The Science and Technology Facilities Council and Nuclear Physics

1. The Science and Technology Facilities Council and Nuclear Physics John Womersley Director, Science Programmes October 2008

2. Facilities Competencies S&I Campuses Health, Security, the Economy, Education 1m 10-6m Human Challenges STFC in partnership STFC leads 10-18m 103m Universal Challenges Global Challenges Particle physics Astronomy Searching for life Climate Energy Environment 107m 1026m

3. Nuclear Physics • The UK has an active research community despite hosting no accelerator facility • Top 16 research themes from 2007 grants round: JYFL Theory Isolde JLAB

4. Future direction • A new generation of accelerators able to make beams of unstable nuclei are now becoming available • Opens an important new window to explore why atomic nuclei exist, how the forces that hold them together behave, and how the chemical elements on which life depends were made in stars. • We will focus our investment in nuclear physics on the highest priority programmes at international accelerator facilities - notably we will participate in the new Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) at GSI in Germany • Shifts emphasis from exploitation to construction

5. AGATA • £4.1M approved over 4 years • contribution to the construction of the first 1pi of the 4 pi detector • Formal grant announcements soon • Liverpool, Manchester, Daresbury, UWS, Surrey, York • 11 academics, 3 PDRAs (new positions), ~4 FTE technical effort, 3 students.

6. NuSTAR • £9.5M approved over 6 years • Expecting to fund R3B and HISPEC (some flexibility to swap WPs with other countries to allow UK to maintain presence in DESPEC or LaSPEC) • Negotiations ongoing. • Will involve at least 6 institutions.

7. PANDA • £2.7M approved over 6 years • Magnet construction; Disc DIRC decision pending. • Involves Glasgow + potentially Edinburgh

8. FAIR • Launch event November 2007 • Contributing through NuSTAR, PANDA (and work on AIDA which was funded through an EPSRC grant). • FAIR GmbH to be set up by early 2009?

9. LHC • Our highest priority in particlephysics is the Large Hadron Collider at CERN - its results will be transformative. • The UK plays a strong and central role: two of the LHC experiments are UK-led. • The UK research community has been a major player in constructing the LHC and the advanced computing infrastructure to handle the data; we will support its exploitation of the exciting results

10. LHC start-up The first beam circulated in the LHC on September 10th, to enormous media interest However, magnet problems mean the programme won’t get underway properly until 2009

11. ALICE • Relativisitic heavy ion collisions at LHC

12. Boulby Underground Laboratory • NP groups involved in dark matter searches • Interest in using Boulby for a nuclear astrophysics experiment

13. Neutrinos • The recent discovery that neutrinos have mass and mix with each other may ultimately account for the very existence of our universe. • We are taking this area of science forward with a programme of • accelerator neutrino experiments including a significant role in the T2K experiment in Japan, which is due to come on-line in 2009; • non-accelerator experiments including R&D towards the SuperNEMO experiment, which will test whether neutrinos and anti-neutrinos are actually the same thing.

14. Accelerator Research • Accelerator technology is a key enabler across a large fraction of our research • Particle and nuclear physics • Synchrotrons and free electron light sources • Neutron sources • In this area we support • Design studies for New Light Source project and for a future Neutrino Factory • Operation of test facilities - ERLP/ALICE, EMMA, MICE • Work on high power proton accelerators • Work on novel techniques (FFAG…) and underlying technologies (SCRF…) • The Cockcroft and Adams Institutes, ASTeC, and university groups

15. Understanding our place in the universe John Womersley

16. Wakeham Review of Physics • Concerns about training and skills in nuclear disciplines • The Panel recommends that RCUK develop a review of the priorities in nuclear physics research to ensure they best match the needs of the UK. RCUK accepts this recommendation, and over the next year STFC and EPSRC will jointly review the research portfolio in nuclear physics, engineering and related areas to assess how they can best support the skills needs of the UK.

17. Interdisciplinary research facilities John Womersley

18. Opening the door to Science and Innovation

19. Daresbury Harwell Science and Innovation Campuses • Develop the Science and Innovation Campuses at Harwell and Daresbury as focal points for collaboration and knowledge exchange with industry and academic researchers, • Should also be gateways to our in-house expertise and that of the communities we support • We will increasingly try to focus our technology competencies on an outward facing collaborative role

20. Gateway Centres Funding for three new centres has been earmarked from the large facilities capital fund • Detector Systems Centre - advanced detector technology • Hartree Centre – a step-change in modelling and simulation • Imaging Solutions Centre – transforming “facilities access” into “solutions access” To follow: • Space Centre – a new space centre for the UK • Joint Institute for Materials Design – integrating materials innovation with advanced characterization

21. International Science Advisory Committee ISAC Council Executive Science Board Science Committees PPAN PALS AGP PPRP FDRP ASTAB GrantsPanels PPGP Projects Review Panels Accelerator Science and Technology Advisory Board NPGP Advisory Panels Advisory Panels Advisory Panels Advisory Panels

22. STFC facilities in the roadmap: The Daresbury and Harwell Science and innovation campuses Diamond Beamlines Phase III ISIS - TS2 instrumentation (Phase III) ESRF upgrade XFEL Diode Pumped Optical Laser for Experiments (DIPOLE) Extreme Light Infrastructure (ELI) European Extremely Large Telescope FAIR SKA New Light Source project European 3rd Generation Gravitational Wave Observatory Neutrino Factory Future Particle Physics Colliders Underground Science Initiatives HiPER Next generation neutron sources

23. Questions, comments? Your input is welcome: john.womersley@stfc.ac.uk 01793 442622