly undetectable fundamental
particle produced by the weak interaction that was first
detected in nuclear beta decay--providing evidence for physics
beyond the Standard Model.
The study of neutrinos features in both the Intensity Frontier of
the HEP program and the Fundamental Symmetries Frontier of NP. These
endeavors are complementary and coordinated with distinct motivations.
The HEP program seeks to exploit the role that neutrinos play in the
Standard Model to better understand the origins of mass and the forces
affecting matter. The NP program seeks to better understand the nature
of the neutrino in terms of its mass, whether it has a distinct
antiparticle, and the role that neutrinos play in the processes and
forces affecting atomic nuclei.
The strategic plans for the HEP and NP programs also consider
investments made by other U.S. federal agencies and international
research organizations, recognizing that large accelerator and detector
experiments have become costly and can take many years to implement.
The HEP and NP programs engage in several efforts to coordinate and
collaborate with high energy physics and nuclear physics programs
around the world to maximize scientific opportunities and maintain
leadership in key scientific thrusts.
In particular, both HEP and NP work closely with the National
Science Foundation (NSF) in many partnerships. These working
relationships and partnerships are greatly facilitated by the fact that
the HEP and NP Federal Advisory Committees are jointly chartered by DOE
and NSF. HEP has also partners with the NSF and the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Astrophysics program on
ground-based and space-based observatories. NP has working
relationships with NASA, the U.S. Air Force, National Reconnaissance
Office (NRO), and U.S. Navy for utilization of particle beams and
infrastructure at NP facilities.
Scientific Facilities and International Collaborations
Historically, the HEP and NP programs have pursued the development
of large, one-of-a-kind particle accelerator facilities, which are
utilized by large international scientific collaborations. The most
prevalent model for collaborating on international facilities, a model
that has evolved over the past few decades, involves the host country
or host region building and operating a new facility that provides
particle beams for experimentation, and the host collaborating with
other countries around the world to build and operate the detectors
that use these beams. During the period that one forefront facility
operates, other new next-generation facilities or upgrades are being
planned for construction and operation in the next decades. This
provides a balance of world-class facilities in diverse geographical
regions. If the cost of a new facility is too expensive for a single
country or region, there is typically a reexamination of the
international collaboration. In this regard the ongoing 12 GeV Upgrade
for the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF), the
planned Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), and the proposed
upgrade of Fermilab's accelerator capabilities for a world-class
Intensity Frontier program are all elements of the international
scientific programs in nuclear and high energy physics.
There are several strategic requirements of HEP and NP science due
to the long timescales and the international nature of these
collaborations--consensus needs to be reached by the national and
international partners on what will be done; long-term commitments need
to be made and honored; and the work must be ``projectized'' and
managed internationally.
Future of the HEP Program
In HEP's strategic plan, the next years will see a transition from
currently operating facilities (Tevatron Collider and Main Injector at
Fermilab) to intensive R&D, design, and construction of new research
capabilities. A balance among research, facility operations, and
construction for future opportunities will be maintained. The plan
enhances and develops a U.S. leadership role in the three main
scientific thrusts of particle physics: the Energy Frontier, currently
explored by the Tevatron and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), with a
teraelectron volt (TeV) lepton collider envisioned as the next-
generation discovery tool; the Intensity Frontier, encompassing high-
power proton- and electron-based accelerators used for neutrino physics
and studies of very rare processes that give unique insights into the
unification of forces; and the Cosmic Frontier, which embodies a wide
range of studies using non-accelerator-based techniques and ultra-
sensitive particle detectors.
Long-range plans for each frontier revolve around the scientific
questions addressed by major new facilities:
The Energy Frontier: At the Energy Frontier, there is a strong case for
operating the Tevatron Collider program through FY 2011 to compete for
scientific discoveries with the LHC during this period. Possible
scientific deliverables over the next five-year period are discoveries
of the Higgs boson and supersymmetric particles. LHC suffered technical
problems in commissioning, but is now scheduled to start operations
late in 2009. HEP support for LHC detector operations, maintenance,
computing, and R&D is necessary to maintain a U.S. role in these
experiments. The HEP plan allows for U.S. participation in the LHC
accelerator and detector upgrades. Details of the scope of U.S.
involvement in these upgrades are currently under consideration.
The Intensity Frontier: At the Intensity Frontier, the Neutrinos at the
Main Injector (NuMI) Off-Axis Neutrino Appearance (NOnA) project at
Fermilab is planned to begin operations with a partially completed
detector in 2013. The NuMI beamline will operate in its current
configuration through FY 2011 for the Main Injector Neutrino
Oscillation Search (MINOS) and MINERnA, and will undertake a year-long
shutdown in FY 2012 to upgrade the beam power for the NOnA experiment.
The future direction of the intensity frontier involves further
upgrades to the Fermilab proton beam power, construction of high
intensity beamlines for neutrino and rare decay experiments, and the
fabrication of detectors capable of utilizing these intense beams to
make significant discoveries.
The upgraded intense proton beam would enable searches for
extremely rare decays that can probe for new physics well beyond the
Energy Frontier, such as muon to electron conversion, and a new
dedicated beamline and experiment to explore this science. A new
neutrino beamline together with a large underground detector located at
a large distance from Fermilab would provide capabilities for a next
generation of neutrino oscillation measurements. Over a ten-year
period, we expect some realignment of professional skills at Fermilab
as the laboratory transitions from the operations-dominated Tevatron
program to the construction-dominated neutrino and rare decay program.
Significant results from NOnA, MINERnA, and other precision
measurements will emerge over the next decade, keeping the U.S. at the
forefront of these studies, even as the infrastructure needed for a
world-leading program in neutrino studies will have been put into
place. This, along with rare decay searches, will provide Fermilab with
a robust, continuous program of world-leading physics in the decade
after the end of the Tevatron Collider program.
The Cosmic Frontier: DOE is partnering with the NASA and NSF in the
fabrication of forefront ground-based and space-based particle
astrophysics observatories for exploration of the Cosmic Frontier. HEP
will collaborate with NSF on a staged program of research and
technology development designed to directly detect dark matter
particles using ultra-sensitive detectors located underground. These
detectors will eventually push current limits on direct detection of
dark matter down by a factor of 1000. HEP anticipates working with NASA
on a Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM) and with NSF on possible ground-
based dark energy measurements. These projects for direct detection of
dark matter and ground- and space-based observatories focused on dark
energy are planned to begin fabrication in the out-year timeframe and
to begin operations in the latter part of the next decade which will
allow the United States to maintain scientific leadership at the Cosmic
Frontier.
Future of the NP Program
The United States is today a world leader at the Quantum
Chromodynamics scientific frontier because of the federal investments
made in the last decade in CEBAF and RHIC (Relativistic Heavy Ion
Collider). The NP program is among the world leaders in the frontier of
Nuclei and Nuclear Astrophysics, with efforts focused at ATLAS and the
HRIBF (Holifield Radioactive Ion Beams Facility) and three university
accelerator facilities. In addition, participation in forefront
neutrino experiments has made the U.S. among the world leaders in the
third frontier of nuclear science, Fundamental Symmetries and
Neutrinos. Each of these frontiers is bolstered by a strong community
of nuclear theorists.
The strategic plan of the NP program over the next five years is to
support university and laboratory scientists and engineers, operate
existing facilities, invest in research capabilities to maintain
leadership in the program's scientific thrusts, and produce research
and commercial isotopes important for the Nation. The NP program is
designed to deliver significant discoveries and advances in nuclear
science and to produce the knowledge, advanced detectors, and
accelerator technologies needed to participate in a broad range of
scientific and technical applications. The Nuclear Science Advisory
Committee's (NSAC) long range plan points toward the mid- and longer-
term priorities to accomplish the NP scientific program, recommending
investments that will enable compelling research and assure U.S.
leadership in nuclear science.
The priority investment for the Medium Energy subprogram is the
completion of the 12 GeV CEBAF Upgrade project, which will double the
energy of the CEBAF electron beam. The project includes construction of
a new experimental hall to exploit the added capability and upgrades to
current detectors and instrumentation. This major CEBAF Upgrade will
provide the opportunity for new discoveries and a more complete
understanding of the mechanism of quark confinement--one of the puzzles
of modern physics. This project will position CEBAF to remain the
international center for these studies for the next decade.
The focus of the Heavy Ion subprogram will be on implementing a
second generation of experiments at RHIC with higher beam luminosity
and greater detector sensitivities to fully characterize and understand
the recently discovered new states of matter. A complementary effort
will be pursued with the heavy ion program at the LHC, which will
enable U.S. participation in studies of hot, dense nuclear matter in a
higher energy regime. This community will be working with the medium
energy community to develop the scientific case and technical
feasibility for a possible future electron-ion collider.
Within the Low Energy subprogram the Nuclear Science Advisory
Committee recommends construction of the next generation Facility for
Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) to advance the frontier of nuclei and nuclear
astrophysics. The Low Energy subprogram is currently conducting R&D and
conceptual design for FRIB. When it begins operations in about a
decade, FRIB will provide a world-leading capability to explore the
structure of the rarest of nuclei and address the nuclear reactions
that power stars and stellar explosions. In the interim, the NP program
is making investments in research capabilities that will allow U.S.
researchers to participate in forefront rare isotope beam studies
around the world in preparation for the FRIB program.
The NP program also supports U.S. participation in international
neutrino experiments that use nuclear physics techniques. These
experiments are focused on neutrino-less double beta decay studies to
determine whether neutrinos are their own antiparticle and to provide
information on the neutrino's mass. Ongoing efforts in this area
include the Italian-led CUORE (Cryogenic Underground Observatory for
Rare Events) project and the Majorana Demonstrator R&D project to
determine the feasibility of a full scale Majorana experiment.
Concluding Remarks
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for providing this opportunity to discuss
the High Energy Physics and the Nuclear Physics research programs at
the Department of Energy. This concludes my testimony, and I would be
pleased to answer any questions you may have.
Biography for Dennis Kovar
Dr. Dennis Kovar has been serving as the Associate Director of
Science for High Energy Physics since October 15, 2007. He served as
the Associate Director of Science for Nuclear Physics (NP) from July
2003 until assuming his present responsibilities. In 2007 he also
served as a co-Acting Deputy Director of the Office of Science. Dr.
Kovar obtained his B.S. in Physics from the University of Texas in 1964
and his Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics from Yale University in 1971. He held
a postdoctoral appointment at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
before joining the scientific staff at Argonne National Laboratory
(ANL) in 1973.
He came to the Department of Energy from ANL in 1990 and served as
Program Manager for Heavy Ion Nuclear Physics (1990-1998), Project
Officer for RHIC (1996-1999) and Director of the Division of Nuclear
Physics (1998-2003), prior to becoming the Associate Director of
Science for Nuclear Physics. As an experimental nuclear physicist, he
produced over 90 refereed articles, primarily in the area of low energy
heavy ion nuclear reactions, nuclear structure and particle detection
techniques and instrumentation. He is a fellow of the American Physical
Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Dr. Kovar was honored with the Presidential Rank Award for Meritorious
Service in 2005 and the Presidential Rank Award for Distinguished
Service in 2008.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you, Dr. Kovar.
The Chair will now recognize Dr. Oddone.
STATEMENT OF DR. PIERMARIA J. ODDONE, DIRECTOR, FERMILAB
NATIONAL ACCELERATOR LABORATORY
Dr. Oddone. Thank you for inviting me to be a witness at
this hearing.
Before I emphasize some of the points in my written
testimony, I would like to start with a personal note. I grew
up in Peru, far away from any ability to do any of this kind of
research. In the 1950s the United States was the beacon for
this type of research. Wonderful discoveries were being made.
The frontier was being expanded. And I decided as a teenager I
wanted to be a physicist and I went to my parents and I told
them so. This was a very strange notion for them, and I must
say they had the wisdom and probably the intestinal fortitude
to actually send a 17-year-old on his own to the United States
to study physics. And so I am here after five decades,
participating, witnessing and contributing to the tremendous
opportunities that have been made possible by the federal
research in this basic field of science and I hope that you in
the future will continue to support this as your predecessors
have done.
Let me emphasize some points. The first one, as Lisa said,
physics has never been as exciting as it is right now. We are
closing in on the Higgs with both the Tevatron and soon with
the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We may discover supersymmetry
that would pair each particle that we know about with another
one with different properties of angular momentum but would,
more importantly, expand our notion of space-time and how we
see space-time and relativity. Physicists would be terribly
disappointed if nature had not used this symmetry. It is so
wonderful. By God, it should be used in nature. We are with
neutrinos studying this very elusive particle with
accelerators, with nuclear reactors, using neutrinos from the
atmosphere, and these neutrinos may in fact explain why the
world is made out of matter and not just a soup of photons that
comes through the annihilation of matter and antimatter in
equal parts.
When we study the cosmos, we have been able to tie the
world of the very small and the very large in a way that the
big structures in the universe we understand as the subatomic
fluctuations at the very beginning of the universe. And further
we study the cosmos and we realize that everything that we knew
about it is about five percent of what is there. Dark energy
and dark matter dominate the content of the universe.
The United States has been a leader in this field through
its existence and that is the second point I want to emphasize,
but that leadership is now in danger. The field has become
global. We use facilities everywhere where we can do the
physics. Europeans have come and used Fermilab for the last 10
years when they were building the Large Hadron Collider. We
have 1,500 physicists working at the LHC now from the United
States, and this balance of facilities and this world use of
facilities that is so powerful in advancing the field depends
on the balanced investment in the various regions. That has
become at this point unbalanced and that is where the threat
comes from. We have closed most facilities and in five years we
will close the Tevatron in the United States, whereas other
regions have built facilities that now give them an advantage
in how they approach this field. Well, it is a problem, but it
is a problem that has a solution.
The advisory panel through its Physics Project
Prioritization Panel, or P5, has put together a powerful plan
at the three frontiers, the three thrusts of particle physics:
the energy frontier where we try to study the very small with
the highest energy machines, the intensity frontier on which
Fermilab will now concentrate that depends for its progress on
producing the greatest numbers of particles. There we will
study neutrinos, very rare processes, and the keystone of that
program is a new facility at Fermilab which we call, for the
moment, Project X. It would be the most intense facility in the
world, giving a beam of neutrinos to the DUSEL Laboratory
funded by the NSF at the Homestake Mine in South Dakota. And
the program as it is presently designed also opens the
possibility for the return to the energy frontier that is now
dominated by the Large Hadron Collider in Europe by developing
accelerators and the technologies necessary, to make progress
after the LHC.
Let me conclude. Maintaining leadership in this fundamental
field is essential. It is essential because it asks the most
fundamental questions. It is hard to imagine leadership in
science for a country without really attacking these questions.
It develops new technologies as it expands and moves the
frontiers of the world as we know it. We are always pushing the
envelopes of technology and this has led to computational and
communication technologies. The Web is an example. The particle
accelerators that we have developed are used in medicine, in
industry, for modifying materials in homeland defense and
security and so are the detectors that are very complex and
that we have developed. Finally, it contributes to the
education of a technical workforce both directly through
international involvement--every major physics department is
involved in particle physics--but also because it attracts
young people to science. Those kinds of questions really, like
it did for me, attract young people to science. They may do
many things as they develop their interests, and people who
enter this career are prepared to work in large disciplinary
teams and make advances cooperatively across the world in this
complex global environment. The United States must remain a
beacon of science and a leader in particle research if it is
going to derive the benefits in education in technological
advances and in science in general. Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Oddone follows:]
Prepared Statement of Piermaria J. Oddone
The State of Particle Physics in Our Nation
Today I will describe the state of my field of research, high-
energy particle physics. Before examining the major questions in
particle physics, I would like to start with a personal note. I was
born in Peru and grew up far away from any possibilities of doing this
kind of research. In high school, reading about the amazing discoveries
and pace of research in nuclear physics and beyond, I was attracted to
physics and proposed to my parents that I become a physicist. This was,
for them, a very strange notion. The beacon for the world in this kind
of research at the time was the United States. My parents had the
wisdom to ship me to the U.S. to study physics at MIT. Today I am
honored to come before you after nearly five decades of witnessing,
participating in and benefiting from the fantastic research
opportunities in our country that have been made possible by federal
support of discovery science in particle physics.
Particle physics has never been more exciting. Experiments at the
Tevatron collider at Fermilab and soon at the Large Hadron Collider at
the European particle physics laboratory CERN are closing in on the
elusive particle--the Higgs boson--that we believe endows elementary
particles with their mass. But in addition we may find something even
more astonishing: that for every particle known today, a new and
previously unseen twin exists, heavier and spinning in a different way.
