C11. Commission on Particles and Fields

Report to the Council and Commission Chair Meeting
2004

Officers 2003 –2005

Chair V. Lüth USA
Vice Chair A. Smith UK
Secretary M. Turala Poland

Members

C. Fosco Argentina
R. Godbole India
G. Herten Germany
T. Huang China
E. Iarocci Italy
A. N. Sissakian Russia
S. Stapnes Norway
G. Wormser France
T. Yamanaka Japan
M. Zeller USA

Associate Members

E. Fiorini (C12)
(2000-2003) A. B. McDonald (C19)
Y. Totsuka (C4)

The membership of C11 is distributed broadly geographically and represents scientists at major laboratories as well as research universities.

IUPAP Sponsored Conferences 2003 - 2008

C11 normally only supports one conference per yea the International Conference on High Energy Physics in even years and the International Symposium on Lepton-Photon Physics in odd years. These meetings are generally regarded as the premier meetings in the field.

The most recent conferences were

2003 LP-03: Fermilab, Batavia, USA, Auguist 11-16, 2003.
2004 ICHEP-04: Beijing, P.R.China, August 16-21, 2004.

Future conferences are planned for

2005 LP-05: Uppsala, Sweden, June 30 – July 5, 2005.
2006 ICHEP-06 Moscow, Russia, July 26 – August 2, 2006.
2007 LP-07: Daegu, Korea, August 13 – 18, 2007.
2008 ICHEP-08: Philadelphia, USA.

The issue of US visa restrictions and drawn out application procedures are of major concern to the HEP community. It is very much hoped that multi-year multi-entry visa can be reinstituted for students and scientists in the near future. Without such improvements, it will be difficult for Philadelphia and Princeton to host ICHEP08.

Formation of a C11 Working Group in Authorship

As HEP Collaborations supporting major experiments grow, there is increasing concern about authorship of scientific publications. It is widely realized that author lists cannot continue to grow, because

• they do not appropriately credit those who have contributed most,
• they do not allow others to identify those most knowledgeable about the results, and this hampers scientific discourse, and
• they lead to absurd publication and citation records.

Members of C11 have discussed these issues and agree that it would be desirable to find ways of improving the current situation. C11 proposes the formation of a Working Group that is charged toexamine the various types of publications, specifically physics analyses in reviewed journals vis-a-vis technical publications with more restricted authorship, to survey the current practices for the selection of authors, and examine examine the impact of the current practices and their potential future variants. The working group will be formed from members of C11and representatives of the major collaborations, both from universities and laboratory staff. The goal is to prepare a draft interim report by May 15 th 2005. This draft report should summarize the findings and outline alternatives to the current practices.

This interim report will be made public and should be reviewed by the various national HEP communities and large collaborations, and depending on the overall response might lead to the formulation of guidelines or recommendations.

Recent Developments and Plans for the Future

In particle physics, the lasting achievement of the later part of the last century has been the formulation of the Standard Model that describes the elementary particles and their interactions with unparalleled precision. However, this theory is not an end to itself. It is known to be incomplete, has too many arbitrary parameters, and it is mathematically inconsistent at the TeV energy scale. In fact, experiments of the last decade indicate that

• new fundamental particles must exist just beyond the reach of current accelerators. These particles may be manifestations of new dimensions of space-time, new quantum dimensions, or something else, more radically different;
• neutrinos have mass and thus may resemble quarks more than we anticipated;
• unidentified dark energy pushes the universe to expand at an increasing rate, and cosmic accelerators beam ultra-high energy particles to earth; and that
• most of the matter of the universe is dark, unlike the conventional matter we can study on earth.

