Perspectives of Nuclear Physics in Europe - European Science ...

1. Executive Summary
structure and astrophysics, fundamental interactions
or applications.
In the figure on page 9, an overview of the major nuclear
physics laboratories in Europe is given, where we have
chosen to highlight (in yellow) those large-scale facilities
that applied for transnational access funds in FP 6 or 7
in “HadronPhysics”, “EURONS”, “HadronPhysics2” and
“ENSAR”. The smaller scale facilities (in red) are members
of Networks or Joint Research Activities in “ENSAR”, or
provide transnational access in “SPIRIT”.
The large-scale facilities that use lepton (electron/
positron or muon) or real photon probes to investigate
primarily the structure and spectroscopy of hadrons
such as protons or neutron are (in strictly north to south
order): MAX-lab in Lund, ELSA in Bonn, MAMI in Mainz,
COMPASS at CERN and DAΦNE at INFN Frascati. All
have limited-size upgrade programmes to either increase
the beam energy (at MAMI) or beam intensity (at DAΦNE)
or upgrade their large experimental setups (at ELSA and
COMPASS).
Hadron beam facilities fall into two categories, those
that use protons, anti-protons, pions or kaons, and
those that use heavy ions. The first group of laboratories
(COSY at FZ Jülich, GSI, the Antiproton Decelerator,
AD, at CERN, and DAΦNE at INFN Frascati) concentrate
on the study of hadron structure and spectroscopy, the
interaction between individual hadrons or their modification
in the dense nuclear medium, and the investigation
of fundamental interactions and symmetries. At DAΦNE,
kaonic atoms are being investigated in addition. COSY
has recently been upgraded by transferring the WASA
detector from Uppsala to Jülich, and DAΦNE has
increased its luminosity by an order of magnitude.
The by far largest number of Nuclear Physics laboratories
operate heavy ion accelerators, whose beam
energies range from MeV to TeV. Consequently, they are
used to tackle very different problems in the field.
At lower incident energies, these are chiefly nuclear
astrophysics problems, fundamental interactions or applications
of nuclear methods in, e.g., materials science,
accelerator mass spectrometry, biomedical sciences,
nuclear medicine, environmental sciences and cultural
heritage studies. As previously mentioned, these
studies are performed mainly at smaller-scale facilities
spread across nearly all NuPECC countries. One of these
experiments, LUNA, takes place at the INFN Gran Sasso
underground laboratory.
At medium energies, nuclear structure studies, often
under extreme conditions, and the investigation of the
dynamics of nuclear reactions are of primary interest. The
experiments are performed either by using high-intensity
stable beams or, since recently, the first radioactive
beams. Prime examples of such laboratories are (in north
to south order): JYFL in Jyväskylä, KVI in Groningen (concentrates
on fundamental interactions), GSI in Darmstadt,
GANIL at Caen, ALTO at IPN Orsay, ISOLDE at CERN,
and the INFN laboratories in Legnaro and Catania.
At the TeV centre-of-mass energies of the ALICE
experiment at LHC/CERN, a change of paradigm is anticipated.
Nucleons and mesons are no longer expected to
be the relevant degrees of freedom in “nuclear matter” at
such high energies. Rather it is expected that a new state
of matter will form: a plasma, where chiral symmetry, a
fundamental symmetry of Quantum Chromodynamics, is
restored and quarks and gluons are no longer confined in
hadrons. Data taking has just started at ALICE, and the
collaboration is actively planning for upgrades of their
large-scale experiment in the future.
Two theoretical Research Infrastructures have been
included in the network of Nuclear Physics facilities.
Those are ECT* at Trento and the high-performance computer
centre, JSC, at FZ Jülich. Whilst ECT* has a broad
remit to support education and foster new theoretical
approaches in the field, JSC has been instrumental in
performing large-scale lattice QCD calculations in hadron
physics and effective field theory calculations in nuclear
structure physics.
1.3.2 Future Research Infrastructures
There are a number of major routes forward for Nuclear
Physics. One is to study the detailed three-dimensional
structure of nucleons or, more generally, hadrons and
their spectroscopy; another one is to explore nuclei under
extreme conditions, e.g. at the boundaries of nuclear
existence, and the (cataclysmic) astrophysical processes
that lead to them; a third one is to investigate strongly
interacting matter at very high energies. All these routes
require powerful new accelerator facilities.
Two such facilities have recently been founded, the
Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research, FAIR, at the
GSI site in Darmstadt and SPIRAL2 at the GANIL site in
Caen. Both projects had previously been included in the
ESFRI list of European large-scale research infrastructures
and supported by EU FP 6 and 7 Design Studies
and Preparatory Phase funding. Their first construction
phases are planned to be completed by 2016 and 2014,
respectively.
FAIR features four strands of research, hadron physics
experiments with anti-proton beams (PANDA experiment),
nuclear structure studies at the extremes with
intense radioactive beams produced in-flight at a fragment
separator (NuSTAR experiments), compressed
baryonic matter investigations (CBM collaboration), and
experiments in plasma physics, atomic physics (also
8 | Perspectives of Nuclear Physics in Europe – NuPECC Long Range Plan 2010