When the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) starts colliding protons in Europe next year, it will mark the beginning of a new era in the physics of particles and forces.  The LHC will take us to the Terascale: an energy frontier named for its teravolts of collision energy.  Research at the LHC will shed light on profound questions: the source of mass, the unification of forces, the nature of dark matter, and extra dimensions of space.

Moderator:   Jerome Friedman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Talks

David Gross, University of California, Santa Barbara

Deep Questions about Matter, Energy, Space, and Time

The speaker will discuss profound questions about elementary particles and forces and the universe; questions that make today a very exciting time in physics.

David Gross is Frederick W. Gluck Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and director of the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics, also at the University. He joined the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara in January 1997. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1966 and then was a Junior Fellow at Harvard. In 1969 he went to Princeton where he was appointed Professor of Physics in 1972, and later Eugene Higgins Professor of Physics, and Thomas Jones Professor of Mathematical Physics.

Professor Gross was an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow (1970-74), was elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1985, Member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1986, and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1987. He is the recipient of the J. J. Sakurai Prize of the American Physical Society in 1986, a Macarthur Foundation Fellowship Prize in 1987, the Dirac Medal in 1988, the Oscar Klein Medal in 2000, and the Harvey Prize of the Technion in 2000. He has received two honorary degrees. In 2004, he was selected to receive France’s highest scientific honor, the Grande Medaille d’Or, for his contributions to the understanding of fundamental physical reality. He received the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics for solving in 1973 the last great remaining problem of what has since come to be called "the Standard Model" of the quantum mechanical picture of reality. He and his co-recipients discovered how the nucleus of atoms works.

Young-Kee Kim, Fermilab, University of Chicago

Today’s Particle Physics Frontier

Right now is a time of radical change in particle physics. Recent experimental evidence demands a revolutionary new vision of the universe. Discoveries are at hand that will stretch the imagination with new forms of matter, new forces of nature, new dimensions of space and time. Breakthroughs will likely come from accelerators at the Terascale, with their teravolts of particle accelerator energy. The Tevatron at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the highest energy colliding beam accelerator available today, provides the earliest look at Terascale physics.

Professor Kim is Deputy Director of Fermilab and Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago.  Her association with Fermilab began in 1990 when she worked on the CDF calorimeter as a Berkeley Lab postdoctoral researcher.  Her first degrees are from Korea University and her Ph.D. is from the University of Rochester.  She took on responsibilities for commissioning the CDF detector for Run II and in 2004, was elected CDF co-spokesperson.  In 2006, Kim was appointed Deputy Director of Fermilab.

Philip Bryant, CERN

The Large Hadron Collider: A Bridge to the Terascale

The Large Hadron Collider Project (LHC) was approved by the CERN Council in December 1994.  At that time, the plan was to build a machine in two stages starting with a center-of-mass energy of 10 TeV to be upgraded later to 14 TeV.  However, from 1995 to 1996 intense negotiations secured substantial contributions to the project from non-member states and in December 1996 the CERN Council approved construction of the 14 TeV machine in a single stage.  This decision carried the energy frontier from 700 keV in 1932 when Cockcroft and Walton first split the lithium atom to the multi-teravolt region, which is now only months away from the grasp of LHC.  The exponential rise in center-of-mass energy over seven and a half decades was always driven by physics research and it is interesting to follow its evolution from acceleration by static fields to time-varying fields, from beams on fixed targets to the application of colliding beams and the all-important impact of technological advances such as superconducting magnets.  Today the LHC is an impressive hive of activity along its 27 km long tunnel and in its huge experimental caverns close to 100 m below ground level and astraddle the Swiss-French border.  A short period of proof-of-principle running is foreseen at the end of 2007 and physics will start in the summer of 2008.  The LHC follows the well established philosophy of using a versatile proton machine to probe a new energy range and then following with a lepton machine that provides ‘cleaner’ physics’ for detailed measurements.  Just as the CERN SppbarS and the Fermilab Tevatron were followed by the CERN LEP, so the high-energy physics community hope to follow LHC with an electron-positron linear collider.  Thus the near future is well charted, but LEP was surely the largest circular lepton machine that will ever be built and likewise LHC will be the largest hadron machine.  The age of linear colliders can start with present technologies, but the challenge for tomorrow’s scientists is to free themselves from acceleration with radio-frequency cavities and to develop a technique for reaching TeV energies in just a few metres.

Philip Bryant was born in England and studied at University College London, where he received a B.Sc. (Hons) in physics in 1963, an M.Sc. in Microwave Engineering in 1965 and a Ph.D. in 1970. In 1968, Bryant joined CERN in the ISR Magnet Group. From 1983, he ran the CERN Accelerator School and wrote a text book “The Principles of Circular Accelerators and Storage Rings” with his former boss Professor K. Johnsen. In 1992, he left the Accelerator School to head a design group for the AUSTRON spallation source and later the PIMMS study for a carbon-ion cancer therapy synchrotron. In 2000, he moved to LHC, taking over the Specification Committee and Non-Member State affairs. Bryant now acts as one of the two deputies to the LHC Project Leader L. Evans.

