Ken Bloom | USLHC | USA
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P5 and the fifth dimension that Einstein missed
Among the rain– William Carlos Williams, “The Great Figure”, 1921
and lights
I saw the figure 5
in gold
on a red
firetruck
moving
tense
unheeded
to gong clangs
siren howls
and wheels rumbling
through the dark city.
Ever since the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5) report was released on Thursday, May 22, I have been thinking very hard about the number five. Five is in the name of the panel, it is embedded in the science that the report describes, and in my opinion, the panel has figured out how to manipulate a fifth dimension. Please give me a chance to explain.
Having had a chance to read the report, let me say that I personally am very impressed by it and very supportive of the conclusions drawn and the recommendations made. The charge to P5 was to develop “an updated strategic plan for the U.S. that can be executed over a ten-year timescale, in the context of a twenty-year global vision for the field.” Perhaps the key phrase here is “can be executed”: this must be a plan that is workable under funding scenarios that are more limited than we might wish. It requires making some hard decisions about priorities, and these priorities must be set by the scientific questions that we are trying to address through the techniques of particle physics.
Using input from the Snowmass workshop studies that engaged a broad swath of the particle-physics community, P5 has done a nice job of distilling the intellectual breadth of our field into a small number of “science drivers”. How many? Well, five of course:
• Use the Higgs boson as a new tool for discovery
• Pursue the physics associated with neutrino mass
• Identify the new physics of dark matter
• Understand cosmic acceleration: dark energy and inflation
• Explore the unknown: new particles, interactions, and physical principles
I would claim that four of the drivers represent imperatives that are driven by recent and mostly unexpected discoveries — exactly how science should work. (The fifth and last listed is really the eternal question of particle physics.) While the discovery of the Higgs boson two years ago was dramatic and received a tremendous amount of publicity, it was not totally unexpected. The Higgs is part of the standard model, and all indirect evidence was pointing to its existence; now we can use it to look for things that actually are unexpected. The observation of the Higgs was not the end of an era, but the start of a new one. Meanwhile, neutrino masses, dark matter and dark energy are all outside our current theories, and they demand explanation that can only come through further experimentation. We now have the technical abilities to do these experiments. These science drivers are asking exciting, fundamental questions about how the universe came to be, what it is made of and how it all interacts, and they are questions that, finally, can be addressed in our time.
But, how to explore these questions in a realistic funding environment? Is it even possible? The answer from P5 is yes, if we are clever about how we do things. I will focus here on the largest projects that the P5 report addresses, the ones that cost at least $200M to construct; the report also discusses many medium-size and small efforts, and recommends hard choices on which we should continue to pursue and which, despite having merit, simply cannot fit into realistic funding scenarios. The three biggest projects are the LHC and its high-luminosity upgrade that should be completed about about ten years from now; a long-baseline neutrino experiment that would create neutrinos at Fermilab and observe them in South Dakota, and a high-energy electron-positron collider, the International Linear Collider (ILC) that could do precision studies of the Higgs boson but is at least ten years away from realization. They are all interesting projects that each address at least two of the science drivers, but is it possible for the U.S. to take a meaningful role in all three? The answer is yes…if you understand how to use the fifth dimension.
The high-luminosity LHC emerged as “the first high-priority large-category project” in the program recommended by P5, and it is to be executed regardless of budget scenario. (See below about the use of the word “first” here.) As an LHC experimenter who write for the U.S. LHC blog, I am of course a bit biased, but I think this is a good choice. The LHC is an accelerator that we have in hand; there is nothing else that could be built in the next ten years that can do anything like it, and we must fully exploit its potential. It can address three of the science drivers — the Higgs, dark matter, and the unknown. U.S. physicists form the largest national contingent in each of the two big multi-purpose experiments, ATLAS and CMS, and the projects depend on U.S. participation and expertise for their success. While we can never make any guarantees of discovery, I personally think that the LHC gives us as good a chance as anything, and that it will be an exciting environment to work in over the coming years.
P5 handled the long-baseline neutrino experiment by presenting some interesting challenges to the U.S. and global particle physics communities. While there is already a plan to build this project, in the form of a proposed experiment called LBNE, it was considered to be inadequate for the importance of the science. The currently proposed LBNE detector in South Dakota would be too small to collect enough data on a timescale that would give interesting and conclusive results. Even the proponents of LBNE recognized these limitations. So, P5 recommends that the entire project “should be reformulated under the auspices of a new international collaboration, as as an internationally coordinated and internationally funded program, with Fermilab as the host,” that will truly meet the scientific demands. It wouldn’t just be a single experiment, but a facility — the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF).
