Higgs factory a ‘must for big physics’

Photographers on a previous Physics Photowalk at Fermilab. Photo: Reidar Hahn

Photographers on a previous Physics Photowalk at Fermilab. Photo: Reidar Hahn

Local event is part of the Global Physics Photowalk featuring 18 labs around the world.

Major science laboratories from around the world, including the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, today announced a Global Physics Photowalk competition, open to amateur and professional photographers. Physics facilities in Australia, Europe and North America will open their doors for a rare opportunity to see behind the scenes of some of the world’s most exciting and groundbreaking science.

The Global Physics Photowalk will involve local and national competitions, with the winning national photos submitted to a global judging panel. Fermilab’s Photowalk will be held on Saturday, July 28, from 8 a.m. to noon. Registration will open on June 4, and information is available on Fermilab’s website. The top photos from Fermilab’s event, as chosen by a jury, will be submitted to the global competition.

Organized by the Interactions collaboration and supported by the UK-based Royal Photographic Society, the global short list will be announced in August, followed by a public vote.

Confirmed locations include CERN – the home of the Large Hadron Collider – as well as underground laboratories in Australia, the UK and the United States, and labs and facilities in Canada, Italy, the UK, the United States — for the first time — China.

Please stay tuned to the Fermilab website for updates about the July 28 event and for registration information. Follow #PhysPics18 on Twitter and Facebook for more info as well.

The international competition will include the following laboratories:

See the winning photos from the previous Fermilab Photowalk. See a selection of winning images from the previous Global Physics Photowalk. 

Fermilab is America’s premier national laboratory for particle physics and accelerator research. A U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science laboratory, Fermilab is located near Chicago, Illinois, and operated under contract by the Fermi Research Alliance LLC, a joint partnership between the University of Chicago and the Universities Research Association Inc. Visit Fermilab’s website at www.fnal.gov and follow us on Twitter at @Fermilab.

DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.

The Interactions collaboration (Interactions.org) seeks to support the international science of particle physics and to set visible footprints for peaceful collaboration across all borders. Members of the Interactions collaboration represent the world’s particle physics laboratories and institutions in Europe, North America, Asia and Australia, with funding provided by science funding agencies from many nations.

The Royal Photographic Society is a registered charity, supported by its 11,600 members. Founded in 1853 to promote the art and science of photography, its objectives today are to educate members of the public, promote the highest standards and to encourage the public appreciation of photography. It does this through public events and activities, exhibitions and its educational activities. See www.rps.org.

 

Stefan Soldner-Rembold

The next two years are pivotal for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, the international particle physics experiment hosted by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

In a vote earlier this month, the DUNE collaboration elected Stefan Soldner-Rembold, professor of particle physics at the University of Manchester, as its new co-spokesperson to help guide the experiment through these next two years. Soldner-Rembold has experience leading a large collaboration – he was co-spokesperson of the 500-member DZero experiment at Fermilab from 2009 to 2011 – and has been working in neutrino physics for more than a decade.

Soldner-Rembold has served in several leadership positions within the DUNE collaboration, including chair of the Speakers Committee, and was elected as a member of the DUNE Executive Committee in 2016.

Two prototype detectors for DUNE are scheduled to be completed at CERN in Switzerland later this year, and technical design on the experiment’s full-size detector will be worked out over the next 18 months. The DUNE collaboration continues to grow – it currently includes more than 1,000 members from 31 countries – and continues to attract young minds from around the world, eager to contribute to this global-scale neutrino experiment.

“This is a formative period for DUNE,” Soldner-Rembold said. “What we decide now will shape the detectors and the way the collaboration works for the next 10 to 20 years. I’m thrilled to be stepping in as co-spokesperson during such an exciting time.”

It’s also a time in which the UK’s contributions to DUNE are ramping up. The UK has committed $88 million to the construction of the experiment (including the facility that will house it and the accelerator upgrades that will power it), and Soldner-Rembold is currently leading the UK-U.S. consortium designing and constructing vital components of the DUNE detector. Prototypes of these components are currently being installed in the ProtoDUNE detectors under construction at CERN, another major partner in DUNE.

“To build the world’s best neutrino detector, we need to attract further international partners,” Soldner-Rembold said. “The election of an international co-spokesperson sends a signal to other countries that this is an interesting and exciting project that they should join and commit to.”

Over the next few years, Soldner-Rembold said, it will be important to continue to encourage young scientists to participate in DUNE.

“In order to create a vibrant and strong collaboration, we need to encourage the next generation of young physicists to be engaged with the project,” he said.

Soldner-Rembold will take over the position from Mark Thomson of the University of Cambridge and will join Edward Blucher of the University of Chicago as co-spokesperson.

“I look forward to working closely with Stefan,” Blucher said. “His wealth of experience will prove invaluable as the DUNE collaboration navigates the exciting years ahead.”