Albert De Roeck, CERN

Discovering the Terascale with the Large Hadron Collider

This is a review of the potential discoveries at the Large Hadron Collider LHC, the highest energy hadron collider ever. The vast amount of data we have available today from previous and current particle physics experiments, in addition to the cosmological observations point towards a rich discovery program for the LHC. In addition to the long-sought Higgs boson, the LHC will probe supersymmetry scenarios and have a unique chance to discover these new particles if they exist. Modern string theory-inspired scenarios for new physics provide a number of stunning predictions which the LHC experiments can explore, such as particles "disappearing" into extra space dimensions.

Albert De Roeck is a senior research scientist and staff member of CERN, located near Geneva, Switzerland. CERN is the home of the new particle accelerator under construction, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which will turn on in 2007. De Roeck is also a professor at the University of Antwerp (Belgium) and a visiting professor at the Institute of Particle Physics and Phenomenology in Durham (UK). He obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Antwerp on an experiment at CERN, studying multiparticle dynamics in hadron-hadron interactions, by colliding meson beams on protons and nuclear targets.

After his Ph.D., De Roeck spent 10 years at the German particle physics laboratory, DESY, where he and his team made very precise measurements of the quark and gluon structure of the proton, and performed precise tests of the strong force. At the end of the 1990's his interest turned to the possibility of discovering new physics at future particle colliders, in particular Supersymmetry and Extra Dimensions, and he returned to CERN. He first joined an experiment at the large electron-positron collider LEP, studying the strong force and searching for signals of new physics. During the last six years, he played a significant role in the preparation of one of the experiments at the LHC. De Roeck is now one of the leaders in the physics program and preparation for physics analysis at the LHC. He regularly gives seminars and lectures all over the world on the physics potential of the LHC project. Co-author of more than 400 scientific papers, as an experimentalist he also has also been collaborating closely with leading theorists of the field.

 Jonathan Bagger, Johns Hopkins University

The International Linear Collider: a Telescope for the Terascale

The LHC will transform our knowledge of the Terascale, opening a vast new region for discovery. But a true grasp of Terascale physics will require a tool of a different kind: an electron-positron accelerator called the International Linear Collider (ILC). The ILC is being proposed as an international research facility to be built in America, Asia or Europe. Experiments at the ILC will zoom in on Terascale phenomena to reveal their innermost secrets, whether they come in the form of Higgs particles, supersymmetric partners, or new dimensions of space. The ILC will shed light on astronomical dark matter by measuring the properties of candidate particles to determine whether they do, in fact, make up the dark matter that fills the universe. And finally, with its unprecedented precision, the ILC will measure quantum effects that let it act as a telescope to see physics at much higher energies.

Jonathan Bagger is Krieger-Eisenhower Professor and Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University.  He was educated at Dartmouth College, Cambridge University, and Princeton University, from which he received a Ph.D. in 1983.  He was then a postdoctoral researcher at the Stanford 
Linear Accelerator Center, and from 1986-1989 an Associate Professor at Harvard University.

Bagger has twice been a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.  He held a Sloan Foundation Fellowship and an NSF Presidential Young Investigator award.  He is a member of the National Research Council's Board on Physics and Astronomy, Vice-Chair of the DOE/NSF High Energy Physics Advisory Panel, and a Trustee of the Aspen Center for Physics.  He has served on the Fermilab Board of Overseers, the SLAC Scientific Policy Committee, the Executive Board of the American Physical Society, and as Chair of the APS Division of Particles and Fields.  He is on the Editorial Board of Physics Reports, the Physical Review and the Journal of High Energy Physics.  He is also a Fellow of the APS.

Bagger's research interests center on high-energy physics at the interface between theory and experiment. Together with Julius Wess, he is the author of the monograph Supersymmetry and Supergravity.

Burton Richter, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

Charting the Course for Elementary Particle Physics

“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times” is the way Dickens begins the Tale of Two Cities. The line is appropriate to our time in particle physics. It is the best of times because we are in the midst of a revolution in understanding, the third to occur in my career. It is the worst of times because accelerator facilities are shutting down before new ones are opening, restricting the opportunity for experiments, and because of great uncertainty about future funding. My task today is to give you a view of the most important opportunities for our field under a scenario that is constrained by a tight budget. It is a time where we cannot afford the merely good, but must focus on the really important.

Burton Richter is Professor and Director Emeritus at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), Stanford University and was Director of SLAC from 1984-1999.  He came to Stanford University in 1956 after receiving a Ph.D. in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Professor Richter’s numerous honors and awards include the 1976 E. O. Lawrence Medal from the U. S. Department of Energy and the 1976 Nobel Prize in Physics.  He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (President, 1994) and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Richter has served in many science capacities, for example, as a member of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (President, 1999-2002), the International Council for Science, the National Academy of Sciences, (Chair, Board on Physics and Astronomy, 2003-2006), the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SEAB), the boards of Varian Medical Systems, Litel Instruments, and AREVA Enterprises, the JASON group of the Mitre Corporation, and the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology,  Review Panel for National Climate Change Assessment.