Dragon size: China to build “Higgs factory” twice the size of Cern’s Large Hadron Collider

[TaiShang]

China to build “Higgs factory” twice the size of Cern’s Large Hadron Collider
China is planning to enter the experimental physics super leagues with a particle accelerator seven times more powerful than the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which discovered the Higgs boson.

The project was first mentioned in three years ago, but most physicists around the world assumed that the Chinese would begin with a modest project to hone their skills.

Instead, they are planning to build a 100km long loop, more than three times longer than the LHC.

The aim is to produce a “factory” for making Higgs bosons in hopes that if hundreds of bosons are produced, it will be possible to find deviations from the particle physics’ “standard model”, which would then give theoretical physicists data for their hypotheses.

Wang Yifang, the director of the Institute of High Energy Physics in Beijing, told China Daily: “The technical route we chose is different from the LHC. The LHC smashes together protons and generates Higgs particles together with many others. The proposed CEPC, however, collides electrons and positrons to create an extremely clean environment that only produces Higgs bosons.”

The design of the facility will not be completed until 2018 and work will begin in 2020, by which time China hopes to have recruited physicists from around the world to staff on the project.

The location of the scheme has not been decided, but Wang has suggested Qinhuangdao, a northern port city near the start of the Great Wall.

Yifang Wang, the director of the Institute of High Energy Physics in Beijing, who proposed the accelerator (IHEP)

The Higgs boson is the particle that carries the Higgs field, which is thought to exist throughout the universe, and which explains a number of mysteries about the standard model, such as why particles have mass and why the strong nuclear force that binds the nuclei of atoms has such a short range.

It is also one of the strangest particles so far discovered, having no spin, no electromagnetic charge and the ability to interact with itself.

“In this situation, you just have to put this brand new weird particle under as powerful a microscope as you can,” Nima Arkani-Hamed, a theoretical physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, told the IHEP.

Arkani-Hamed is the first director of Beijing’s new Center for Future High Energy Physics, tasked with investigating the physics capabilities of such a machine and getting physicists around the world on board with the project.

The Large Hadron Collider, where the Higgs was discovered, produces the particle in proton-proton collisions. Experiments at the LHC will continue to study the Higgs over the next decades. But scientists around the world—including the group in China—are also planning ahead for ways to get an even closer look at the bizarre particle.

@Martian2 , @JSCh

 

[C130]

so is China can going to finance,build, and run this all by themselves

wait never mind. seems it's different than the LHC maybe not as complex, and you want foreign scientists to work with it as well.

 

[TaiShang]

That's one dragon size scientific project by one of the world's leading scientific powers.

 

[Pangu]

Awesome! Just look at Cern's facilities! I do not envy the engineers trouble shooting the 100km loop monster when we get it up & running...

 

[Martian2]

China has operated the Beijing Electron Positron Collider (BEPC) for 28 years

China has operated its own linear accelerator for 28 years. The Beijing Electron Positron Collider was upgraded in 2008 and is commonly referred to as BEPC II.

China has twice upgraded the sophisticated detector, now called Beijing Electron Spectrometer III (BES III).

After 28 years of experience, China is well-qualified to build the world's largest super-collider.
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First e+e- Collison at BEPCII/BESIII----Institute of High Energy Physics

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Updated collider produces particle results in Beijing | Malamalama, The Magazine of the University of Hawai'i System

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GCR - Trends - China to build “Higgs factory” twice the size of Cern’s Large Hadron Collider

 

[cirr]

A few more large projects of a scientific nature are in the pipeline。

 

[TaiShang]

A few more large projects of a scientific nature are in the pipeline。

Do you know whether the new Tianhe will be completed this year or not?

 

[T-72M1]

nice

 

[cirr]

Do you know whether the new Tianhe will be completed this year or not?

Definitely and most probably in H1 2016.