Realizing this set of fundamental issues, the high energy communities in various parts of the world have recently tried to chart roadmaps for future research in particle physics. They have identified the exploitation of the following current facilities as the goal for the immediate future:

• At the energy frontier, experiments at proton colliders, the Tevatron in the US to be followed by the LHC in Europe, are aiming to probe for physics beyond the standard model, specifically the electroweak symmetry breaking.
• Precision measurements of QCD couplings and the proton structure will be performed at the HERA electron-proton collider at DESY in Germany,
• The physics of heavy flavours of quarks will be studied at the B Factories at KEK in Japan and PEPII at Stanford in the USA, and in the future also at the Tevatron and the LHC. Searches for exceedingly rare kaon decays will continue at much higher intensities at Fermilab and Brookhaven, and towards the end of this decade at JHF in Japan.
• long baseline experiments are being prepared at Fermilab and CERN, K2K is operating in Japan, with upgrades of proton sources to much higher fluxes, others are in the planning stage.
• Non-accelerator neutrino experiments, Super-Kamiokande and Kamland in Japan, SNO in Japan, Borexino in Europe will further explore neutrino oscillations. Larger detectors are being planned, which can also serve searches for proton decay and other rare phenomena.

For the longer-term future, there is now general agreement among particle physicists that the next machine should be a linear electron-positron collider with energies of 0.5 to 1 TeV in the center of mass.

ICFA and the International Linear Collider

C11 has sponsored the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA) since 1976. The 16 ICFA members are selected from all regions using accelerators, most of the directors of major laboratories are members of ICFA; the chair of C11 serves as an ex-officio member of ICFA. ICFA’s is charged to promote international collaboration in all phases of the construction and exploitation of very large high energy accelerators.

There is consensus that given the size and complexity of a high energy linear collider, only one such facility should be built worldwide, jointly by communities in Asia, the Americas and Europe. The various regions or laboratories are expected to take responsibility for the construction, operation and maintenance of the components.

With the rapid growth in communication and networking, data and software can be readily shared and remote collaboration and operation are possible. ICFA has been helping guide international cooperation on the Linear Collider since the mid 1990’s.

In February 200, ICFA formed an International Linear Collider Technical Review Committee (ILC-TRC) to assess the present technical status of development and potential for meeting the advertised parameters at 500 GeV c.m. energy of the Linear Collider designs at hand, and to establish for each design a list of R&D tasks.

In 2002, ICFA formed the Linear Collider Steering Committee to promote the construction of an Electron-Positron Linear Collider through worldwide collaboration. Most of the15 members are drawn from ICFA and the regional LC steering committees in Europe, Asia and the America. Under the chairmanship of M. Tigner of Cornell University the ILC-SC has given particular attention to the science, technology development and organization of the LC project. With the special emphasis on outreach, the ILCSC fostered the formation of the Interactions Group which now has participants from of 15 laboratories around the world. Their press releases and web posting has become a major resource for the community.

The next major step towards the realization of a global linear collider is the creation of an internationally-federated design team. The ILCSC is in the midst of establishing such a team. A critical prerequisite for starting the work of the global design team is the requirement of a single option for the RF technology to power the main linacs. Up to now, two designs, one based on superconducting the other warm copper cavities, have been pursued. It is too wasteful to continue R&D for both.

In early 2004, the ILCSC created the International Technology Recommendation Panel (ITRP) to recommend the optimal choice of RF technology. This group of very experienced members of the community, not accelerator experts, spent six months to assess the situation and on August 19 th reported its recommendation:

“ We recommend that the linear collider be based on superconducting rf technology. The superconducting technology has favorable features that follow in part from the low rf frequency. The large cavity aperture and long bunch interval reduce the complexity of operations, reduce the sensitivity to ground motion, permit inter-bunch feedback, and may enable increased beam current. The main linac rf systems, the single largest technical cost elements, are of comparatively lower risk. The use of superconducting cavities significantly reduces power consumption.

This recommendation is made with the understanding that we are recommending a technology, not a design. We expect the final design to be developed by a team drawn from the combined warm and cold linear collider communities, taking full advantage of the experience and expertise of both.”

This decision, while not uncontroversial, has been accepted by ICFA and the HEP community. The next step will be the formation of a Central Design Effort, i.e. a coordination of the regional design efforts towards the Conceptual Design Report and common Cost Estimate in the course of the next two years. The Technical Design Report and a site selection are expected to follow and be completed by 2009. Government agencies, OECD and other international organizations are following these developments closely . It is hoped that the funding will be available to allow the pursuit of these exciting goals.