This discovery would herald a new understanding of space-time and the
Theory of Relativity. Furthermore, several generations of experiments
using accelerators, reactors, the sun and cosmic rays are advancing our
understanding of neutrinos, elusive particles that, together with their
heavy counterparts yet to be discovered, may be responsible for the
matter in our universe.
In the last five decades we have moved from a complete lack of
understanding of the bewildering variety of newly discovered particles
to a remarkable understanding of how all of these hundreds of particles
fit together in a simple and beautiful framework. This modestly named
``Standard Model'' has produced a transformation of how we think of the
universe: how it began and our place within it. This remarkable
intellectual achievement is the result of a powerful interplay between
theorists and the experimental physicists and engineers that have built
some of the most technologically advanced facilities ever created. The
Standard Model has only four fundamental forces and only a few
elementary constituents, namely, six quarks and six leptons. At the
same time that we have made discoveries that confirm this simple
conceptual paradigm, we are discovering a growing number of profound
mysteries that cannot be resolved within it. One can say that our
progress has been as great in expanding what we know as in expanding
our awareness of a vast landscape we know nothing about.
As we have advanced in our understanding of particle physics, we
have discovered the deep connection between the world of the very small
that we study with accelerators and the world of the very large that we
observe in the cosmos. The largest objects in the universe, galaxies
and cluster of galaxies, originated in the subatomic quantum
fluctuations in the earliest moments of the universe. Many of the
mysteries that confront us, such as the discovery of dark matter and
dark energy as primary components of our universe, or the nature of
neutrinos and their transformations, cannot be explained within our
current understanding of particles and forces, and yet such
explanations must exist. This tension between what we have observed and
what we can explain is driving theorists to develop many alternative
frameworks to account for these phenomena. A great expansion of our
experimental horizons will soon take place with the start of the Large
Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland. The LHC promises an
extraordinarily exciting and productive period in the world of science
as these theories confront experimental reality and we make new
discoveries, perhaps beyond anything so far imagined.
The extreme technical demands of particle physics experiments lead
to inventions of unanticipated utility. Many innovations have come out
of the development of accelerators, fast computational techniques, data
mining and processing and particle detector technologies as described
more extensively in Appendix 3. These innovations benefit society and
the economy, such as
1) nuclear medicine and the use of isotopes for treatment and
for metabolic studies;
2) the use of accelerators in proton and neutron cancer
therapies;
3) the development of light sources and neutron sources to
advance many fields of science, including materials science,
atomic and molecular science, chemical sciences, nanosciences
and biosciences;
4) industrial accelerators to sterilize food, modify
materials, or inspect components;
5) radiation detectors used in scanning applications for
medical diagnosis;
6) radiation detectors for national security and other
detection purposes;
7) development of advanced computer technology, spurred by
early application of computers for particle physics data-
taking, pattern recognition and analysis on a massive scale;
8) new massive computer architectures, inspired by the
boundless needs for computational power for quantum
chromodynamics calculations;
9) advance of the greatest distributed computing systems in
the world, grid computing, launched by the need for
computational resources to mine and model data;
10) perhaps the best known example of an application of
particle physics technology, the creation of the World Wide Web
at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory. Impelled by
the need for communications across continents on many different
platforms, U.S. particle physics laboratories quickly
followed--and so did the world;
11) Future applications of accelerator technologies: safer
sub-critical nuclear reactors, transmutation of nuclear waste;
bench top accelerators for material, chemical and biological
research.
Research in particle physics plays an important role in science,
technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. Making
discoveries about the world around us has excited humankind for
centuries. The real possibility of understanding matter, energy, space
and the evolution and fate of the universe generates excitement around
the globe; it is a strong driver of scientific exploration, and it
attracts young people to science. For those who choose to pursue
particle physics, our discipline prepares students not only for careers
in particle physics but for any career in which large,
multidisciplinary teams tackle complex scientific and technological
problems. Federal support of particle physics research has trained
thousands of scientists. At my institution, Fermilab, alone, more than
1,700 young scientists have received their Ph.D.s in the last three
decades.
The field has become progressively more international, demanding
new forms of cooperation between the world agencies that support
science. As more countries have invested in particle physics research
the scientific collaborations to build accelerators and large detector
facilities can typically involve dozens of countries and more than a
hundred institutions. Coordination on a global scale is now common and
will become more so in the future. The U.S. position in this global
context of scientific cooperation and diplomacy is changing. We have
been very much at the leading edge, attracting large investment from
global partners to the U.S. For example, the groups operating the CDF
and DZERO detectors in the Tevatron, Fermilab's proton-antiproton
particle collider, each have hundreds of physicists. About 40 percent
of these physicists hail from dozens of countries beyond our shores,
bringing their resources and knowledge to the U.S. Similarly, nearly
half of the support for BaBar, the detector in the Asymmetric B-Factory
at SLAC, came from Europe. In a reversal of flow, today nearly 1,500
physicists from the U.S. participate in LHC experiments in Europe,
roughly 25 percent of all users of that facility.
The free international sharing of facilities that has characterized
our field has long been dependent on a balance of investments by
various countries and regions over time, primarily by Europe and the
U.S. but also with significant investments by Japan and China. Today,
however, there is a growing imbalance that should raise grave concern.
While the U.S. has either been the leader in particle physics research
or shared leadership with Europe, that leadership is about to pass
wholly to Europe with the start-up of the LHC. Europe's annual
investment in particle physics is at least twice as large as that in
the U.S. The capital value of their facilities will exceed that of the
U.S. by an order of magnitude when the Tevatron shuts down. Nearly all
major U.S. facilities, the Asymmetric B-Factory at SLAC, the Tevatron
at Fermilab, the CESR collider at Cornell and the AGS at Brookhaven
have either been shut down for particle physics research or will be
shut down within two years. The last upgrade to a particle physics
accelerator facility in the U.S. was the construction of the Main
Injector at Fermilab, completed ten years ago, in 1999. It will be the
one remaining facility devoted to particle physics in the U.S. once the
Tevatron shuts down, and it will have strong competition from an
advanced new facility starting in Japan at JPARC.
The future for discovery science in particle physics in the U.S.
will depend critically on following a clear scientific roadmap that
establishes pioneering research facilities to replace our aging
facilities. Last year the High Energy Physics Advisory Committee, or
HEPAP, developed a comprehensive plan for the field. This plan can be
funded within the resources anticipated for the Office of Science
during the next decade. It contains a set of balanced investments in
the three great lines of inquiry of particle physics, all of them
driving toward a unified understanding of nature:
1) The Energy Frontier, where we directly produce new
particles and explore new phenomena;
2) The Intensity Frontier, where neutrinos and rare particle
processes tell us indirectly about new phenomena at energies
even beyond the LHC; and
3) The Cosmic Frontier, where we study natural phenomena
arising from the early universe that ultimately will connect to
our understanding of particles and forces.
The executive summary of this HEPAP plan ``U.S. Particle Physics:
Scientific Opportunities'' is included in this testimony as Appendix 2.
Support for the HEPAP plan at the three frontiers is essential for a
vigorous world-leading program in particle physics. And a vigorous and
healthy program in this fundamental field of science is essential for
us as a nation to derive the practical benefits that come from pushing
the boundaries of science and technology, to provide a beacon for
scientists and students from the U.S. and the world and to continue as
the leader in discovery science.
Appendix 1
The Major Questions in Particle Physics
Appendix 2
``U.S. Particle Physics: Scientific Opportunities''
Chapter 1: Executive Summary
Appendix 3
``U.S. Particle Physics: Scientific Opportunities''
Chapter 2: LParticle Physics in the National and
International Context
2.1 LLong-Term Value of Research in Fundamental
Sciences
2.2 LBenefits to Society
2.3 LThe International Context
Appendix 1
The Major Questions in Particle Physics
The Standard Model Framework has transformed the way we look at the
world around us. It encompasses the forces and particles that we are
familiar with, from nuclei to atoms to chemistry to biology. We used to
think this was what the world is made of. Today, we know better: it is
only some five percent of the matter and energy in the universe. The
vast majority of the universe is dark matter and dark energy, still
totally mysterious and detected only through their gravitational
effects on the cosmos. Observations in space, deep underground and,
most powerfully, in experiments at particle accelerators will
ultimately reveal the particles and forces that underlie dark matter
and dark energy.
Profound question such as these arise when we confront the Standard
Model with observations of the universe around us and fail to find an
answer within it. It is clearly an incomplete framework that must be
radically expanded to bring a unified understanding of nature.
Some of the questions that arise when we confront the Standard
Model with cosmological observations are:
What is the nature of dark matter? Is it a simple
particle or a complex set of particles and interactions?
What is the nature of dark energy?
Why is the universe we see made out of matter and not
equal parts of matter and anti-matter as the Standard Model
would have it? Do neutrinos provide the answer?
What new forces acted at the Big Bang to produce the
distribution of matter we see today?
How will the universe evolve and what is its end-
point?
Other profound questions arise when we join the Standard Model with
gravitation:
Do all forces unify in a single framework?
Are there extra dimensions of space?
Are there hidden sectors not yet observed because
they are too massive or because they interact weakly with our
world?
Further questions arise from the Standard Model itself:
What mechanism endows elementary particles, those
without any internal structure, with mass?
Does the Higgs particle that theoretically endows
elementary particles with mass actually exist?
What is the nature of neutrinos and what do their
tiny masses and transformations tell us?
Do heavy neutrinos exist in the early universe and
explain how matter came to dominate?
Why are there three families of similar elementary
particles and not some other number: two or four or more?
Why is there such a vast difference in the masses of
the quarks, a factor greater than 10,000, from the quarks that
make up the proton to the top quark?
Why are the neutrino masses so light, a million times
smaller than the electron mass?
These questions sound almost theological. It is a feature of the
remarkable age of experimentation and discovery we live in that we can
expect to answer many of them in the next few decades.
Further Reading:
1) National Academy of Sciences Report `` Connecting Quarks to
the Cosmos: Eleven Science Questions for the New Century'',
(http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309074061)
2) National Academy of Sciences Report `` Revealing the Hidden
Nature of Space and Time: Charting a Course for Elementary
Particle Physics'' (http://www.nap.edu/catalog/11641.html)
Appendix 2
A U.S. Roadmap for Particle Physics
The field is currently progressing along the roadmap of the
Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel whose May, 2008 report
was recommended by the High Energy Advisory Committee and serves as a
guide: ``US Particle Physics Opportunities: A Strategic Plan for the
Next Ten Years'' (http://www.er.doe.gov/hep/files/pdfs/P5--
Report%2006022008.pdf). The Panel was convened at the request of the
DOE and the NSF to produce a realistic plan for particle physics under
several budget scenarios. This plan proposes to develop the three
frontiers of particle physics in a balanced way and has replaced the
previous DOE strategy that was aimed at hosting the International
Linear Collider early in the next decade. The reason for the changed
strategy was the large cost estimate for the International Linear
Collider and the absence of new information on the required energy
scale--something that only research at the LHC will provide. The cost
estimate for the International Linear Collider was developed rigorously
by the world particle physics community and it allowed our policy-
makers to determine that such a plan could not be realized any time
soon and that a new strategy was required for the health of the field
in the U.S.
One important aspect of this plan is the need for cooperation in
major projects across government agencies. The planned Joint Dark
Energy Mission requires a strong partnership between the DOE and NASA.
The development of the world-leading neutrino program in the U.S. with
a new beam from Fermilab aimed at the Deep Underground Science and
Engineering Laboratory at the Homestake mine, South Dakota, 1,300 km
away, requires a strong partnership between the DOE and the NSF. While
partnerships between NASA and DOE have been successful in the past such
as in the case of the Fermi satellite, and partnerships between the DOE
and NSF have been successful such as in the case of LHC, these new
projects are much larger and will demand even closer collaboration.
In the section below I reproduce in its entirety the Executive
Summary of the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel: ``U.S.
Particle Physics Opportunities: A Strategic Plan for the Next Ten
Years''.
1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Particle physics is a central component of the physical sciences,
focused on the fundamental nature of matter and energy, and of space
and time. Discoveries in this field, often called high-energy physics,
will change our basic understanding of nature. The Standard Model of
particle physics provides a remarkably accurate description of
elementary particles and their interactions. However, experiment and
observation strongly point to a deeper and more fundamental theory that
breakthroughs in the coming decade will begin to reveal.
To address the central questions in particle physics, researchers
use a range of tools and techniques at three interrelated frontiers:
The Energy Frontier, using high-energy colliders to
discover new particles and directly probe the architecture of
the fundamental forces.
The Intensity Frontier, using intense particle beams
to uncover properties of neutrinos and observe rare processes
that will tell us about new physics beyond the Standard Model.
The Cosmic Frontier, using underground experiments
and telescopes, both ground and space based, to reveal the
natures of dark matter and dark energy and using high-energy
particles from space to probe new phenomena.
As described in the box on pages X-XX, these three frontiers form
an interlocking framework that addresses fundamental questions about
the laws of nature and the cosmos. These three approaches ask different
questions and use different techniques, but they ultimately aim at the
same transformational science.
The changing context
Recent reports, including the National Research Council's
``Revealing the Hidden Nature of Space and Time'' (the EPP2010 report)
and earlier P5 reports, have discussed the outlook for the field of
particle physics in the United States. The scientific priorities have
not changed since those reports appeared, but the context for the
scientific opportunities they describe has altered.
Particle physics in the United States is in transition. Two of the
three high-energy physics colliders in the U.S. have now permanently
ceased operation. The third, Fermilab's Tevatron, will turn off in the
next few years. The energy frontier, defined for decades by Fermilab's
Tevatron, will move to Europe when CERN's Large Hadron Collider begins
operating. American high-energy physicists have played a leadership
role in developing and building the LHC program, and they constitute a
significant fraction of the LHC collaborations--the largest group from
any single nation. About half of all U.S. experimental particle
physicists participate in LHC experiments.
As this transition occurs, serious fiscal challenges change the
landscape for U.S. particle physics. The large cost estimate for the
International Linear Collider, a centerpiece of previous reports, has
delayed plans for a possible construction start and has led the
particle physics community to take a fresh look at the scientific
opportunities in the decade ahead. The severe funding reduction in the
Omnibus Bill of December 2007 stopped work on several projects and had
damaging impacts on the entire field. The present P5 panel has
developed a strategic plan that takes these new realities into account.
Overall recommendation
Particle physics explores the fundamental constituents of matter
and energy and the forces that govern their interactions. Great
scientific opportunities point to significant discoveries in particle
physics in the decade ahead.
Research in particle physics has inspired generations of young
people to engage with science, benefiting all branches of the physical
sciences and strengthening the scientific workforce. To quote from the
EPP2010 report:
``A strong role in particle physics is necessary if the United
States is to sustain its leadership in science and technology
over the long-term.''
The present P5 panel therefore makes the following overall
recommendation:
The panel recommends that the U.S. maintain a leadership role
in world-wide particle physics. The panel recommends a strong,
integrated research program at the three frontiers of the
field: the Energy Frontier, the Intensity Frontier and the
Cosmic Frontier.
The Energy Frontier
Experiments at energy-frontier accelerators will make major
discoveries about particles and their interactions. They will address
key questions about the physical nature of the universe: the origin of
particle masses, the existence of new symmetries of nature, the
existence of extra dimensions of space, and the nature of dark matter.
Currently, the Tevatron at Fermilab is the highest-energy collider
operating in the world.
The panel recommends continuing support for the Tevatron
Collider program for the next one to two years, to exploit its
potential for discoveries.
In the near future, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva,
Switzerland will achieve much higher collision energies than those of
any previous accelerator, to explore the energy range we call the
Terascale. The LHC represents the culmination of more than two decades
of international effort and investment, with major U.S. involvement.
Experiments at the LHC are poised to make exciting discoveries that
will change our fundamental understanding of nature. Significant U.S.
participation in the full exploitation of the LHC has the highest
priority in the U.S. high-energy physics program.
The panel recommends support for the U.S. LHC program,
including U.S. involvement in the planned detector and
accelerator upgrades.
