More than 400 physicists from the United States will convene in Providence next week, Aug. 9-13, 2011, to discuss the future of their field and the types of experiments that will propel particle and high-energy physics forward in the nation.
Hosted by Brown University, physicists at the American Physical Society’s Division of Particles and Fields meeting will hear about the latest results from the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s most powerful particle collider, that aims to unlock secrets from the beginning of the universe. One of the main objectives of the LHC is to determine the existence of the Higgs boson, an elusive particle that is believed to endow other particles with mass. Scientists will hear about efforts at the collider to narrow the parameters in which the Higgs boson is believed to reside.
The LHC’s beginning has meant the end of the two-decade reign of Tevatron, the U.S.-based particle accelerator at the Fermi National Laboratory, which is ceasing particle collisions this fall. The gathering is expected to discuss life post-Tevatron. One idea is Project X, a proposed high-intensity proton accelerator complex, located at Fermilab, which could provide beam for a variety of physics projects. The accelerator also would contain superconducting radio frequency components similar in design to those for a future lepton collider. A forum on Project X is scheduled for Wednesday, Aug. 10.
Other projects are also being considered, such as a lepton collider, an electron-positron collider, a muon collider, and neutrino facilities. Participants are expected to discuss the merits of each idea during a forum at the meeting.
“We have to define the future. It’s an important dialogue to chart the future of U.S. physics,” said Meenakshi Narain, professor of physics at Brown and the meeting’s head program organizer.
Other sessions are devoted to celebrating the Tevatron, astrophysics, dark matter, the types of instruments needed to define future results, physics and the modern media, and women in physics, which will be moderated by Anastasia Volovich from Brown and Sarah Demers from Yale.
Most of the discussions will be held at the Rhode Island Convention Center, but some sessions are being held on the Brown campus. On Friday, Harrison Prosper, a physicist from Florida State University, will deliver a public talk on the frontier of physics in which he will describe “why we think (and) hope the Large Hadron Collider will tell us something decisive about the frontier of physics and beyond.” The talk takes place at 6 p.m. in the Salomon Center for Teaching, De Ciccio Family Auditorium.
On Saturday, also in the Salomon Center, Bill Foster, a physicist and former U.S. representative from Illinois who is seeking to reclaim his seat in 2012, will give a talk titled “What Life is Like as a Scientist in Congress.” Pier Oddone, Fermilab’s director, will talk about the future of U.S. facilities devoted to physics research, and Barry Barish, the American Physical Society’s president, will deliver closing remarks. Steve Myers, director of accelerators and technology at the European consortium overseeing the LHC, also will speak.
Throughout the week, graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty from Brown and other institutions will present their research programs in so-called “parallel talks.” In all, there are 372 parallel talks and 32 invited plenary talks.
The meeting, held every two years, “gives great exposure to Brown University, to the Department of Physics and to our high-energy physics group,” said Ulrich Heintz, professor of physics and the conference’s lead organizer.