CERN Accelerating science

A word from the Deputy Head of the EP department - March 2019

Dear Colleagues, dear Members of the EP Department and CERN Users,

Welcome to the first EP newsletter of 2019. Following the completion of Run 2 at the end of last year we are now well established in the second long shutdown of the LHC, which will last for two years before beams return in 2021. This does not mean that work has eased off, as is evidenced by the wealth of interesting results that are currently being revealed at the Winter conferences. The shutdown also provides the opportunity to upgrade the experiments, each of them being a hive of activity. ALICE and LHCb are undergoing major upgrades, both concerning their detectors and the way they are readout. For LHCb in particular this is a voyage into the future, where the entire experiment will be read out at the bunch-crossing rate of 40 MHz when data taking resumes, and the trigger performed fully in software.  We take this occasion to review the trigger developments of all four major LHC experiments.

Another topical issue is the update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics, an event that takes place every six or seven years, for which the main themes will be worked out during this year. The deadline for community input at the end of last year saw 160 documents submitted, outlining different views of the future of our field.  In the absence of a clear statement from the Japanese government concerning the ILC, the focus of the discussions will be on which of the contenders to follow HL-LHC at the energy frontier should be supported, either CLIC or the FCC. In addition, the diversity of physics at CERN is recognized to be essential, and future proposals in this domain have been reviewed in the Physics Beyond Collider study, also as input to the strategy update.  A special feature is included in this edition, giving the latest news from these various activities.  Discussions at the Open Symposium in Granada in May will be crucial to drive the process forward.

You will find many more articles and interviews in this newsletter, reflecting the wide range of activity in the department, along with the introduction of new staff and fellows in EP.  I wish you pleasant reading,

Roger Forty  (Deputy Department Head)