The international particle physics community has reached consensus
that a full understanding of the physics of the Terascale will require
a lepton collider as well as the LHC. The panel reiterates the
importance of such a collider. In the next few years, results from the
LHC will establish its required energy. If the optimum initial energy
proves to be at or below approximately 500 GeV, then the International
Linear Collider is the most mature and ready-to-build option with a
construction start possible in the next decade. A requirement for
initial energy much higher than 500 GeV will mean considering other
collider technologies. The cost and scale of a lepton collider mean
that it would be an international project, with the cost shared by many
nations. International negotiations will determine the siting; the host
will be assured of scientific leadership at the energy frontier.
Whatever the technology of a future lepton collider, and wherever it is
located, the U.S. should plan to play a major role.
For the next few years, the U.S. should continue to participate in
the international R&D program for the ILC to position the U.S. for an
important role should the ILC be the choice of the international
community. The U.S. should also participate in coordinated R&D for the
alternative accelerator technologies that a lepton collider of higher
energy would require.
The panel recommends for the near future a broad accelerator
and detector R&D program for lepton colliders that includes
continued R&D on ILC at roughly the proposed FY 2009 level in
support of the international effort. This will allow a
significant role for the U.S. in the ILC wherever it is built.
The panel also recommends R&D for alternative accelerator
technologies, to permit an informed choice when the lepton
collider energy is established.
The Intensity Frontier
Recent striking discoveries make the study of the properties of
neutrinos a vitally important area of research. Measurements of the
properties of neutrinos are fundamental to understanding physics beyond
the Standard Model and have profound consequences for the evolution of
the universe. The latest developments in accelerator and detector
technology make possible promising new scientific opportunities in
neutrino science as well as in experiments to measure rare processes.
The U.S. can build on the unique capabilities and infrastructure at
Fermilab, together with DUSEL, the Deep Underground Science and
Engineering Laboratory proposed for the Homestake Mine in South Dakota,
to develop a world-leading program of neutrino science. Such a program
will require a multi-megawatt-powered neutrino source at Fermilab.
The panel recommends a world-class neutrino program as a core
component of the U.S. program, with the long-term vision of a
large detector in the proposed DUSEL and a high-intensity
neutrino source at Fermilab.
The panel recommends an R&D program in the immediate future to
design a multi-megawatt proton source at Fermilab and a
neutrino beamline to DUSEL and recommends carrying out R&D on
the technologies for a large multi-purpose neutrino and proton
decay detector.
Construction of these facilities could start within the 10-year
period considered by this report.
A neutrino program with a multi-megawatt proton source would be a
stepping stone toward a future neutrino source, such as a neutrino
factory based on a muon storage ring, if the science eventually
requires a more powerful neutrino source. This in turn could position
the U.S. program to develop a muon collider as a long-term means to
return to the energy frontier in the U.S.
The proposed DUSEL is key to the vision for the neutrino program.
It is also central to non-accelerator experiments searching for dark
matter, proton decay and neutrino-less double beta decay. DOE and NSF
should define clearly the stewardship responsibilities for such a
program.
The panel endorses the importance of a deep underground
laboratory to particle physics and urges NSF to make this
facility a reality as rapidly as possible. Furthermore the
panel recommends that DOE and NSF work together to realize the
experimental particle physics program at DUSEL.
Scientific opportunities through the measurement of rare processes
include experiments to search for muon-to-electron conversion and rare-
kaon and B-meson decay. Such incisive experiments, complementary to
experiments at the LHC, would probe the Terascale and possibly much
higher energies.
The panel recommends funding for measurements of rare
processes to an extent depending on the funding levels
available, as discussed in more detail in Sections 3.2.2 and
7.2.3.
The Cosmic Frontier
Although 95 percent of the universe appears to consist of dark
matter and dark energy, we know little about either of them. The quest
to elucidate the nature of dark matter and dark energy is at the heart
of particle physics--the study of the basic constituents of nature,
their properties and interactions.
The U.S. is presently a leader in the exploration of the Cosmic
Frontier. Compelling opportunities exist for dark matter search
experiments, and for both ground-based and space-based dark energy
investigations. In addition, two other cosmic frontier areas offer
important scientific opportunities: the study of high-energy particles
from space and the cosmic microwave background.
The panel recommends support for the study of dark matter and
dark energy as an integral part of the U.S. particle physics
program.
The panel recommends that DOE support the space-based Joint
Dark Energy Mission, in collaboration with NASA, at an
appropriate level negotiated with NASA.
The panel recommends DOE support for the ground-based Large
Synoptic Survey Telescope program in coordination with NSF at a
level that depends on the overall program budget.
The panel further recommends joint NSF and DOE support for
direct dark matter search experiments.
The panel recommends limited R&D funding for other particle
astrophysics projects and recommends establishing a Particle
Astrophysics Science Advisory Group.
Enabling technologies
The U.S. must continue to make advances in accelerator and detector
R&D to maintain leadership at the Intensity and Cosmic Frontiers of
particle physics; to allow for a return to the Energy Frontier in the
U.S.; and to develop applications for the benefit of society.
The panel recommends a broad strategic program in accelerator
R&D, including work on ILC technologies, superconducting rf,
high-gradient normal-conducting accelerators, neutrino
factories and muon colliders, plasma and laser acceleration,
and other enabling technologies, along with support of basic
accelerator science.
The panel recommends support for a program of detector R&D on
technologies strategically chosen to enable future experiments
to advance the field, as an essential part of the program.
Benefits to society
The drive to understand the world around us is a basic part of our
humanity. Research in fundamental science provides the ideas and
discoveries that form the long-term foundation for science and
technology as a whole, which in turn drive the global economy and our
very way of life. Each generation of particle accelerators and
detectors builds on the previous one, raising the potential for
discovery and pushing the level of technology ever higher. From the
earliest days of high energy physics in the 1930s to the latest 21st
century initiatives, the bold and innovative ideas and technologies of
particle physics have entered the mainstream of society to transform
the way we live. Section 2 addresses these benefits in more detail.
Unique to particle physics is the scale of the science: the size
and complexity not only of accelerators and detectors but also of
scientific collaborations. For example, superconducting magnets existed
before Fermilab's Tevatron accelerator, but the scale of the
accelerator made the production of such magnets an industrial process,
which led to cost-effective technology for magnetic resonance imaging.
The World Wide Web was invented to solve the problem of communicating
in international collaborations of many hundreds of physicists. The
scale on which particle physicists work results in innovations that
broadly benefit society.
Particle physics has a profound influence on the workforce. The
majority of students trained in particle physics find their way to
diverse sectors of the national economy such as national defense,
information technology, medical instrumentation, electronics,
communications, transportation, biophysics and finance--wherever the
workforce requires highly developed analytical and technical skills,
the ability to work in large teams on complex projects, and the ability
to think creatively to solve unique problems.
The international context
The scientific opportunities provided by particle physics bring
together scientists from every corner of the globe to work together on
experiments and projects all over the world. Both the technical scale
and the costs of today's largest accelerators and experiments put them
beyond the reach of any single nation's ability to build or operate.
Particle physics projects now take shape as international endeavors
from their inception. As the costs and scale of particle physics
facilities grow, international collaboration becomes increasingly
important to the vitality of the field. Global cooperation, a hallmark
of particle physics research, will be even more important in the
future.
The Large Hadron Collider accelerator and detector system, for
example, drew from innovation and expertise in Europe, the Americas and
Asia to deliver the cutting-edge technology required for this next-
generation collider program. The proposed LHC upgrades will likewise
have continuing and very significant contributions from these regions.
The successful programs at the KEK and SLAC B factories and at the
Tevatron provide additional examples of the benefits of international
collaboration. These scientific collaborations take on new significance
as beacons for free and open exchange among men and women of science of
all nations. They offer an inspiring model for cooperation from a field
long known for its leadership in international collaboration.
As particle physics moves into the future, the balance of the
physical location of the major facilities among the regions of the
world will be key to maintaining the vitality of the field in each
region and as a whole. In developing a strategic plan for U.S. particle
physics, the P5 panel kept the international context very much in mind.
The funding scenarios
The funding agencies asked the panel to develop plans in the
context of several DOE funding scenarios:
A. Constant level of effort at the FY 2008 funding level
B. Constant level of effort at the FY 2007 funding level
C. Doubling of budget over ten years starting in FY 2007
D. Additional funding above the previous level, associated
with specific activities needed to mount a leadership program.
The FY 2007 DOE funding level was $752M; the FY 2008 level was
$688M. Constant level of effort here means that the budget increases
with inflation in then-year dollars. The panel also received guidance
on NSF budget assumptions. Interagency collaboration on particle
physics experiments has become increasingly important. The plan
presented in this report depends on such collaborative funding among
DOE, NSF and NASA.
The panel evaluated the scientific opportunities for particle
physics in the next 10 years under the various budget scenarios.
Scenario B: Constant level of effort at the FY 2007 level
The scenario of constant level of effort at the FY 2007 level,
Scenario B, would support major advances at all three interrelated
frontiers of particle physics. At the Energy Frontier, the Fermilab
Tevatron would run in 2009, but the planned run in 2010 to complete the
program could not take place due to budgetary constraints. The LHC
experiments would be well under way. These experiments will likely make
significant discoveries that could change our fundamental understanding
of nature. R&D would go forward on future lepton colliders. At the
Intensity Frontier, the MINOS, Double Chooz, Daya Bay and NOnA
experiments would yield a greatly improved--if not complete--
understanding of the fundamental properties of neutrinos. Precision
measurements, limited to a muon-to-electron conversion experiment,
would be carried out and the U.S. would participate in one offshore
next-generation B Factory. On the Cosmic Frontier, greatly improved
measurements shedding light on the nature of dark energy would come
from the DES, JDEM and LSST projects. The next generation of dark
matter search experiments would reach orders-of-magnitude greater
sensitivity to--perhaps even discover--particles that can explain dark
matter.
Under Scenario B, the U.S. would play a leadership role at all
three frontiers. Investments in accelerators and detectors at the LHC
would enable U.S. scientists to play a leading role in the second
generation of studies at the Energy Frontier. Investments in facility
capabilities at the Intensity Frontier at Fermilab and DUSEL would
allow the U.S. to be a world leader in neutrino physics in the
following decade. Funding of the cutting edge experiments studying dark
matter and dark energy would insure continued U.S. leadership at the
Cosmic Frontier. Investments in a broad strategic accelerator R&D
program would enable the U.S. to remain at the forefront of accelerator
developments and technologies focused on the needs of the U.S. program
at the Energy and Intensity Frontiers.
Scenario A: Constant level of effort at the FY 2008 level
Budget Scenario A would significantly reduce the scientific
opportunities at each of the three frontiers compared to Scenario B
over the next 10 years. It would severely limit scientific
opportunities at the Intensity Frontier during the next decade.
Scenario A would require canceling planned experiments and delaying
construction of new facilities. It would slow progress in understanding
dark energy at the Cosmic Frontier and R&D toward future accelerator
facilities at the Energy Frontier. It would cut the number of
scientists, as well as graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.
Scenario A would unduly delay projects, extending them over a longer
period.
Scenario A would most profoundly limit studies at the Intensity
Frontier, with a negative impact on both neutrino physics and high-
sensitivity measurements. It would require cancellation of the NOnA
neutrino experiment that is ready for construction. The MINERnA
experiment could not run beyond FY 2010 due to lack of funds to operate
the Fermilab accelerator complex. Consequently, a first look at the
neutrino mass hierarchy would be unlikely during the next decade, and
experimenters could not measure neutrino cross sections, including
those important to future long-baseline neutrino oscillation
experiments. The U.S. could not contribute significantly to the next-
generation overseas B factories that will carry out unprecedented
studies of matter-antimatter asymmetry and searches for new processes
in the quark sector. Furthermore, this budget scenario would delay the
construction of a high-intensity proton source at Fermilab by at least
three to five years. This delay would in turn severely compromise the
program of neutrino physics and of high-sensitivity searches for rare
decays at the Intensity Frontier in the subsequent decade.
For dark-energy studies at the Cosmic Frontier, Budget Scenario A
would delay DOE funding for the ground-based LSST telescope.
This budget scenario could not support the investment in new
facilities for advanced accelerator R&D, important for future
accelerators both at the energy frontier and for other sciences. As
discussed above, it would also delay the construction of a high-
intensity proton source, postponing the establishment of a foundation
for energy frontier studies at a possible future muon collider.
Scenario A would require an additional reduction of approximately
10 percent beyond the FY 2008 cuts in the number of scientists over the
10-year period. It would lead to a significant drop in the number of
graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Scenario A's drought in R&D
coupled with delays in facility construction imposed during this decade
would limit scientific opportunities in the subsequent decade.
Overall, while this funding level could deliver significant
science, there would be outstanding scientific opportunities that could
not be pursued. It would sharply diminish the U.S. capability in
particle physics from its present leadership role.
Scenario C: The doubling budget
Budget Scenario C would support a world-class program of scientific
discovery at all three frontiers in the decade ahead. It would provide
strong support for the development of future research capabilities and
of the scientific work force. Programs could move forward at a more
efficient pace, with reduced costs, more timely physics results and
increased scientific impact.
At the Energy Frontier, this budget scenario would extend the
discovery potential of the Fermilab Tevatron Collider by supporting
operation in FY 2010. Budget scenario C would provide robust funding
for exploitation of the LHC physics potential. It would increase
operations funding for U.S. groups working in Europe on the LHC and
provide the needed personnel support at both universities and national
laboratories for LHC detector and machine upgrades.
Progress toward a future lepton collider is a very high priority of
the field worldwide. Should results from the LHC show that the ILC is
the lepton collider of choice, funding in this scenario would support
R&D and enable the start of construction of an ILC abroad. If LHC
results point to another lepton collider technology, its R&D would
advance. Increased funding for muon collider R&D would lead to an
earlier feasibility determination for a neutrino factory and perhaps a
muon collider.
Scenario C would significantly advance the exploration of physics
at the Intensity Frontier. Construction of a new high-intensity proton
source at Fermilab, which would support both neutrino physics and
precision searches for rare decays, would be complete. Scenario C would
enable an earlier construction start than would Scenario B and would
shorten the construction time. It would also advance the design and
construction of a beamline to DUSEL and would reduce the overall cost
and risk of both these projects. Efforts to develop the technology for
large-scale liquid argon or water Cerenkov detectors for neutrino
physics and proton decay would benefit greatly from increased funding,
leading to an earlier construction start, shorter construction period
and reduced risk for a large underground detector at DUSEL. Scenario C
would enable the high-sensitivity neutrino experiment to operate during
the decade, providing great sensitivity to matter-antimatter asymmetry
in neutrinos. Scenario C would also enable new rare K-decay experiments
highly sensitive to new physics.
At the Cosmic Frontier, Scenario C would advance the exploration of
dark energy by enabling the timely completion of the two most sensitive
detectors of dark energy, the JDEM space mission and the ground-based
LSST telescope. Scenario C enables strategic, large-scale investments
in exciting projects at the boundary between particle physics and
astrophysics, the study of high-energy particles from space. Without
these investments, the U.S. will likely lose leadership in this rapidly
developing area.
Budget scenario C would provide needed additional funds to advance
accelerator R&D and technology goals. These goals go well beyond
preparation for possible participation in ILC. Accelerator goals for
the field include advancing the development of key enabling
technologies such as superconducting rf technology, high-field magnet
technology, high-gradient warm rf accelerating structures, rf power
sources, and advanced accelerator R&D, all of which could greatly
benefit from increased funding.
Increased funding in Scenario C would allow a robust detector R&D
program in the U.S. to prepare for future experiments at both the
energy and intensity frontiers.
Budget Scenario C provides desperately needed resources to rebuild
university and laboratory infrastructure that has eroded during lean
funding years and would allow retention and hiring of needed laboratory
and university technical staff. This budget scenario would provide
additional support for university groups, further addressing the
pressing needs enunciated in several recent reports, among them the
National Academy's ``Rising Above the Gathering Storm.''
Scenario D: Additional funding
The following scientific opportunities would justify additional
funding above the level of the funding scenarios discussed above.
A lepton collider will be essential for the in-depth understanding
of new physics discovered at the LHC: the source of the masses of the
elementary particles, new laws of nature, additional dimensions of
space, the creation of dark matter in the laboratory, or something not
yet imagined. Major participation by the U.S. in constructing such a
facility would require additional funding beyond that available in the
previous funding scenarios.
The study of dark energy is central to the field of particle
physics. DOE is currently engaged with NASA in negotiations concerning
the space-based Joint Dark Energy Mission. If the scale of JDEM
requires significantly more funding than is currently being discussed,
an increase in the budget beyond the previous funding scenarios would
be justified.