This is a remarkable strategic step. First, it makes the statement that if we are going to do the science, we must do it well. LBNF would be bigger then LBNE, and also much better in terms of its capabilities. It also fully integrates the U.S. program into the international community of particle physics — it would commit the U.S. to hosting a major facility that would draw world-wide collaboration and participation. The U.S. will hold up its end of the efforts to build particle-physics facilities that scientists from all over the world can take part in, just as CERN has successfully done with the LHC. To organize this new facility will take some time, such that peak costs of building LBNE will be pushed to a time later than the peak costs of upgrading the LHC.
One of the important ideas of special relativity is that the three dimensions of space and one dimension of time are placed on an equal footing. Two events in space-time that have given spatial and time separations in one frame of reference will have different spatial and time separations in a different frame. With LBNF, P5 has postulated a fifth dimension that must be considered: cost. If we were to try to upgrade the LHC and build LBNF at the same time, the cost would be more than we could afford, even with international participation. But by spacing out these two events in time, doing the HL-LHC first and LBNF second, the cost per year of these projects has become smaller; time and cost have been put on a more equal footing. Why didn’t Einstein think of that?
Thus, it is straightforward to set the international LBNF as “the highest-priority large project in its timeframe.” The title of the P5 report is “Building for Discovery”; LBNF will be the major project that the U.S. will build for discoveries in the areas of neutrino masses and exploration of the unknown.
As for the ILC, which Japan has expressed an interest in building, the scientific case for it is strong enough that “the U.S. should engage in modest and appropriate levels of ILC accelerator and detector design” no matter what the funding scenario. How much involvement there will be will depend on the funds available, and on whether the project actually goes forward. We will understand this better within the next few years. If the ILC is built, it will be a complement to the LHC and let us explore the properties of the Higgs and other particles in precise detail. With that, P5 has found a way for the U.S. to participate in all three major projects on the horizon, if we are careful about the timing of the projects and accept reasonable bounds on what we do with each.
These are the headlines from the report, but there is much more to it. The panel emphasizes the importance of maintaining a balance between the funds spent to build new facilities, to operate those facilities, and to do the actual research that leads to scientific discovery at the facilities. In recent years, there have been few building projects in the pipeline, and the fraction of the U.S. particle-physics budget devoted to new projects has languished at around 15%. P5 proposes that this be raised to the 20-25% level and maintained there, so that there will always be a push to create facilities that can address the scientific drivers — building for discovery. The research program is what funds graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, the future leaders of the field, and is where many exciting new physics ideas come from. Research has also been under financial pressure lately, and P5 proposes that it should not receive less than 40% of the budget. In addition, long-standing calls to invest in research and development that could lead to cheaper particle accelerators, more sensitive instrumentation, and revolutionary computational techniques are repeated.
This strategic vision is laid out in the context of three different funding scenarios. The most constrained scenario imagines flat budgets through 2018, and then annual increases of 2%, which is likely below the rate of inflation and thus would represent effectively shrinking budgets. The program described could be carried out, but it would be very challenging. LBNF could still be built, but it would be delayed. Various other projects would be cancelled, reduced or delayed. The research program would lose some of its capabilities. It would make it difficult for the U.S. to be a full international partner in particle physics, one that would be capable of hosting a large project and thus being a global leader in the field. Can we do better than that? Can we instead have a budget that grows at 3% per year, closer to the rate of inflation? The answer is ultimately up to our elected leaders. But I hope that we will be able to convince them, and you, that the scientific opportunities are exciting, and that the broad-based particle-physics community’s response to them is visionary while also being realistic.
—
Finally, I would like to offer some words on the use of logos. Since the last P5 report, in 2008, the U.S. particle physics program has relied on a logo that represented three “frontiers” of scientific exploration:
I hope that this logo does an even better job of emphasizing the interconnectedness not just of experimental approaches to particle physics, but also of the five (!) scientific questions that will drive research in our field over the next ten to twenty years.
Of course, I’m also sufficiently old that this logo reminded me of something else entirely:
Maybe we can celebrate the P5 report as the start of an American revolution in particle physics? But I must admit that with P5, 5 science drivers and 5 dimensions, I still see the figure 5 in gold:
“I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold”, Charles Demuth, 1928
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