The new Tianhe however will follow the new Shenwei which is already operational but not yet made public for some reason。

 

[JSCh]

Scientists on collision course with future
By Cheng Yingqi (China Daily) Updated: 2015-11-18 07:49

A view of the Compact Muon Solenoid, one of two particle detectors at the Large Hadron Collider. Hundreds of engineers and staff worked for two years to fit out the giant LHC to facilitate research into elusive sub-atomic particles under the guidance of the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Denis Balibouse / Reuters
​

Chinese physicists have proposed building the world's largest particle collider, making China a global research center. Cheng Yingqi reports.

Many commonplace technologies in our homes and workplaces are the results of less-than-commonplace research.

The World Wide Web, touch-screen technology, diagnostic X-ray equipment and the Linux operating system are examples of relatively recent discoveries that sprang from one of the least-understood branches of scientific research: Particle physics.

Now, with the Beijing Electron Positron Collider, China's 25-year-old particle collider, about five years away from the end of its working life, the nation's high-energy scientists are thinking big and proposing to make the country the center of global high-energy research within the next 10 years.

They have completed an initial conceptual design for a super-giant facility that will be the world's biggest and most powerful particle accelerator and collider.

"We recently completed the initial conceptual design and have organized international peer reviews. The final conceptual design will be completed by the end of 2016," said Wang Yifang, director of the Institute of High Energy Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in an exclusive interview with China Daily, published on Oct 29.

"The characteristic of high-energy physics is that wherever the most powerful facility is located, that's where the world's leading researchers will be," he said.

If accepted, the designs produced by Wang and his team will significantly upgrade the largest machine on Earth - the Large Hadron Collider of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, also known as CERN.

"When the LHC was started in the 1990s, China's high-energy physics community didn't have the manpower or material resources to offer CERN a lot of cooperation," Wang said.

In July 2012, CERN announced the most significant scientific breakthrough in decades; the discovery of the long-sought Higgs boson particle, also known as the "God Particle", which is crucial to explaining why matter has mass and is seen as a basic building block of the universe. However, China's contribution was once again limited.

An enduring dream

In the 1970s, when European scientists pitched the concept of the Large Electron-Positron Collider - CERN's 27-km-long accelerator chain that preceded the LHC - China wanted a machine of similar scale.

At first, Chinese scientists approached the government with a plan for a collider of 50 gigaelectronvolts - a minute electrical charge roughly equivalent to the amount of energy an ant expends to take one step - known as a proton synchrotron system. The project failed to get off the ground, though, because the experts were "overconfident about the country's economy" at the time, according to Zhang Chuang, a researcher at the Institute of High Energy Physics who participated in the design and construction of the Beijing collider.

In 1980, Deng Xiaoping, China's then-leader, gave special approval for a fund of 240 million yuan ($1.5 million at the time) to build the BEPC. It was a huge amount of money for the impoverished country, but still small when measured against the cost of research.

The limited budget meant the BEPC's designed circumference was only 240 meters, with a maximum energy level of 2.3 GeV, 50 times less than the LEP collider.

Although CERN was dominant in the field, in 2005 Chinese scientists began considering the future of high-energy physics in the country.

"Again and again, we discussed the nature of the machine we would build when the BEPC was decommissioned," Wang said.

In 2009, China invested 640 million yuan to upgrade the collider, and has since spent 90 million yuan annually on its operation and maintenance. Since then, research into low-energy "charm" physics - a form of high-energy physics focused on studying the "charm quark", an elementary particle - has been a unique field for the BEPC, attracting the attention of hundreds of specialists at home and abroad.

However, the low level of energy constrained its capacity for use in the detection of a wider range of novel particles, such as the Higgs boson.

The BEPC and beyond

Despite its limitations, the BEPC helped China train a large number of high-energy physicists, some of whom gained further experience by participating in world-class research projects, such as those carried out at the LHC. "By 2020, the scientific goals of the BEPC will have mostly been achieved, so we will have a group of world-class, high-energy physicists available for the proposed project," Wang said.

The project will have two phases. The first will involve the construction of a 50-to-100-km-circumference Circular Electron-Positron Collider, or CEPC, capable of generating millions of Higgs boson particles, while the second will be a fully updated version of the LHC, but seven times more powerful.