Appendix 3
Economic and Societal Benefits
Although the purpose of particle physics research is to gain
knowledge about the world around us and is not directly focused on
applications, much of the research requires the development of new
techniques. Particle physics is also not directly focused on education,
but it has great impact as it inspires the young to technical and
scientific careers and trains students rigorously who work in the
field. The field thus contributes broadly through applications and
education to the economic benefit of the society.
The attraction of Fermilab to young students is remarkable. Either
directly or indirectly through their teachers we have connections to
more than 30,000 students and 2,000 teachers yearly in grades K through
12th. For many years we have hosted Saturday Morning Physics bringing
students from the local high schools to Fermilab. Science fairs at the
laboratory bring thousands of guests of all ages. Cosmic ray chambers
at high schools allow students and their teachers to build a network to
study extensive cosmic ray showers in the atmosphere.
Those students attracted to scientific careers will pursue advanced
degrees in many of our research universities, all of which have strong
particle physics groups that collaborate here and in Europe on
forefront experiments. Fermilab has produced more than 1,700 Ph.D.s
with nearly half coming from abroad. These students are trained
technically and trained to work cooperatively with colleagues across
the world. It is not unusual in particle physics collaborations to have
colleagues from countries that are in conflict and at each other's
throats working together to solve research problems at work or when
breaking bread together.
Innovation has characterized particle physics. As technologies have
found broad application, particle physicists cannot claim all the
credit since as technologies evolve they advance in broad multi-
disciplinary fronts with many contributors. It is possible however to
trace the origin of technologies to the early applications that
establish their foundations. On these foundations industry produces
practical products and tools. A study of these applications was done in
connection with the Particle Physics Prioritization Panel of the HEPAP
advisory committee in 2008 and its conclusions are reproduced below.
2. PARTICLE PHYSICS IN THE NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT
2.1. LONG-TERM VALUE OF RESEARCH IN FUNDAMENTAL SCIENCES
The drive to understand the world around us is a basic part of our
humanity. Research in fundamental science provides the ideas and
discoveries that form the long-term foundation for science and
technology as a whole, which in turn drive the global economy and our
very way of life.
In 2005, a panel of nationally recognized experts from across the
spectrum of science and society, chaired by Norman Augustine, retired
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Lockheed Martin Corporation,
produced ``Rising Above the Gathering Storm: Energizing and Employing
America for a Brighter Economic Future.'' To quote from the report:
``The growth of economies throughout the world has been driven
largely by the pursuit of scientific understanding, the
application of engineering solutions, and the continual
technological innovation. Today, much of everyday life in the
United States and other industrialized nations, as evidenced in
transportation, communication, agriculture, education, health,
defense, and jobs, is the product of investments in research
and in the education of scientists and engineers. One need only
think about how different our daily lives would be without the
technological innovations of the last century or so.''
The ``Gathering Storm'' report makes the following recommendation:
``Sustain and strengthen the Nation's traditional commitment
to long-term basic research that has the potential to be
transformational to maintain the flow of new ideas that fuel
the economy, provide security, and enhance the quality of
life.''
The ``Gathering Storm'' report was influential in forging a
bipartisan accord in Washington to strive toward global leadership in
science for the U.S. by doubling the funding for research in the
physical sciences over the next decade, among other actions.
Particle physics is a central component of the physical sciences,
focused on the fundamental nature of matter and energy, and of space
and time. Discoveries in particle physics will change our basic
understanding of nature. Particle physics has inspired generations of
young people to get involved with science, benefiting all branches of
the physical sciences and strengthening the scientific workforce.
To quote from another National Academies report, ``Charting the
Course for Elementary Particle Physics,'' the work of a panel including
leaders from both science and industry and chaired by economist Harold
Shapiro:
``A strong role in particle physics is necessary if the United
States is to sustain its leadership in science and technology
over the long-term.''
That report continues:
``The committee affirms the intrinsic value of elementary
particle physics as part of the broader scientific and
technological enterprise and identifies it as a key priority
within the physical sciences.''
Besides its long-term scientific importance, particle physics
generates technological innovations with profound benefits for the
sciences and society as a whole.
2.2. BENEFITS TO SOCIETY
It's a simple idea. Take the smallest possible particles. Give them
the highest possible energy. Smash them together. Watch what happens.
From this simple idea have come the science and technology of particle
physics, a deep understanding of the physical universe and countless
benefits to society.
Each generation of particle accelerators and detectors builds on
the previous one, raising the potential for discovery and pushing the
level of technology ever higher. In 1930, Ernest O. Lawrence, the
father of particle accelerators, built the first cyclotron at Berkeley,
California. He could hold it in his hand. Larger and more powerful
accelerators soon followed. After a day's work, Lawrence often operated
the Berkeley cyclotrons through the night to produce medical isotopes
for research and treatment. In 1938, Lawrence's mother became the first
cancer patient to be treated successfully with particles from
cyclotrons. Now doctors use particle beams for the diagnosis and
healing of millions of patients. From the earliest days of high energy
physics in the 1930s to the latest 21st century initiatives, the bold
and innovative ideas and technologies of particle physics have entered
the mainstream of society to transform the way we live.
Some applications of particle physics--the superconducting wire and
cable at the heart of magnetic resonance imaging magnets, the World
Wide Web--are so familiar they are almost cliches. But particle physics
has myriad lesser-known impacts. Few outside the community of experts
who study the behavior of fluids in motion have probably heard of the
particle detector technology that revolutionized the study of fluid
turbulence in fuel flow.
What is unique to particle physics is the scale of the science: the
size and complexity not only of accelerators and detectors but also of
scientific collaborations. For example, superconducting magnets existed
before Fermilab's Tevatron, but the scale of the accelerator made the
production of such magnets an industrial process, which led to cost-
effective technology for magnetic resonance imaging. The World Wide Web
was invented to solve the problem of communicating in an international
collaboration of many hundreds of physicists. The scale on which
particle physicists work results in innovations that broadly benefit
society.
Selected examples from medicine, homeland security, industry,
computing, science, and workforce development illustrate a long and
growing list of beneficial practical applications with origins in
particle physics.
Medicine: cancer therapy
The technologies of particle physics have yielded dramatic advances
in cancer treatment. Today, every major medical center in the Nation
uses accelerators producing X-rays, protons, neutrons or heavy ions for
the diagnosis and treatment of disease. Particle accelerators play an
integral role in the advance of cancer therapy. Medical linacs for
cancer therapy were pioneered simultaneously at Stanford and in the UK
in the 1950s using techniques that had been developed for high energy
physics research. This R&D spawned a new industry and has saved
millions of lives.
Today it is estimated that there are over 7,000 operating medical
linacs around the world that have treated over 30,000,000 patients.
Fermilab physicists and engineers built the Nation's first proton
accelerator for cancer therapy and shipped it to the Loma Linda
University Medical Center, where it has treated some 7,000 patients.
Relative to X-rays, proton therapy offers important therapeutic
benefits, especially for pediatric patients. The Neutron Therapy
Facility at Fermilab has the highest energy and the deepest penetration
of any fast neutron beam in the United States. Neutrons are effective
against large tumors. More than 3,500 patients have received treatment
at the Neutron Therapy Facility.
Medicine: diagnostic instrumentation
Particle physics experiments use an array of experimental
techniques for detecting particles; they find a wide range of practical
applications. Particle detectors first developed for particle physics
are now ubiquitous in medical imaging. Positron emission tomography,
the technology of PET scans, came directly from detectors initially
designed for particle physics experiments sensing individual photons of
light. Silicon tracking detectors, composed of minute sensing elements
sensitive to the passage of single particles, are now used in
neuroscience experiments to investigate the workings of the retina for
development of retinal prosthetics for artificial vision.
Homeland security: monitoring nuclear nonproliferation
In nuclear reactors, the amount of plutonium builds up as the
uranium fuel is used, and the number and characteristics of anti-
neutrinos emitted by plutonium differ significantly from those of anti-
neutrinos emitted by uranium. This makes it possible for a specially
doped liquid scintillator detector monitoring the anti-neutrino flux
from a nuclear reactor core to analyze the content of the reactor and
verify that no tampering has occurred with the reactor fuel. Lawrence
Livermore National Laboratory has built and is testing a one-ton
version of this type of detector, originally developed by high energy
physicists to study the characteristics of neutrinos and anti-
neutrinos, as a demonstration of a new monitoring technology for
nuclear nonproliferation.
Industry: power transmission
Cables made of superconducting material can carry far more
electricity than conventional cables with minimal power losses.
Underground copper transmission lines or power cables are near their
capacity in many densely populated areas, and superconducting cables
offer an opportunity to meet continued need. Further superconducting
technology advances in particle physics will help promote this nascent
industry.
Industry: biomedicine and drug development
Biomedical scientists use particle physics technologies to decipher
the structure of proteins, information that is key to understanding
biological processes and healing disease. To determine a protein's
structure, researchers direct the beam of light from an accelerator
called a synchrotron through a protein crystal. The crystal scatters
the beam onto a detector. From the scattering pattern, computers
calculate the position of every atom in the protein molecule and create
a 3-D image of the molecule. A clearer understanding of protein
structure allows for the development of more effective drugs. Abbott
Labs' research at Argonne National Laboratory's Advanced Photon Source
was critical in developing Kaletra, one of the world's most-prescribed
drugs to fight AIDS. Next-generation light sources will offer still
more precise studies of protein structure without the need for
crystallization.
Industry: understanding turbulence
Turbulence is a challenge to all areas of fluid mechanics and
engineering. Although it remains poorly understood and poorly modeled,
it is a dominant factor determining the performance of virtually all
fluid systems from long distance oil pipelines to fuel injection
systems to models for global weather prediction. Improvements to our
knowledge will have payoffs in reducing energy losses in fuel
transport, improving efficiency of engines and deepening our
understanding of global climate behavior. Technology developed for
particle physics and applied to problems of turbulence has extended our
understanding of this difficult phenomenon by more than tenfold.
Silicon strip detectors and low-noise amplifiers developed for particle
physics are used to detect light scattered from microscopic tracer
particles in a turbulent fluid. This technique has permitted detailed
studies of turbulence on microscopic scales and at Reynolds numbers
more than an order of magnitude beyond any previous experimental reach.
Computing: the World Wide Web
CERN scientist Tim Berners-Lee developed the World Wide Web to give
particle physicists a tool to communicate quickly and effectively with
globally dispersed colleagues at universities and laboratories. The
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center had the first web site in the United
States, Fermilab had the second. Today there are more than 150 million
registered web sites. Few other technological advances in history have
more profoundly affected the global economy and societal interactions
than the Web. Revenues from the World Wide Web exceeded one trillion
dollars in 2001 with exponential growth continuing.
Computing: the Grid
Particle physics experiments generate unprecedented amounts of data
that require new and advanced computing technology to analyze. To
quickly process this data, more than two decades ago particle
physicists pioneered the construction of low-cost computing farms, a
group of servers housed in one location. Today, particle physics
experiments push the capability of the Grid, the newest computing tool
that allows physicists to manage and process their enormous amounts of
data across the globe by combining the strength of hundreds of
thousands of individual computers. Industries such as medicine and
finance are examples of other fields that also generate large amounts
of data and benefit from advanced computing technology.
Sciences: synchrotron light sources
Particle physicists originally built electron accelerators to
explore the fundamental nature of matter. At first, they looked on the
phenomenon of synchrotron radiation as a troublesome problem that
sapped electrons' acceleration energy. However, they soon saw the
potential to use this nuisance energy loss as a new and uniquely
powerful tool to study biological molecules and other materials. In the
1970s, the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center built the first large-
scale light source user facility. Now, at facilities around the world,
researchers use the ultra-powerful X-ray beams of dedicated synchrotron
light sources to create the brightest lights on Earth. These luminous
sources provide tools for protein structure analysis, pharmaceutical
research and drug development, real-time visualization of chemical
reactions and biochemical processes, materials science, semiconductor
circuit lithography, and historical research and the restoration of
works of art.
Sciences: spallation neutron sources
Using accelerator technologies, spallation neutron sources produce
powerful neutron beams by bombarding a mercury target with energetic
protons from a large accelerator complex. The protons excite the
mercury nuclei in a reaction process called spallation, releasing
neutrons that are formed into beams and guided to neutron instruments.
Using these sophisticated sources, scientists and engineers explore the
most intimate structural details of a vast array of novel materials.
Sciences: analytic tools
Particle physicists have developed theoretical and experimental
analytic tools and techniques that find applications in other
scientific fields and in commerce. Renormalization group theory first
developed to rigorously describe particle interactions has found
applications in solid state physics and superconductivity. Nuclear
physics uses chiral lagrangians, and string theory has contributed to
the mathematics of topology. Experimental particle physicists have also
made contributions through the development of tools for extracting weak
signals from enormous backgrounds and for handling very large data
sets. Scientists trained in particle physics have used neural networks
in neuroscience to investigate the workings of the retina and in
meteorology to measure raindrop sizes with optical sensors.
Workforce development: training scientists
Particle physics has a profound influence on the workforce. Basic
science is a magnet that attracts inquisitive and capable students. In
particle physics, roughly one sixth of those completing Ph.D.s
ultimately pursue careers in basic high-energy physics research. The
rest find their way to diverse sectors of the national economy such as
industry, national defense, information technology, medical
instrumentation, electronics, communications, biophysics and finance--
wherever the workforce requires highly developed analytical and
technical skills, the ability to work in large teams on complex
projects, and the ability to think creatively to solve unique problems.
A growing list
The science and technology of particle physics have
transformational applications for many other areas of benefit to the
Nation's well-being.
Food sterilization
Medical isotope production
Simulation of cancer treatments
Reliability testing of nuclear weapons
Scanning of shipping containers
Proposed combination of PET and MRI imaging
Improved sound quality in archival recordings
Parallel computing
Ion implantation for strengthening materials
Curing of epoxies and plastics
Data mining and simulation
Nuclear waste transmutation
Remote operation of complex facilities
International relations
At this time there exist few quantitative analyses of the economic
benefits of particle physics applications. A systematic professional
study would have value for assessing and predicting the impact of
particle physics technology applications on the Nation's economy.
2.3. THE INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT
The scientific opportunities provided by particle physics bring
together hundreds of scientists from every corner of the globe to work
together on experiments and projects all over the world. Both the
technical scale and the costs of today's large accelerators put them
beyond the reach of any single nation's ability to build or operate.
Particle physics projects now take shape as international endeavors
from their inception. These scientific collaborations take on new
significance as beacons for free and open exchange among men and women
of science of all nations. They offer an inspiring model for
cooperation from a field long known for its leadership in international
collaboration.
Collider experiments have had strong international collaboration
from the outset. Experiments at CERN, Fermilab and SLAC combined the
strengths of U.S., European and Asian groups to achieve the ground-
breaking discoveries that define particle physics today. Accelerator
design and construction is now a joint effort as well. American
accelerator physicists and engineers helped the Europeans build the
Large Hadron Collider at CERN and collaborated with the Chinese to
build the Beijing Electron-Positron Collider. The GLAST project
involves a seven-nation collaboration of France, Germany, Italy, Japan,
Spain, Sweden and the U.S.
Japan is currently constructing a 50-GeV proton synchrotron at the
Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex. The JPARC synchrotron will
produce an intense neutrino beam aimed at the large Super-Kamiokande
detector to study neutrino oscillations and matter-antimatter
asymmetry. This experiment has significant U.S. participation, as did
its predecessors. U.S. physicists are also working on two overseas
reactor neutrino experiments, Daya Bay in China and Double Chooz in
France.
The KEK B-Factory and the Belle detector continue to operate, and
plans are under way to significantly increase the collider's beam
intensity to improve sensitivity to physics beyond the Standard Model.
Modest U.S. participation continues in this collaboration. At lower
energies, the new BEPC-II collider in China is about to start
operation. A number of U.S. groups are working on its experimental
program.
Cosmic Frontier experiments have also involved international
collaboration, but on a smaller scale due to the hitherto modest size
of the experiments. Here too, however, the magnitude of future
experiments makes international collaboration essential.
Planning for the future of the field is also international. Both
HEPAP and P5 have members from Europe and Asia, essential for
understanding the current and future programs in those regions at all
three scientific frontiers in particle physics.
