Oddone addresses need for infrastructure at Users' Meeting
Pier Oddone
The annual Fermilab Users’ Meeting concluded Thursday with a series of talks on possible future projects and a call by Director Pier Oddone for the community to unite behind the need for new U.S.-based research infrastructure.
“For vitality and a competitive position in the world, we need investments of capital,” Oddone said. “The position of U.S. particle physics in the world will depend on those assets.”
Unlike Europe and Asia, the U.S. has not built any large high-energy accelerator projects during the last decade. The Tevatron is at the end of its life, although Mike Procario, of the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, told users that his office will push to extend its operation through 2011 because of its exceptional productivity. Oddone stressed the need for additional funding for Tevatron operations, beyond resources required to support the laboratory's future.
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Mike Procario, Department of Energy Office of Science |
The success of a solid U.S. high-energy physics program requires that users support the recommendations of the field’s advisory panels, which offer a coherent plan for the field, Oddone said. Project X, a high-intensity proton source, and a neutrino beam to DUSEL in South Dakota would serve as vital projects at the Intensity Frontier on the way to the next global machine at the Energy Frontier.
Getting started on DUSEL and a 100-kiloton detector there would put the U.S. far ahead of global competition in long-baseline experiments and likely attract Asian and European collaborators, Oddone said.
Project X has synergies with the ILC and also could ultimately become the front end of a muon collider. Oddone plans to keep pushing for the Mu2e and neutrino experiments a muon collider would enable. The combined results from those experiments would extend measurements made at the LHC and enable searches for new physics beyond the reach of the LHC.
--Tona Kunz
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