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

1. Executive Summary
1.1.3 Objectives
The objectives of the current NuPECC Long Range Plan
are:
• To review the status of the field in Europe and put it
in a worldwide context.
• To formulate recommendations for developing nuclear
science and its applications in the next decade and
beyond.
• To agree upon an action plan and propose a roadmap
for the upgrade of existing facilities and the construction
of new large-scale facilities.
• To synchronise the new action plan at European level
with e.g. the EU FP7 ERA-net “NuPNET” of funding
agencies, taking into account developments at the
global level in America and Asia.
1.1.4 Forward Look
The present Forward Look or Long Range Plan Perspectives
of Nuclear Physics in Europe, as initiated
and carried through by the Nuclear Physics European
Collaboration Committee, NuPECC, addresses the perspectives
and plans for nuclear physics in the period
from 2010 to approx. 2025, and attempts to identify the
most important areas for future developments.
The document includes a set of recommendations and
a road map for major activities, new facilities and tools
for both experiment and theory that are intended to help
funding agencies, decision makers, politicians and also
the European nuclear physics community in planning
and shaping the future ahead in the most enlightened,
effective and productive way.
The NuPECC recommendations and proposed road
map are based on the work of six expert working groups
(WGs), whose membership was drawn from the wider
nuclear physics community in Europe. The NuPECC
Long Range Plan 2010 (LRP2010) was discussed at several
mini-workshops of the respective working groups.
Two town meetings (Scoping Workshop in 2009 and
Consensus Conference in 2010 under the Spanish EU
presidency) were open to all members of the nuclear
physics community. Hence, the LRP2010 represents a
clear majority view of the major issues in the field and
of the major steps to be taken in the future.
The working groups were asked to examine the following
major Nuclear Physics areas: Hadron Physics,
Phases of Strongly Interacting Matter, Nuclear
Structure and Dynamics, Nuclear Astrophysics,
Fundamental Interactions, and Nuclear Physics Tools
and Applications.
In the following sub-sections of the Executive
Summary, we present the “big picture”, a summary of
the status of nuclear research infrastructures in Europe,
plans to upgrade them or build new ones in the next
one or two decades, collaborations at European and
global level, and brief summaries of each of the major
scientific themes.
1.2 The Big Picture
Nuclear physics is the science of the atomic nucleus
and of nuclear matter. The atomic nucleus is the dense
core of the atom and is the entity that carries essentially
all the mass of the familiar objects that we encounter in
Nature, including the stars, the Earth and indeed human
beings themselves.
Atomic nuclei consist of two types of particles, the
electrically charged proton and the neutron, which has
no charge. Varying numbers of protons and neutrons
aggregated together form the elements of the periodic
table, and by binding negatively charged, much lighter
electrons around them form atoms. The atoms can, in
turn, combine and form molecules making complex
chemical and biological structures. The largest and
heaviest nuclei contain up to nearly 300 protons and
neutrons (collectively called nucleons).
The constituents of nuclei are, however, not elementary.
Following intensive research efforts throughout
the latter third of the 20 th century, it is now known that
protons and neutrons have a substructure: they are composed
of point-like particles called quarks. The quarks
interact and are ‘glued’ together through the strong force,
one of the four known forces in Nature.
The strong force is mediated by gluons, which have
the unusual property of being able to interact with themselves,
in contrast to the carriers of the other known
forces. This is due to a property called colour, which
has surprising and fundamental consequences: It is not
possible to free quarks from their ‘confinement’ inside
the nucleons. The strong force also binds the nucleons
of the atomic nucleus together, although the binding
between the nucleons is not mediated by the gluons
directly, but indirectly by the exchange of more complex
particles (mesons).
We have good grounds to believe, today, that quarks
and gluons aggregated to form nucleons in the first
moments after the Big Bang that created the Universe,
taking only about one millionth of a second. About 3
minutes later, when the Universe had cooled sufficiently,
protons and neutrons were able to bind and form the
first light nuclei, which subsequently captured electrons
and formed atoms.
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