The transformation occurring in the international scene has
presented challenges to this panel. Free access for physicists of all
nations to the world's accelerators rests on the assumption that each
region takes its share of responsibility by building and operating such
facilities. In recent decades, each region hosted major collider
experiments and a variety of smaller experiments. But now, with the end
of both the Cornell and SLAC collider programs and with the Fermilab
Tevatron collider about to complete its program in the next few years,
the map of the field is changing rapidly. Most of the accelerator-based
experiments in the near-term will occur overseas. The panel has given
careful consideration to how the changing international context will
affect the ability of the U.S. to pursue most effectively the
extraordinary scientific opportunities that lie ahead and to remain a
world leader in the field of particle physics.
Biography for Piermaria J. Oddone
Oddone was appointed Director of Fermi National Accelerator
Laboratory in July, 2005. Fermilab, a U.S. Department of Energy
Laboratory, is managed by Fermi Research Alliance (FRA), a partnership
of the University of Chicago and the Universities Research Association
(URA). Fermilab advances the understanding of matter, energy, space and
time through the study of elementary particle physics. Fermilab
provides cutting edge particle accelerators and detectors to qualified
researchers to conduct basic research at the frontiers of particle
physics and related disciplines. Fermilab also has a vital program in
particle astrophysics and cosmology linking the physics of elementary
particles to the evolution and fate of the Universe.
Oddone was previously Deputy Director of the Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory, with primary responsibility for the scientific
development of the laboratory and its representation to the agencies.
Achievements during his tenure as Deputy Director include gaining the
National Energy Super Computer Center (NERSC), launching and developing
the Joint Genome Institute (JGI), breaking ground on the Molecular
Foundry (the LBNL nanosciences center), establishing major new programs
in quantitative biology, astrophysics and computer science and
exploiting the Advanced Light Source (ALS).
Oddone's research has been in experimental particle physics and
based primarily on electron-positron colliders at the Stanford Linear
Accelerator Center (SLAC). He invented the Asymmetric B-Factory, a new
kind of elementary particle collider to study the differences between
matter and antimatter and worked in the development of the PEP II
Asymmetric B-Factory at SLAC (a second one was built in Tsukuba, Japan)
and the formation of the large international collaboration, BaBar, to
exploit its physics opportunities. Together with the Belle detector in
Japan, BaBar discovered the violation of matter-antimatter symmetry in
the decay of particles containing the b quark. Hundreds of researchers
have exploited the B-Factories over the last decade, developing a
precise understanding of the quark model. Oddone received the 2005
Panofsky Award of the American Physical Society for the invention of
the Asymmetric B-Factory. He is a Fellow of the American Physical
Society. He was elected as Fellow of the American Academy of Arts &
Sciences in 2008. He also is a member of the Executive Council of the
National Laboratory Directors Council (NLDC).
Oddone was born in Arequipa, Peru, and is a U.S. citizen. After
receiving his undergraduate degree from MIT, Oddone received his Ph.D.
in Physics from Princeton University followed by a post-doctoral
fellowship at Caltech. He joined the Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory in 1972.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you, Dr. Oddone.
Dr. Montgomery.
STATEMENT OF DR. HUGH E. MONTGOMERY, PRESIDENT, JEFFERSON
SCIENCE ASSOCIATES, LLC; DIRECTOR, THOMAS JEFFERSON NATIONAL
ACCELERATOR FACILITY
Dr. Montgomery. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member
Inglis and Members of the Committee for the opportunity to
appear before you. As you might notice, I have a slight accent.
I have been an active researcher in Europe and in the United
States for my entire professional career and I am currently
Director of one of your great attractors, the Thomas Jefferson
National Accelerator Facility, Jefferson Lab in Newport News. I
am going to concentrate a little on the nuclear physics aspect
of this hearing.
The hearing has a grand and beautiful title: Investigating
the Nature of Matter, Energy, Space and Time. It could be
argued that this has been the program since man stood on two
legs. Indeed, for those of you who think that nuclear physics
does not affect you, I point out that nuclear physicists study
the building blocks that make up 99 percent of the mass of our
everyday world. Since nuclear physics was born about a century
ago, much has been learned and some of the fundamental
structures of nuclei have been delineated, but much still
remains a mystery. Now, while nuclear physics is a basic
science, it is also important for the impacts it has on
society, some of which I will mention later. Our field also
creates a cadre of highly intellectual, highly educated
individuals capable of addressing the problems facing our
society.
Three research thrusts provide the framework that defines
nuclear physics. Each of these thrusts offers the potential for
discovery and each is a way to examine the universe and the
nature of matter. The Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator
Facility, CEBAF, at Jefferson Lab is the world leader in
incisive studies of properties of the nucleon and the nuclei,
distributions of the constituent quarks and gluons, their
motion and their spin. A truly fascinating aspect of nature is
that the masses of the protons and neutrons arise not from the
masses of the quarks within them but rather from their
interactions. This is Einstein's E = mc2 at work.
Complementary research is conducted at Brookhaven National
Laboratory where the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC)
compresses protons and neutrons in high energy collisions
between gold nuclei. This actually melts the nuclei and the
constituents, the quarks and gluons, form a liquid by a plasma
that is believed to have existed in the first moments of the
universe.
The study of the structure of complex nuclei also leads to
an understanding of how stars and planets are formed from
nucleo-synthesis. Reactors in different parts of the world are
used by U.S. physicists to study ghost-like particles called
neutrinos. The latter is an example from the branch of our
field labeled fundamental symmetries.
Now, nuclear physics enjoys a relatively high profile,
largely due to its role in nuclear weapons and nuclear energy.
This only hints, however, at the potential that nuclear physics
holds for society. Radiation imaging techniques developed for
nuclear physics experiments at Jefferson Lab have led to
inexpensive mobile devices that detect cancer early and save
lives. Each year I and maybe one or two of you get a stress
test using radioactive isotopes and positron-electron
tomography to ensure that the blood flows through the right
parts of my heart.
Nuclear physicists are essential not only in the university
classroom. They also assume critical roles in society, in
fields such as national defense and environmental research and
in industry. These working scientists make essential
contributions to the education of our citizens in this
increasingly technological society.
Now, the United States continues to be the world leader in
the construction and operation of large nuclear physics
facilities. We are upgrading existing accelerators, for
example, doubling the energy of CEBAF, and we will soon start
construction of the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at Michigan
State University. Vigorous operation of these and other
facilities, RHIC, for example, will underpin a superb science
program for the next decade and more. And on the horizon, we
are developing an Electron Ion Collider that will form a
crucial cornerstone for the field in the subsequent decades.
In summary, nuclear physics is a key contributor to science
and society. I believe it is an endeavor worthy of the support
of the people of this country.
I would like to thank you again for this opportunity and
will be happy to try to answer your questions. And if I could
just use the ``orange time'' in my presentation, I would like
to suggest that we read the panels behind you. It says on the
left, ``For I dipped into the future, far as human eyes could
see, saw the vision of the world and all the wonder that that
would be,'' and on the right it says, ``Where there is no
vision, the people perish.'' Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Montgomery follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hugh E. Montgomery
Thank you Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Inglis, and Members of the
Committee for the opportunity to appear before you to provide testimony
on the question of ``Investigating the Nature of Matter, Energy, Space,
and Time.'' While I have only been Director of the Thomas Jefferson
National Accelerator Facility, Jefferson Lab for the past year, I have
been an active researcher in the field, here and in Europe, for my
entire professional career. I am pleased to offer you my perspective on
the subject with emphasis on that part covered by the programs of the
Office of Nuclear Physics in the Office of Science of the Department of
Energy.
This hearing has been given a grand and beautiful title,
``Investigating the Nature of Matter, Energy, Space, and Time.'' It
could be argued that this has been the program of mankind since man
stood on two legs. For those who may think that nuclear physics does
not affect you, I would point out that nuclear physicists study the
building blocks that make up 99.9 percent of the mass of our everyday
world. We seek not only a concise description of matter but also to
describe the interactions between the building blocks of matter and the
way that elements can exist.
About a century ago, Rutherford performed experiments which
suggested strongly the existence of a nucleus within each atom. With
those experiments nuclear physics was born. A major transition took
place in the middle of the twentieth century with the development of
accelerators, enabling us to probe and manipulate the nucleus. While
much has been learned and some of the fundamental structure of nuclei
has been delineated, much still remains a mystery. To achieve the goal
of finding the building blocks of the universe, it is therefore
imperative to continue this quest with the more powerful experimental
techniques that become available with technological progress.
Nuclear physics is a basic science and in my testimony I will
discuss aspects of that fundamental science, an historical perspective
of the field, its accomplishments, and a look to the future. However,
nuclear science is also important for the impacts it has on society.
These impacts come not only from the fundamental understanding that
results from our research but from the tools and technologies developed
both from our evolving understanding of nuclei themselves and from the
novel apparatus devised to obtain that understanding. They range from
nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, to radioactive tracer tagging (used
in biological research and cancer detection), to accelerators (used for
applications as diverse as cancer treatment and semiconductor
manufacturing, as well as for basic research in many fields), to
nuclear power and nuclear weapons. The search for basic knowledge in
nuclear physics also generates a cadre of highly-educated individuals,
who often apply their training in nuclear physics to a broad range of
problems faced by society.
Since a complete discussion of the subject of nuclear physics is
beyond the scope of this testimony, I will rely on the testimonies of
my colleagues in this hearing for some of the underpinning context for
my remarks. For example, I believe that Dr. Kovar's testimony will
include a complete sketch of the governance and support of nuclear
physics within the United States. It is indeed important to recognize
that both the Department of Energy Office of Science and the National
Science Foundation provide support for research facilities and research
physicists in this field.
There are three major components of the field of nuclear physics,
which I will briefly summarize.
For the first seventy years of the last century, nuclear physicists
developed a description of nuclei and their properties in terms of the
then-known building blocks, protons and neutrons, and their
interactions. In 1968, we discovered that the nucleons had
constituents, which we dubbed quarks and we invented gluons to bind
them together and developed a theory, which we named quantum
chromodynamics, to describe their interactions. A truly fascinating
aspect of nature, at this extraordinarily small distance scale, is that
the masses of the protons and neutrons arise not from the masses of the
quarks, but rather from the gluons, which carry their interactions. It
is interesting to speculate on the consequences of this for the
technology of the next fifty years.
The Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility at Thomas
Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, Jefferson Lab, has become the
world leader in incisive studies of properties of the nucleon and the
nuclei associated with the distributions of quarks and gluons, their
motion and their spin. The accelerator was built a little more than a
decade ago using an innovative, superconducting radio frequency,
acceleration technique. The current experimental program, with six
billion (or giga)-electron-volt (six GeV) beam energy and with
exquisite control of the electron spin, has opened new windows on the
distributions not only of quarks and gluons, but also of their spin. We
are now in the midst of an upgrade project to raise the energy to 12
GeV in order to extend this knowledge. The additional energy will also
allow us to search directly for configurations where the glue plays a
predominant role, as predicted by the theory but not yet seen. This
work has the potential to tell us why we have never yet seen an
isolated quark or gluon.
Complementary research at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider
(RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory compresses protons and
neutrons in high energy collisions between gold nuclei. This raises the
temperature of the nuclear matter to many thousands of times that of
the sun. The nuclei then melt, forming a quark-gluon liquid much as ice
melts into water. This liquid, which exhibits spectacular properties,
is believed to have existed in the first moments of existence of the
universe.
The structure of complex nuclei continues to be a challenging
subject with new frontiers to be explored. The conventional view of a
nucleus is that it is built up of protons and neutrons. We label the
element using the number of the protons. That is the property which
distinguishes lead from gold, or helium from hydrogen. The numbers of
neutrons are also important and it is their presence that changes
hydrogen into deuterium and tritium, or Uranium-235 (the component
which makes a nuclear fuel ``enriched'') into Uranium-238. Our interest
today is in manipulating these building blocks of our universe by
working with rare isotopes and radioactive beams to find the maximum
numbers of protons or neutrons that we can insert into a given nucleus.
These studies lead to the understanding of processes like nucleo-
synthesis, the physics that underlies the existence of the stars and
the planets and the relative abundance of their constituent elements.
Work is just underway to build a major new facility in the U.S., the
Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at Michigan State University, to help
address these questions. At Jefferson Lab, a planned experiment to
measure the radius of the neutrons in lead will provide input to
understanding neutron stars.
In some radioactive decays of nuclei, in particular in b decay,
neutrinos are produced. The study of these ghost-like particles has
historically been a very important component of nuclear physics.
Recently there was some beautiful work employing nuclear reactors such
as the KamLand experiment, executed in Japan. The Daya Bay neutrino
oscillation experiment is under construction in China, enabled by
funding support for U.S. physicists in international collaborations.
These are examples from the third branch of our field, which is often
labeled as ``fundamental symmetries.''
Together these three research thrusts (quantum chromodynamics,
nuclear structure and astrophysics, and fundamental symmetries), while
always shifting, are the framework within which nuclear physics has
defined itself. Each of the directions offers the possibility of
discovery; each is a way to examine the universe and its building
blocks. I have emphasized the experimental thrusts within the field,
but to realize a description also requires a theory. Quantum
chromodynamics is rich enough to potentially describe not only the
quarks and gluons and their interactions, but also the nucleons and
hadrons and their interactions. But executing the calculations is a
challenge. Nuclear physics theorists have helped to design dedicated
computer chips, have helped to connect desktop computers in innovative
ways, and are now turning to the graphics engines to supplement the
traditional super-computer resources they need for their work.
Of all the sciences, nuclear physics enjoys a relatively high
profile due to the prominence of nuclear weapons in the story of the
second half of the twentieth century as well as the use of nuclear
fission for nuclear power. Just across the James River from us in
Surry, Virginia are two nuclear reactors, which supply electricity that
is clean and reliable. If we can manage the surrounding political
issues, nuclear power could play a major role in providing energy for
the human race. Since the discovery of radioactivity, the use of
nuclear properties for medical treatment has become part of our
everyday life. Within the past ten years, the radiation imaging
techniques, developed for nuclear physics experiments at Jefferson Lab,
have led to the development of fresh approaches to mammography and the
deployment of inexpensive, mobile commercial devices that detect
cancers earlier and save lives. Each year I, and perhaps others among
you, get a stress test that uses radioactive isotopes and positron
electron tomography to check that my blood is flowing to the right
parts of my heart. The production of these isotopes is another
important by-product of the nuclear physics research we do. Nuclear
physicists are essential not only in the university classroom. They
assume critical roles in society, in fields such as nuclear energy and
nuclear medicine and in industry more generally, a fact demonstrated in
detail by the Cerny report.
In addition, the contributions of working scientists to the
education of the citizens of our increasingly technological society are
not only desirable but essential.
Nuclear physics depends on large facilities, and the United States
continues to be a world leader in the construction and operation of
these facilities. These include the devices at the National
Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University,
CEBAF at Jefferson Lab, and the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at
Brookhaven. (This list is not exclusive, and U.S. nuclear physicists
also work at other facilities located at laboratories and universities
across the globe.) We are upgrading the existing accelerators, for
example taking CEBAF to 12 GeV, and will soon start construction of the
Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at NSCL. Vigorous operation of these
and other facilities will underpin a superb science program for the
next decade and more. What we see on the horizon, as was indicated in
the 2007 long range plan for the field, is an Electron Ion Collider.
This could be thought of as a higher energy version of the
functionality currently provided by CEBAF at Jefferson Lab. The
discussions of the physics case and of some design concepts are
currently under way. We are looking to converge on the choice of the
site in a few years and expect to set a goal of construction towards
the end of the next decade. This would take our search for, and
understanding of, the building blocks of the universe to the next stage
from the nuclear physics point of view. It would form a crucial
cornerstone for the field in the subsequent decades.
The state-of-the-art nuclear physics facilities in the United
States are also available to collaborating scientists from around the
globe. As hosts we benefit from the influx of young talented scientists
who participate in the research; some write a doctoral thesis in their
home institutions while others collaborate as postdoctoral researchers.
They contribute to the science and often seek positions in academe and
industry in this country. They represent a valuable ancillary source of
stimulus for the research and development in our economy and supplement
our internal educational process. Our DOE Office of Science national
laboratories are great attractors for scientific talent from across the
world.
I mentioned earlier how the ability to construct accelerators
transformed the field of nuclear physics. Today, accelerators underpin
not only their traditional use for particle and nuclear physics but
also a broad range of materials science, medicine and biology. The
ability to construct a broad range of accelerators is a primary core
competency associated with the Office of Science laboratories. The
devices we have today, including the superconducting Continuous
Electron Beam Accelerator Facility at Jefferson Lab, could not have
been built with the technologies of 1980. Research and development
across a broad suite of technologies and with a time-to-use ranging
from one to thirty years and more is essential. Support for this work
from the multiple Office of Science programs, which benefits and is
carried out in multiple locations with the relevant core competencies,
is an important role for the Department of Energy. If this expertise is
ensured, we will be able to build the accelerator we will need ten
years from now to retain world leadership.
I have attached to this testimony references to several key
documents and reports that I utilized in its preparation. I have tried
to impress on you how nuclear physics contributes in an essential way
to our search for the building blocks of our universe, that this search
is enormously exciting, and that the United States plays a major role.
In addition I hope that I have also demonstrated that this science
plays an essential role in our daily lives keeping us warm or cool,
spawning new tools and technologies, improving our quality of life, and
even saving our lives. It also trains bright young scientists who
contribute to the U.S. in many different ways. I believe it is an
endeavor worthy of the support of the people of this country. Thank you
again for this opportunity, I would be happy to try to answer your
questions.
Document references:
The Frontiers of Nuclear Science: A Long Range Plan, Nuclear Science
Advisory Committee, December 2007; http://www.sc.doe.gov/np/
nsac/nsac.html
Journey into the Heart of Matter, The Department of Energy's Office of
Science Office of Nuclear Physics, 2006; www.sc.doe.gov/np/
publications/NPbrochure-2006.pdf
Education in Nuclear Science Report (November 2004); http://
www.sc.doe.gov/henp/np/nsac/docs/
NSAC-CR-education-report-
final.pdf
Biography for Hugh E. Montgomery
Hugh E. Montgomery is the Director of the Thomas Jefferson National
Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab).
As the Lab's Chief Executive Officer, he is responsible for
ensuring funding for the Lab and for setting policy and program
direction. In addition, he oversees the delivery of the Lab program and
ensures that Jefferson Lab complies with all regulations, laws and
contract requirements. Montgomery also is responsible for developing
and ensuring relationships with Jefferson Lab's stakeholders.
In addition to serving as the third Director in the history of
Jefferson Lab, Montgomery is the President of Jefferson Science
Associates, LLC. JSA is a joint venture between the Southeastern
Universities Research Association and CSC Applied Technologies formed
to operate and manage Jefferson Lab.
An internationally recognized particle physicist, Montgomery began
his career in 1972 as a research associate at the Daresbury Laboratory
and Rutherford High Energy Laboratory in Great Britain. In 1978, he
became a staff member at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, where he remained
until joining the staff at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in
Batavia, IL, as an associate scientist in 1983. Montgomery spent the
next 25 years of his career at Fermilab, occupying a number of
positions of responsibility within the laboratory management before
being named Associate Director for research at Fermilab, a position he
held until joining Jefferson Lab in 2008. As Associate Director, he was
responsible for the particle physics and particle astrophysics research
programs at Fermilab.
Montgomery's research has focused on expanding the understanding of
the fundamental components of our universe and how they interact. He
was involved with muon scattering experiments at CERN and Fermilab, and
in the DZero Experiment on the Fermilab Tevatron Collider. Active on
the experiment for 12 years, he was co-spokesman from 1993-99, which
covered the time of the observation of the top quark.
In addition to presenting numerous invited talks internationally,
Montgomery has been actively engaged in many professional committees.
Notably, as well as participating in two HEPAP Sub-panels, he served
as: a member of the Review of Department of High Energy Physics of Tata
Institute for Fundamental Research located in India; a member of the
FOM Review of NIKHEF in Holland; a member of the APS Panofsky Prize
Committee; Chairman of the Elementary Particle Physics Review
Committee, Helmholtz Society, Germany; Chairman of the Atlas Oversight
Committee, STFC, England; member of the SLAC Policy Committee; Chair of
the Evaluation Committee of Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare and
the Large Hadron Collider Committee, CERN.
A native of Great Britain, Montgomery earned a Bachelor's and Ph.D.
in physics from Manchester University, England.
Discussion
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you, Dr. Montgomery, and I do
appreciate you pointing those out. Those are here in the room
and I think few of us ever look up and see what is written
there. I remember when I first started on this committee that I
did that, but it is something that we forget to look at and we
forget those messages up there for us.
Communicating With the Public
I want to thank all our witnesses for their testimony. Let
me begin right now the first round of questions, and the Chair
will recognize himself for five minutes. This is obviously a
field that is not easy for everyone to understand and I don't
claim that I have a great understanding of all of it. Two years
ago when I was visiting Stanford and SLAC, I had the
opportunity to meet Pierre Schwab. I don't know if anyone is
familiar with him. But what really stood about Mr. Schwab is
that he calls himself a high energy physics groupie. He is an
entrepreneur, a software engineer. He is not a physicist. But
he is a man who is fascinated by the research that we are
discussing today and the fundamental questions that it can
answer. He donated $1 million of his own money to Stanford's
Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology. I
bring him up because you seldom see anyone outside of people
who are physicists really getting involved, talking, having the
interest in what we are having a hearing on today. I know Dr.
Randall has done work to make extra dimensions and warped
passages more accessible to laypeople, but I think we need to
do more of that, especially in a time of large federal
deficits, increasingly expensive experiments, you know, just
trying to get the money to be able to put towards this
research.
So my question for the whole panel, I will start with Dr.
Randall, what can DOE and research community in general do to
better communicate its goals and triumphs and plans to the
general public?
Dr. Randall. That is an excellent question. I just want to
start by saying that I have found when I have talked to people
that once people have the opportunity to hear about the science
they are interested. I think a lot of people are afraid or will
stay away from it, but once they take seriously the fact that
you are listening to them, that you want to hear their
questions, they provide opportunities for people to hear about
it. There are many more people interested than you would
imagine. That is not to say everyone is, and I don't think
everyone should be necessarily, but people that want to know
about it should have the opportunity to know about it. I think
of many times I have been in towns where the cab driver is
like, really, you are lecturing about this? And then the
lecture hall would be full. I mean, thousands of people will
show up to listen to this kind of thing if they know about it.
Having said that, I think that is a difficult question. I
mean that is more, almost a PR question, you know, how do you
make people aware of things.
Mr. Lipinski. Well, we are--because we have to respond to
our constituents, the American public, unfortunately, you know,
if you want to look at it that way for the scientific aspect of
it, that is----
Dr. Randall. That is not said in a negative way, just so
you know. It is just that this is not--it is not my area of
expertise. I mean, what I did is, I tried to say I made a big
effort to write a book where the information is there for
people who want to know about it so that it is accessible to
them, so people who want to understand the science can. But I
think that there is a lot of people who watch TV, who read
newspapers that wouldn't read a book, and I think the answer
there is that it really has to be out. It should be out there
more in the news. It should be out there more in TV, media, but
I think that is where people get their information and I think
there should be more of a sense that people have--they
shouldn't be as afraid of learning about science, and there
should be a sense they are being listened to. Even the question
of black holes at the LHC--this comes up in every lecture I
give practically--well, are you going to make black holes that
destroy the world? And you give a scientific answer and
everyone is happy. I have never heard someone say no, no, no, I
still don't believe you. I mean, I think they want you to know
that they are worried, they want to know that you are listening
to them, that you have addressed these worries and that there
is interest in science there. And I think that there has to be
more of that opportunity. I don't know where that would be but
I think that science reporting--I mean, I do worry that in this
era where newspapers are facing troubles that science reporting
will be one of the things that gets cut and I think that is
exactly the wrong direction to go in at this point, especially
when science is so essential to so many things that we are
doing today.
Mr. Lipinski. You have done an excellent job with the work
that you have done, Dr. Randall.
Dr. Randall. Thank you very much for that.
Mr. Lipinski. I thank you for doing that.
Any other comments, what can be done? Dr. Oddone, and then
we will go to Dr. Montgomery.
Dr. Oddone. Our community is learning how to do this better
and better. At Fermilab, we hold, for example, a public lecture
roughly on a monthly basis. We have had 900 people--Lisa
Randall was there--from the community come and listen to this.
Through our education program with children, Saturday Morning
Physics--I think Representative Biggert's son actually took
advantage of that--we reach many, many children and we have
programs to train teachers so we are actually working with the
new generation probably, you know, reach 2,000 teachers and
some 30,000 K-12 students on this activity.
And I think we have also created vehicles like Symmetry
Magazine to reach a much broader audience, and so I think the
community is getting much more sophisticated about actually
realizing that it is ultimately the public that supports our
research and they have to be part of this venture.
Mr. Lipinski. Dr. Montgomery.
Dr. Montgomery. My theme is a little similar to Pier's.
When I arrived in Newport News a year and a half ago, the lady
next door came with cookies and introduced herself and asked me
what I was going to do, and I told her I was going to direct
the Jefferson Lab, and she immediately launched into praise for
the laboratory's participation in the science education in the
schools around there. I think that certainly where we have the
labs, the little bit of funding that goes toward the education
and involvement directly with the community is an enormous
winner for everything associated with the program, and the kids
that come in and visit are really impressed by just the small
amount of time that a scientist will spend with them and they
are enormously excited by the coolness of the things that we
have in the labs.
Mr. Lipinski. I think you are right on target with that and
I actually have legislation to encourage the National Labs to
work with museums for science education. We are--we have votes
again but at this time I am going to move on to Mr. Inglis. I
recognize Mr. Inglis for five minutes and then decide how we
are going to proceed from there. Mr. Inglis.
Mr. Inglis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. In the interest of
time, let me defer to Dr. Ehlers, who actually will have more
interesting questions than I would have, I think. So Dr.
Ehlers.
String Theory
Mr. Ehlers. I thank the gentleman for yielding. I hope they
are interesting questions, partially interesting comments. We
will just go down the line as time permits.
Dr. Randall, first of all, I have to congratulate you. You
destroyed a--I grew up in the Midwest and we have a widespread
belief there that you have just disproved our belief there,
that you come from New York and that is why you talk rapidly.
Midwesterners believe probably to a person that the reason New
Yorkers speak so rapidly is to cover up that they don't know
what they are talking about, but you effectively disproved that
here. Just a quick question, my curiosity. Unfortunately, being
a good Member of Congress takes about 80 hours a week, which
leaves me no time to keep up with modern physics, but you
mentioned string theory. Is there any experimental proof or any
experimental results that corroborate string theory or is it
still rather speculative theoretical work?
Dr. Randall. I am afraid string theory is speculative,
theoretical work, and that is because it is addressing
questions that are simply beyond the energies and distances
that we can explore. Having said that, though, it is important
to understand that string theory has also given rise to ideas
that add accessible skills and ideas which are still rather
exotic sounding to probably most people here, including
ourselves, such as extra dimensions of space or supersymmetry,
which Pier mentioned. I mean, actually developing string theory
led to the development of supersymmetry, which might be around
the corner. It could be at low energies. So I guess my point is
that even though string theory itself probably won't be tested
in the foreseeable future, that is not to say that it is not
giving rise to theoretical ideas that can change our view of
the universe and that can actually be tested.
Mr. Ehlers. If they are corroborated.
Dr. Randall. Well, they are tested. I didn't mean that they
are proven.
Next Generation Accelerators
Mr. Ehlers. Okay. Dr. Kovar, you mentioned next-generation
accelerators, and Dr. Montgomery I believe referred to that
too, or Dr. Oddone. What do you see on the horizon in next-
generation accelerators?
Dr. Kovar. So I think there are all sorts of possibilities.
There are examples of--there is a technique that is called
Wakefield acceleration, a plasma Wakefield accelerators of
beams, which may make it possible to have a tabletop
accelerator that you can use for medical purposes or for
scanning materials for security. There is a whole range of
opportunities and we are organizing a workshop in Washington,
D.C., on October 26 where we are bringing in a group of experts
and people, people from the scientific community, from the
medical community, from the security community, from the
industrial community and those interested in energy and
environment. And, we are going to try to identify those areas
in which there is potential for significant advancements and
what the impact would be in terms of productivity or in terms
of breakthroughs, and we are going to put that together. We
have a workshop and there is going to be a report to the Office
of Science and the Office of High Energy Physics and hopefully
we are going to--you will see in that report exactly what that
potential is going to be, but I think there is--I think it is
extremely important for the Nation. We historically had been
leaders in accelerator science and in terms of accelerator
technology. Because of the investments that Pier mentioned in
Asia and in Europe, in next-generation capabilities--those
investments have been made over the last decade--we now find
that that technology has been transferred to those economies.
The preferred vendors for certain accelerator components are no
longer in the United States and so I think it is extremely
important for us to make these investments. I think it is
important for science but I also think it is very important for
the Nation and our economy.
International Cooperation
Mr. Ehlers. Dr. Oddone, I think you made the same point
about the need for the United States to once again take the
lead with the major facility here. When I first got here, Newt
Gingrich became Speaker and, as you know, he is very interested
in science and technology. He gave me the assignment of writing
the national science policy, which was a huge task for one
person to try in his first year in office. We actually did it.
It was the first one written since the Endless Frontier in
1945, which shows that the scientific community was just
resting on their laurels in terms of just going ahead. I am not
counting that I wrote an extremely good report but one aspect I
pointed out in there, and that is that most--in many areas,
frontiers of research were becoming so difficult, so expensive,
so complex that we would be forced into international
cooperation if we wished to proceed. I recommended that we
recognize that and proceed on that as a policy. It didn't
happen as part of our policy but it is happening in fact with
ITER now developing in France. We simply decided we didn't want
to put enough money in and by ``we'' I mean the Congress. And--
--
Mr. Lipinski. Dr. Ehlers.
Mr. Ehlers.--the Large Hadron Collider, the same situation,
and I realize my time is expired, but I assume we will come
back. You can think about the question in the meantime: What
mechanism should our nation set up with other nations so that
this will be part of our policy and not happenstance that we
join with the Large Hadron Collider because Congress killed the
Superconducting Super Collider, et cetera? So we will get back
to that when we come back from votes.
Mr. Lipinski. Thank you, Dr. Ehlers. I hate to interrupt
you because you certainly have the great knowledge up here
amongst us. We are--I think at this time because of where we
are on this vote moving on to another question may take a
little time. Unfortunately, we are going to have to recess and
ask our witnesses to come back again, probably 25 minutes. I
will run back after the third vote and get us started again,
and just to have an opportunity to ask a couple more questions.
So the hearing stands in recess.
[Recess.]
Mr. Lipinski. The hearing will come back to order.
Unfortunately, things work very differently here in
Congress than they do in the laboratory. You continually get
called away unfortunately and it doesn't give a lot of time for
concentration, but we are back, and the Chair is going to come
back and chair but before that I will start us off again,
because we are going to have votes again relatively soon. The
Chair will recognize Mr. Inglis for five minutes.
Mr. Inglis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and we want to get
quickly back to Dr. Ehlers so that he can get another round of
questions.
Dark Energy and Matter
A question for you, though. We had a wonderful opportunity
to visit the Ice Cube in Antarctica and saw the work being done
there on neutrinos. So help me understand, a layman understand
a little bit of this, Dr. Randall. What is the--how is a--
neutrinos are related to dark energy in what way? I mean, it is
a mystery to us. Is this right?
Dr. Randall. There are two different things out there, dark
matter and dark energy. Dark matter, we really--I would say we
are on the cusp of understanding dark matter. We have a real
hope. It is really at scales that we are about to probe. We
have many different types of experiments that look at both
directly, which is to say--the point is, dark matter doesn't
interact very strongly, so in order to increase the probability
you need huge. So there are huge targets of whatever that could
look for dark matter or there are other types of astronomical
experiments that look for the annihilation products of dark
matter, so dark matter can annihilate with itself and produce
things that we can observe astronomically like photons or
neutrinos or whatever. So what the Ice Cube could be connected
to is dark matter. Dark energy is very mysterious and requires
a whole different set of types of explanations which we could
talk about independently. But dark matter is stuff that is just
like particles. We know about it. It is just that it doesn't
interact with light as much, but it means that it has particle
properties that we are familiar with. So what we can look for
in something like the Ice Cube is, for example, annihilation
products that come out when dark matter--from dark matter
annihilation or studying neutrinos directly. So you have these
big targets which allow--basically, you are, you know, buying a
lot of lottery tickets. You know, you are increasing the
probability that even though these neutrinos interact so
weakly, you are providing the opportunity for it to have some
interaction that you can actually record.
Mr. Inglis. Right. So what is--I think we have heard some
percentages here this morning, but what is the percentage that
we think we know of energy, we can detect some percentage----
Dr. Randall. The amount of stuff that we know what it is,
is really--is very small. It is maybe five percent. Now----
Mr. Inglis. This is of matter?
Dr. Randall. And that is to say that is stuff that we
really understand, like the kind of matter that is here in this
room that we are made up of. You know, it is funny because
everyone is always shocked to find out that 25 percent is dark
matter and 70 percent is dark energy, but I always actually
found it kind of remarkable that the stuff we know about is as
big a fraction as it is. I mean, why should the rest of the
universe--I mean, because we are just making a statement that
it interacts in the way the stuff we are familiar with does.
That is to say it interacts in a way that it emits and absorbs
light, which is really the only way we have had to see things.
Really, to see its interaction with light is essentially how we
look out into the universe. And it could be that there is
matter that for whatever reason doesn't emit or absorb light or
does it at a much lower level, and that could well be dark
matter. The really interesting thing theoretically seems to be
that it could be connected to this very same interaction scale
that we are probing today at colliders, because what do you
need to have--so what do we need to actually have dark matter
out there? Well, you need something that is stable, that hasn't
decayed, and you need something that has the right density to
be out there in the abundance that we see it today, which is to
say in the early universe we can predict how much was
annihilated, how much is left today, and its interaction scale
is set by this very same weak scale. It turns out, and it could
be a coincidence or it could be something deep and meaningful,
that it gives you the right abundance to be dark matter today.
So from that perspective, it is actually--if there really is
something new at the weak scale, which we assume there is,
perhaps it is less mysterious why there should be dark matter
out there.
Mr. Lipinski. So of the matter that we know of, your
estimate is we know five percent. Ninety-five percent then
would be in the category of dark matter or in----
Dr. Randall. Well, like we said, 25 percent is dark matter
so matter is stuff like made up of particles that clump
together. It forms galaxies. It forms objects. The rest of it
is something which is even more mysterious in many ways. It is
something that Einstein told us was allowed. It is just energy,
and it is called dark energy, but really it is just energy that
can be out there permeating the universe. It still emits
gravity but it doesn't clump, so it is not acting the way
matter acts. It is really just there in terms of its
gravitational effect and the energy that is distributed
throughout the universe, and it is a very big mystery. I mean,
it was one of the major discoveries to realize that it is there
at all, but why it has the particular amount it has, why it has
a comparable amount to the rest of the matter that we know
about, why it is not huge, which is what actually quantum
mechanics and special relativity would tell us, it is one of
the big mysteries that we face today. So understanding dark
energy could lead to some very--any explanation is going to
give some deep insight into what is out there.
Mr. Inglis. Very interesting. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Realizing the Taxpayer Investment
Chairman Baird. Thank you. Good to be here. Sorry I am a
good bit late but I thank you for your presence and my
colleagues as well. I want to first say I am very interested in
what you are doing, the work you are doing. I have had a long
interest in physics. I am not anywhere near Dr. Ehlers but I
have had a passionate interest in it. But at the same time we
have a $10 trillion debt, the deficit is going to exceed $1
trillion, and to be perfectly blunt, you all are on a pretty
expensive end of the spectrum and there is an awful lot of
other things we could spend the money on. So help us
understand, what do we get for the money? I mean, if I have got
to go home and tell my fishermen and my loggers and my
steelworkers and my laborers and my homemakers and my nurses
and everybody whose tax dollars are going to fund your big
projects, what do we get for it?
Dr. Oddone. Let me tackle that one.
Chairman Baird. You are a brave man. I admire that.
Dr. Oddone. I think the first thing that you get out of it
is really a place at the frontier, the opportunity to expand
knowledge, and it is in a way that is very powerful. If you
think of how our civilization will be remembered centuries from
now, the progress that we make in understanding the universe
around us is what will really be enduring and will remain as
understanding for humanity, and I think when we invest in this
area of science, we are at that frontier and we are expanding
that frontier. So I think it is an opportunity for inspiring
young people to go into science and it is something that I
think responds to some very deep human emotion of discovering
the world around you. So that is the first thing that we are
motivated by and that you get. But when you do that, when you
are at the frontier and when you learn something, it is passed
along and you now put it away and you think well, what I don't
understand is the next step. You are forced to invent, to
stretch the technology, to really take things way beyond the
place at which you found them. And if you look at the history
of particle physics, we have done that from the beginning of
accelerators and detectors. Today you can look at how we use
accelerators, medical accelerators by the thousands and
accelerators in industry to modify materials, to put ions in
place, how we have learned to do very fast pattern recognition
with computers from early computer technology, how, when we try
to tackle these global projects, physicists invented the World
Wide Web as a way in which they could all talk to each other
across dozens of countries, dozens of different technical
platforms. The tools that come out of accelerator physics are
employed now in light sources and neutron sources with a wide
variety of applications. So I think the second thing you get is
that drive that says, ``these problems are so hard yet they are
so inspiring,'' that it leads to invention, it leads to us
really thinking very, very hard about what the technological
barriers are that prevent us from actually responding to those
questions that Lisa asked there. And so I think that is the
second part that you get.
I think the third part that you get is the fact that this
type of science really influences science technology,
engineering and math education in a very broad spectrum. At the
highest spectrum of very technical people, if you look around
the universities, this type of research is a vital part of any
physics department. It is an intellectual part of our
universities. It brings students and they work at these
problems and it is part of the miracle of American enterprise
that the universities, in fact, contribute so much to our
development across a broad front. Science is a very important
part in asking those questions, a very important part of
bringing students into physics and in technical careers. We see
it at Fermilab at a much younger age. We have a marvelous
program, very talented people, 200 volunteers that go into the
community, thousands of children that come to Fermilab, and it
is an inspiring thing to ask these questions and try to
understand how the world is put together, these deep mysteries
of dark energy, dark matter, why the world is dominated by
matter and not matter and antimatter. They ask the most
profound questions, very unlike the question you just asked in
the sense that they don't ask about why, you know, you cost us
a lot of money and why should we be doing this. They really
only ask the questions that intrigue them and they are brought
into this field, and they may not come in as high energy
physicists someday, but they have been inspired to look at the
world in a different way. So I think those are the three things
you get.
Chairman Baird. Thank you.
Dr. Montgomery.
Dr. Montgomery. Yes, I would like to respond a little bit
in the vein that we talked earlier. I refer to myself as the
Director of Jefferson Lab. I wrote an article which appeared on
a page on our web site in which I try to explain that in fact
when you are sitting in Europe, as I once was, or in China or
in Japan and you look to the United States, you don't only see
Harvard. You actually see Fermilab and Jefferson Lab and
Brookhaven National Lab and LDL and Stanford's linear
accelerator. And those great attractors actually bring
scientists, both students who come here but also the
participants in the experiments, and some significant fraction
of those people actually want to stay. Given our difficulty in
educating our society to a level which can actually function in
today's technological age, that is a major augmentation of our
system. I think it is a small piece but a very important piece
of why and what you get from our labs.
Chairman Baird. Good points.
Dr. Ehlers.
International Collaboration and More on Next Generation
Accelerators
Mr. Ehlers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. First of all, just a
side issue but it is something that Dr. Baird and I are both
very interested in. Dr. Oddone, you mentioned that you
immigrated to this country to study physics. It is a good thing
you did it when you did because if you tried to come to this
country now to do it, you would have a much more difficult time
getting in. And we have spent time lobbying with the State
Department and Homeland Security to try to ease this transition
of scientists, and I was just telling Dr. Baird the other day
about my son who is a geophysicist and has left this country
and gone to a very attractive position in Europe, in Germany,
to be specific. And when he came in, no prior permission, went
down to register, took 15 minutes, it was all over. Compare
that to what you have to do to import scientists from other
countries. So I hope you will join with both of us in trying to
impress upon the Congress, upon the government, upon Homeland
Security and so forth that we really have to be certain to
allow the scientific talent to continue to come into this
country because if you don't get that talent, they now have
other places they can go and you are not going to get your next
generation of accelerators if you don't get in the next
generation of really bright people. So just a little editorial
comment there.
I didn't have much in the way of other questions. You have
already answered some of my questions about dark energy and
dark matter, but just getting back to a question I had asked
before we went to vote, and that is the next-generation
accelerators, and I think Dr. Oddone and Dr. Montgomery haven't
had a chance to respond yet, but I am very interested in that
question because you may reach a point where it is no longer
appropriate to use accelerators to continue as Dr. Randall
mentioned. Maybe you are going to be doing more work with
cosmic rays at some point just because that may be the cheaper
way to try to learn what you need to learn. I don't know. What
comments do you have?
Dr. Oddone. Let me answer that in two ways. The first one
has to do about international collaboration. You had asked how
the world is coming together so that for the next major
facility it doesn't happen because we decided to cancel
something like the Superconductor and Super Collider. I think
there are multiple levels in which this international
collaboration happens. We have many relations, laboratory to
laboratory, that are very healthy, so if you look at Tevatron,
for example, 40 percent of the collaborators in physics are
from Europe and 40 percent of the capital contributions have
come from Europe. If you look at the Large Hadron Collider,
there is very significant investment of the United States in
this facility. We participated in it. We have a remote
operation center at Fermilab and it is a great opportunity for
us. I think these models have worked and they represent a
facility that is either regional or national with international
participation, where there is an anchor facility or region that
basically establishes the facility and invites international
participation. That model has been very successful for us.
There are new models being explored for what might happen in a
great new global facility similar in scale to the LHC where
many countries would come together to try to do that, and there
is a group. It is not officially constituted. I think it is
more of a club called Funding Agencies for Large Colliders in
which all the agencies of interested countries from Europe, the
United States, China, Japan, Russia and so on participate. They
are trying to coordinate that global issue to see if we build a
new facility how should we decide where it goes, what kind of
governance should we have and so on. So the level of world
cooperation among the agencies is now much higher than ever
before in trying to understand how one would move such a large
facility.
The other comment that I would make concerns your remark
about perhaps we ought to do something with cosmic rays that
might be cheaper, and----
Mr. Ehlers. By the way, I was not being very serious about
that.
Dr. Oddone. I understand, but I should say the following.
The observations that we make of the cost in the natural world
lead us to all sorts of questions and contradictions that we
want to explore, but ultimately we believe this finds the
resolution in understanding the particles in the fields that
underlie all of this. And we don't know of any other way really
to explore that world other than with accelerators. We will
find phenomena. We may find a dark matter particle, for
example, deep in a mine, a natural one, and then the question
will be, well, what is it? And I think until we produce it at
the Large Hadron Collider, we will not know really what is
behind it. So I think it is very important to connect the large
world that we see outside with the world that underpins it,
which is really the world of the very small that we study with
accelerators. So I don't think anytime soon we could say that
we would replace one particular thrust like the energy frontier
with accelerators or the intensity for dealing with
accelerators purely with cosmological observation.
Mr. Ehlers. All right. By the way, if you want to find dark
matter in the mine, you might want to go to coal mines.
Dr. Montgomery.
Dr. Montgomery. So I would like to address your question in
two pieces also. The first is that not all accelerators are the
same. In fact, for nuclear physics, what we would really like,
as I mentioned in my testimony, is if you like, the machine of
the future would be an electron ion collider and that would
provide different capabilities, different characteristics than,
for example, you might look for a particle physics accelerator.
And that in turn allows me to point out that in fact we
sometimes discuss how are going to build the next big
accelerator, the accelerators are what we are discussing. In
fact, if you look at the science of the Office of Science in
the Department of Energy, then accelerators underpin the
science in basic energy sciences, in nuclear physics and in
particle physics. The whole spectrum is underpinned by the
ability to build accelerators of different types. And if you
look at the laboratories that you have, then you will find, for
example, that Jefferson Laboratory is well known for its
superconducting radio frequency acceleration technology but it
is not well known for magnets, and then Lawrence Berkeley Lab
is known for magnets a little bit it is not known at all for
superconducting radio frequency. And so in thinking about the
next accelerators that we build, then the laboratories have to
work together. And so it is important that the Office of
Science in general, Department of Energy maybe more broadly,
ensures that the full spectrum of capability in accelerator
science, whether it be magnets, radio frequency technology of
whatever that it is required to build the accelerator in 10 or
15 years from now is present in one or other of the
laboratories so that together they can build that accelerator.
Mr. Ehlers. Thank you very much, and I apologize, Dr.
Randall.
Dr. Randall. Just since I was accused of saying it, I just
want to reiterate a little bit what Pier said, which is that I
think that there really are different ways of exploring new
physics, and the essential point to high energy accelerators is
that it is the only way to directly explore what is there. We
can get all sorts of indirect clues, but if you think about it
in any other context of your life, whenever you have had an
indirect clue, you very rarely know what is really going on. I
mean, the only way to really understand the details of what is
out there is to get to the energies where we can make these
kind of things and explore their properties. That is not to say
that we don't learn a lot by exploring the cosmos, but it is a
very different sort of thing, and of course, if we want to know
if something is dark matter, the cosmos is actually a very good
place to look because that is where we know it is lurking. But
if we want to understand detailed properties of the fundamental
nature of matter, the kind of experiments that we can do when
we can have control and create things here on Earth and make
the stuff directly, have it right here to study, it is just a
completely different type of question that you can ask in that
case.
Mr. Ehlers. The point is, with an accelerator you can run
more of a controlled experiment. With the cosmic rays, you take
what you get.
I apologize. I am very late for another meeting I am
supposed to be at and so I have to leave, but thank you very
much for a very enlightening session here. Thank you.
More on Best Use of Taxpayer Money
Chairman Baird. I will ask--with the indulgence of my
friend, Mr. Inglis, I will ask one last question. So I am going
to continue a line of discussion that I began a second ago and
follow up in a couple of ways. You look at the Superconducting
Super Collider which was really a lot of money spent and got
nothing really out of it, and--I mean out of the failed project
in Texas, and Large Hadron Collider, you know, tremendous
amount of money, great expectation. You fire the thing up and
it sort of self destructs, not entirely, I understand, but we
now read this sort of, ``well, that is okay, it can still do
some pretty cool stuff.'' I am paraphrasing here but it
certainly--I am sure nobody is more disappointed than you folks
in the scientific community. But there might be one group of
people a little bit more disappointed, and that would be the
taxpayers who say look, we put a hell of a lot of money into
this thing on promise that certain things would be achieved and
now it is not going to be achieved. If that happened in lots of
other aspects of government, there would be investigations. I
mean, you guys would be here before one of these very
unpleasant oversight committees where somebody would be
glowering at you. And you get to skate, I mean partly because
you know stuff we haven't a clue what you are doing, and I
think that is neat. I admire your knowledge. I admire your
intellect. But there is a kind of a core responsibility that
goes with it that says Bob and I and the rest of us up here, we
have got to go to the aforementioned people I talked to and we
have to say to them, we are going to take your money and invest
it on your behalf. And you get taxpayer dollars in one of two
ways: either people trust you, which is rare, or you threaten
them, which is the underlying motive. You say, we are going to
put a gun to your head and take your money to put it towards
the Large Hadron Collider, which then is going to melt its
connections the first time we fire it up. Walk me through your
mental process, because it is not just about the cost and yes,
there are some neat things that happen, side effects and some
neat direct discoveries. But there are also opportunity costs,
opportunity costs to the folks whose money we take is, ``I
could have spent that on my kids' education, a new car,
repairing the roof.'' But the opportunity costs on a broad
societal scale is, we have thousands of other problems and the
money we spend on the big gizmos you folks work with is money
we can't spend on other things that might actually have more
immediate and more direct benefit to a society and economy that
are in trouble. Walk us through how you--other than just
``gosh, we are really curious and we really want to get this,''
how do you rationalize the economic costs? I mean, how do you
say yes, if we spend X amount of new money on the new ILC which
will then afterwards have the next ILC or whatever, how do you
do it? Give us some insights into that. What goes on in your
heads and in your organizations?
Dr. Kovar. Let me take a cut at this because this is what I
have to do every year when we present our budget to Congress.
There are several ways of answering this question. One part of
it has to do with those things that we have control over, and
so within the Office of Science we work very hard to set up
project management practices so that when we start projects we
bring them in on cost, on schedule and they perform. And we
work very hard to do it but you have got to remember that
everything we do here--it is sort of along the line of what
Pier talked about is one of a kind. Generally it is an advance.
It is defining the state of the art. So it is high risk, okay?
Part of the benefits that we have--and I want to point out that
our contribution to the LHC is sitting there and it is working,
I mean, as best we can tell. Knock on wood, I mean, but it is
working. On the other hand, I want to point out that it is a
very complicated machine, and there are two gentlemen to my
left who know about these much better than I do, but it is the
most complicated accelerator that has been built. And so down
the road it is going to run, it is going to work, but it is not
good right now. Two months from now when it starts running, a
lot of people will breathe a big sigh of relief but the
expectation is that it is going to run at some point.
Now, for part of this investment that the country has made,
we have already reaped the benefits. I mean, the next
generation of electronics, the silicon detectors, the next
generation superconducting magnets. For example, in the United
States we developed something through our R&D program that is
niobium-tin. It is a new alloy that we use for superconducting
magnets and I think ITER placed an order to the United States
for $60 million to produce that for the facility in France.
That was developed in the United States. It is going to be
spent in the United States. During this period of time there is
a whole generation of students and it turns out 20 percent
remain in the field. The other 80 percent are in industry, they
are in government, they are in national labs and security and
medical facilities, so it turns out those investments are the
investments and I think the thing that you also get, and it
is--I am going to repeat a little of what Pier and Mont
described. I mean, we are in fact addressing these questions
that just are spectacular in terms of their interest for the
general public, you know, my cousins and my uncles in Texas,
they appreciate it. I come and talk to them and they are just
fascinated by it. However, there are a whole bunch of questions
where there are remarkable breakthroughs but they are so
technical and only the experts can really appreciate it. And we
should develop a way, a language, so we can communicate that to
you.
But the other part of this is all of these benefits to
society, and it is the job that any program manager, federal
program manager has in trying to convey exactly what these
benefits to society are and how do we document that in a way
that you can explain. You know, my wife is a nurse and she
understands making people better and what the benefits of this
are. These longer-term benefits really need to be articulated
better, okay? And in that regard, I think the Office of Science
now has put together a workforce plan where we are beginning to
invest in bringing in kids and teachers to our national labs on
a much larger scale. And so part of this is I think educating
the American public as to what science is, giving them some
context. I think all of these are things that I think are very
important but, you know, in the context of health care and
Social Security down the road and national security, I know all
of you have an enormous responsibility and these are really
very tough problems, but in the context. Earlier before you
came in we looked at what is on the wall here, you know,
``Where there is no vision, the people perish.'' I think some
of these longer-term things are just very important for our
society. I am not sure that I answered your question.
Chairman Baird. It was appreciated and I thought you were
very insightful.
Does anyone else want to take a quick run? I don't want to
belabor it too much, but with Mr. Inglis's indulgence, it is a
matter I struggle with. And then Dr. Randall, we will let you
finish.
Dr. Montgomery. So you picked two particular examples, SSC
(Superconducting Super Collider) and LHC. First of all, I think
they are different beasts, but you picked in fact the two
projects which have had difficulty, let us say, have had
challenges. But--this is true, but there are also a number of
devices which you have supported which do work, which have been
spectacular successes. I know, for example, and you may not but
it is certainly true that our colleagues like Dr. Kovar and
some sitting behind me actually apply, if you like, metrics to
the way our accelerators perform. And each year as lab director
I submit our performance against those metrics and that folds
into the money that we get in the subsequent years so there are
metrics. And we are successful in a large number of the
accelerators, it is not confined to Jefferson Laboratory.
Fermilab has had success with the Tevatron. The SLAC B Factory
was spectacular. The Relativistic Heavy Iron Collider in
Brookhaven has done very good work. So you are getting real
scientific measurements and return on your dollars in general.
I just wanted to make that point so that it is not entirely a
question of, did you deliver on the LHC yet or not? Thank you.
Dr. Randall. So I want to say a couple of things. One is
just a basic fact about the accelerators which I think is
important to know. So when the SSC was designed and started to
be developed, physicists sat down and said what would we like
to have if we really could make a machine that will really
probe the physics that we know is there that we really want to
understand. That was the design people came up with, and with
the LHC they had an existing tunnel and that is important
because the existing tunnel had a fixed size. The SSC would
have been much bigger, which meant that magnets had to be
stretched to the limit of the technology that was possible. So
everyone knew when the LHC was being designed it is something
that is pushing various technology to the limit, and when that
happens, there are often times when things don't work
immediately. So just in the context of asking the physics
community, I mean I think everyone in the physics community, at
least in this field, would have said the SSC would have been
the obvious way to go. I would still say, you know, if we could
fund it, it would be the way to go. And had we done that, it
would work, and just, it is important to keep in mind the
Tevatron where Pier is has been remarkably successful. I think
it doesn't get enough adulation, in fact, because it has been
extended to energies and luminosities beyond what was ever
prepared in the beginning. So when physicists have the
opportunity to do what they really want to do when it is
available, it has been successful, and in terms of the LHC, it
is just, I mean, we are disappointed but it is just a question
of time at this point, which means to get these things up and
running. But the SSC would still have been a better machine. It
would have been three times the energy. There is just no
comparison. And so I mean, I do think it is tragic that that
was stopped and it would have been running by now.
I think in terms of the other questions you asked, I mean,
this is something I am actually curious about. Whenever they
compare science funding, it always gets compared to, you know,
I don't know, saving babies or something. I mean, there are a
lot of things we spend money on that aren't necessarily
directly working for the benefit of humanity. And I think in
terms of, when we ask what it is to make progress, we really
have to think about what is the role of government, what do we
want to be funding, and the government is working on things
that wouldn't happen otherwise. If it is something that an
entrepreneurial interest is going to take over, then it will
happen. It is things that are more strategic, more long-term
that ultimately will have benefits but don't necessarily have
them in the next second. And the kind of physics that we are
doing, I mean, it is a different type of science than a lot of
other types of science, in that we are formulating very precise
questions at very remote energies and distances. We will make
progress, and a lot of the other types of science are very
important but it is not--you hear a lot of buzz but it is
different than actually making progress in the sense of 20
years down the line you can say, what do we have? And here we
have some definite goal and we do know what it means to make an
event. That is not to say one should be done at the expense of
another but it is just a very different type of thing and I
think there is a strong argument for it.
Dr. Oddone. I appreciate the struggles that you have with
the many practical problems that the Nation faces and how to
make a judgment about what should be invested in this. In the
end it really has to be justified by the results. Now, it is
not fair to say the SSC was a bad idea because it never
produced anything. Well, Congress stopped it so it never
produced anything, so it is not really in some sense an example
of a failed science project. And I think it is too early to
judge on the LHC. Our laboratory, even though we compete in
terms of finding the Higgs-Boson with our Tevatron and so on,
we have sent some of our best people over to CERN to help them
understand the issues that were involved in that machine, and I
completely agree with you that our field is in deep, deep
trouble globally if we do not deliver on the Large Hadron
Collider. So our intent is absolutely to deliver and I hope
that if you have a hearing two or three years from now you
actually would tell me, you know, why didn't we do that rather
than, in some sense, letting the Europeans do it? Because the
kinds of things that will be discovered will in fact set the
tone for the world for what is really coming in our way that is
unimagined.
A lot of the science that we do is absolutely neat, but I
say it is imaginable. I can imagine how I modify a molecule to
dock in some substance that I can then use to affect disease. I
can imagine how I may modify a surface, the atomic surface of a
material in order to get a better material. There are lots and
lots of things in science that are absolutely neat, wonderful,
I support them and they are imaginable. I think when we
actually tackle the questions that Lisa has asked, when we open
this new regime, the Large Hadron Collider will be seven times
the energy, 30 times the intensity that we have, we really are
poking into the unimaginable. We may be astounded at what we
find, things that we haven't been able to even imagine. We have
lots of imagination. We have made all these theories and so on
but we actually--that is the nature of the frontier. We may be
going towards the spices in India but we may run into America,
in some sense, with the Large Hadron Collider. And I think that
is what you are getting a ticket at the table for, to be there
and be doing those things.
Chairman Baird. Thank you. I appreciate very much the
testimony, your expertise and your patience with us as you try
to educate us on matters rather arcane to most of us on the
Committee. With that, the hearing stands adjourned with the
gratitude of the Members. Thank you very much.
[Whereupon, at 1:52 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
Appendix:
----------
Additional Material for the Record
Superconducting Particle Accelerator Forum of the Americas
100 M St. SE, Suite 1200
Washington, DC 20003
Hon. Brian Baird
Chairman, Energy and Environment Subcommittee
Science and Technology Committee
2350 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
Oct. 3, 2009
Dear Chairman Baird:
The Superconducting Particle Accelerator Forum of the
Americas, SPAFOA, a not-for-profit industry forum registered in
the District of Columbia. Our activities are totally supported
by member dues. The goal of the SPAFOA is to provide a
partnership between our industry members and government funded
superconducting accelerator programs during their design,
component prototyping, manufacturing, siting and installation.
We appreciate this opportunity to submit written testimony
providing our views on the need for and value of an integrated
formal industrialization program during the R&D phases of major
DOE science programs. Integrating the systems engineering,
manufacturing, and equipment operational capabilities of
industry with the world class research capabilities on the
National Laboratories on these programs would be mutually
beneficial. For example, the laboratories would gain industry's
expertise in manufacturing and assembly to incorporate into
laboratory prototypes, thus lowering equipment costs and
increasing end use reliability. Industry would gain a better
understanding of the fundamental parameters that impact
component performance allowing it to modify designs for future
commercial applications.
The SPAFOA therefore recommends the Energy and Environment
Subcommittee request DOE to adopt an industrialization approach
during the planning and implementation of major programs.
Further elaboration on this issue is shown on the attached
white paper, ``Industrialization of Advanced Accelerator
Technology,'' which was submitted to the DOE Accelerators for
Americas Future symposium and workshop on Oct. 26-28.
Thank you for your consideration in this matter.
Kenneth O. Olsen, P.E. Dr. John V. Dugan
President Vice President
Kenneth O. Olsen
Superconducting Particle Accelerator
Forum of the Americas
Industry Working Group
Industrialization of Advanced Accelerator Technology
Introduction:
The accelerator symposium working groups are charged with
identifying the Nation's future R&D needs for accelerator technology in
five distinct application areas. Government R&D investments in
accelerator technology for science programs over the decades has lead
major technological advances. In order for these advances to benefit
society in multiple applications, they must be implemented by the
private sector. Also, since the Nation's accelerator R&D expertise
resides mostly at the national labs and universities, it is anticipated
that many of the working groups' recommendations will require
government R&D investment to further advance the state of the art.
However, in order for American industry to expedite the adoption of
these technologies and compete in the global marketplace for government
and private sector applications, the government must develop a formal
industrialization program to integrate the country's industrial base
into their R&D programs.
Industrialization activities must be focused on two distinct market
sectors;
Federal: The federal sector R&D is dominated by DOE's
Office of Science and to some degree National Science
Foundation programs at the national laboratories and
universities. Industry must become a true partner in these R&D
efforts to gain the necessary technical design background.
Conversely, industry can educate the laboratories on
manufacturing, installation and operability of deployed
systems.
Commercial: The commercial sector tends to adopt
advanced technologies developed and deployed by the government.
Generally this occurs once the major technical risks have been
reduced. Perhaps the best example of this is in aerospace where
technologies developed for the military migrate to commercial
aviation over time.
Objective:
Industrialization of accelerators will prepare industry to cost-
effectively produce accelerator components and systems. The main
objective must be to reduce the learning curve through technology
transfer and provide industry with the support needed to bridge the gap
between R&D and deployment, especially for commercial applications.
Industrialization requires two-way technology transfer during the early
stages of government sponsored accelerator R&D to educate industry on
the R&D programs and technical progress of accelerator programs in the
labs and to educate the laboratories on production engineering and post
deployment operational issues such as reliability and maintainability
that should be integrated into their R&D activities. Industry needs to
develop the capability to cost effectively respond to requests for low
production specialty products and develop production expertise to
manufacture large quantities of accelerator components to meet the
requirements on future large science programs such as the International
Linear Collider (ILC).
Global Activities:
The potential of advanced accelerator technology applications has
initiated the formation of government-academia-industry coordinating
groups in many parts of the world. Asia and Europe have recognized the
importance of accelerator industrialization and have set up programs to
integrate it into their accelerator programs. Since these regions have
different laws and cultural backgrounds, one cannot do an across the
board comparison of their activities to the situation in America.
However, it is clear they recognize the importance of industry,
academia, and government cooperation. It is also reasonable to assume
that they are partially or totally supported by government funds. A
brief description of each is a follows:
Japan: The ``Advanced Accelerator Association Promoting Science and
Technology,'' referred to as the Advanced Accelerator Association (AAA)
was established in June 2008 to facilitate Industry-Government-Academia
collaboration and to promote and seek various industrial applications
of advanced accelerator and technologies derived from R&D, excluding
creating new drug, biotechnology and medical uses. As of April 1, 2009
the AAA had a total of 100 members, two-thirds from industry. AAA
activities include worldwide outreach of significant advanced
accelerator developments, seeking ways to handle intellectual property
within the ILC project and integrating manufacturing technologies from
a variety of industrial fields to create innovative scientific
technologies.
Europe: The ``European Industry Forum for Accelerators with SCRF
Technology'' (EIFast) was founded in October 2005 to maintain and
further strengthen the position of European science and industry in
SCRF. As a united voice of European research and industry, EIFast
promotes the realization of European and global SCRF projects. The
organization has 47 current members, the large majority of whom are
from the European industrial base. The organization interfaces with two
main scientific programs: The European X-Ray Laser Project (XFEL) and
the ILC.
An industrial forum was established in the Americas in 2005 to
support the ILC Americas Regional Team industrialization efforts,
called the Linear Collider Forum of America. That forum recently
reorganized based on the delays of the projected ILC program schedule
and expanded its program coverage to all SCRF based accelerator
programs in the Americas. It is now called the Superconducting Particle
Accelerator Forum of the Americas. The forum has 16 current members and
is totally supported by private sector member dues.
Approach:
This symposium and subsequent workshops will be examining the past,
present and future of accelerators in five major application areas. It
is assumed that the large majority of accelerator technology advances
will occur in the R&D areas within discovery science area since they
will be developing leading edge technology. The design and construction
of these accelerator based activities, the majority of them
incorporating superconducting technology, will advance the state-of-
the-art which will then be transferred to security, energy, medical,
and industrial applications. A knowledgeable industrial base will
expedite this transfer process and prepare industry to compete in the
global marketplace.
The importance of industrialization became apparent within the
three regions supporting the ILC program. The technical specifications,
production quantities, and original program schedule placed a
significant challenge on industry in Asia, Europe, and the Americas.
Clearly a post R&D industrial briefing would present a steep learning
curve and would not be adequate to meet these requirements. There are
several other government programs in the Americas that, when taken
together, accumulate into a significant requirement for the accelerator
industry. A sample of these is as follows:
Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator facility (CEBAF)
Upgrade, JLAB
Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, (RHIC) BNL
Energy Recovery LINAC, BNL
Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), MSU
Project X, Fermilab
Cornell Energy Recovery Linac
Mo99 Production, TRIUMF
U.S. Navy Free Electron Laser (FEL) Ship Self
Defense, ONR
Therefore, government must develop a comprehensive
industrialization program for these activities to prepare industry to
compete on a level field with its global competitors. Other parts of
the world have developed approaches to integrate their industries with
government activities. Within the U.S., the program must take into
account the various legal constraints and available incentives that are
unique to the country such as the Buy America Act, Stimulus Funding,
CRADAs, SBIRs, cost sharing contracts, personnel exchanges to
collaborate with on-site R&D activities at the laboratories, etc.
Failure to do so will greatly weaken the ability of our industries to
compete in the global marketplace. Note that an industrialization
program which focuses funding primarily through the SBIR program is not
acceptable to industry.
Recommendations:
The following recommendations are suggested to implement a formal
industrialization component for government funded accelerator R&D
activities:
1. DOE SC should assign a role of accelerator R&D program
coordinator within the Director's senior staff. This person can
examine the cross-cutting opportunities across SC for R&D
program integration among HEP, NE, other areas of DOE and other
federal agencies and department.
2. Establish an accelerator technology advisory group of
laboratories, universities, component producers and end-users
to develop innovative ways to transfer government funded
technologies to the private sector.
3. Examine the various DOE contractual and cost sharing
methods available to the laboratories to work collaboratively
with industry during the R&D phases of major accelerator
programs.
4. Place more emphasis on demonstration and financing
incentives for commercial accelerator applications.
5. Require program plans for government funded accelerator R&D
projects to include an industrialization element with a funding
commitment.