Compared with the LHC - which took 10 years to build and cost several billion dollars - the proposed CEPC, construction of which could begin in 2020 or 2025, has been designed to ensure that the cost will not exceed the European benchmark.

"About 20 percent of the funding for the LHC came from non-European countries. We are also planning to encourage international cooperation in the CEPC, and hopefully 30 percent of the funding will come from overseas," Wang said.

Nima Arkani-Hamed, from the US Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, said that in addition to providing overseas funding, the international scientific community "will unite to help in the physics and engineering design aspects of putting the CEPC together".

A technician performs checks on the Beijing Electron Positron Collider after an upgrade in 2009. Wang Yongji / Xinhua​

Beneficial spinoffs

So, why would any government spend billions dollars of taxpayers' money on these "big toys" for particle physicists? To satisfy natural curiosity about the origins of the universe or simply to win a few Nobel Prizes?

Those are both credible reasons, but the reality is that the resultant "secondary products" of high-energy research are the driving force.

"In high-energy physics research, there is no existing equipment or methods for us to explore particles about which we know little, so we design and build the equipment ourselves from scratch," Wang said.

That process has resulted in the development of many technologies that have subsequently been applied in wider fields. The World Wide Web is a prime example; in 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist working at CERN, invented the Web to facilitate automatic information sharing between CERN scientists in different countries. A few years later, CERN made the software publicly available, thus allowing the growth and development of the Internet.

In China, the construction of the BEPC improved the country's industrial technology and resulted in microwave components and devices that can be applied to radar systems.

Heidi Schellman from Northwestern University in the US, uses the metaphor of climbing Qomolangma, known in the West as Mount Everest, to illustrate the case; the fact that a person is climbing the mountain will not directly affect anyone's daily life, but the fleece jackets and breathable waterproof fabrics that were first invented for serious mountaineering expeditions are now relatively cheap, indispensable and ubiquitous.

Leadership transfer

Despite the short- and long-term benefits that huge scientific projects can bring, the cost of building a super collider is so huge that the world can only afford one at a time.

In the late 1970s, roughly at the same time as the LHC, the US launched an ambitious project in Texas; an 87-km-long collider called the Superconducting Super Collider. However, the project came under fire from the beginning when critics railed against the budget of more than $4 billion.

In 1993, a nonprofit watchdog called the Project on Government Oversight, released a draft audit report that heavily criticized the high cost and poor management, leading the US Congress to officially cancel the SSC in October 1993, even though $2 billion had already been spent.

"The cancellation of the SSC was a disaster for high-energy physics in the US. Overnight, we ceded leadership of a field we had pioneered and driven for decades to Europe," said Arkani-Hamed, who added that the ramifications of the decision continue to be felt.

"Some physicists cynically thought the money for the SSC would go to their favorite areas, but of course nothing of the sort happened. Instead, after the cancellation of the SSC, the US ceased to think of itself as a place where 'really big things can happen'. It has made many of our scientists timid and small-minded in their thinking about the future," he said.

That unfulfilled dream has been adopted by new candidates. CERN is considering a project similar to China's, while Japan is planning an International Linear Collider, which would require more-advanced technology and a much larger budget.

Wang, from the Institute of High Energy Physics, said no matter how fierce the competition, the high cost means there is only likely to be one 100 TeV (trillion electron volts) collider in the world at any given time.

"In the end, it will come down to whose design is best," he said.

Arkani-Hamed believes China can build and operate a massive collider project. "No matter where such a machine happens, developing and building it is going to require a huge influx of new people into the field. China has an ocean of the necessary raw talent needed to make this happen," he said, citing the country's growing economic power and its desire to improve the basic level of research as prime factors.

"There is no other field where leadership can be transferred so decisively, because here the major facility is a discrete unit (a separate entity that's part of a larger whole) and scientists around the world will follow the machine wherever it is," he said.

Contact the writer at chengyingqi@chinadaily.com.cn

_____________________________________________________________​

Workshop on CEPC Theory Studies Held at IHEP

IHEP Center for Future High Energy Physics held on December 14, 2015 a workshop on project applications for CEPC (Circular Electron Positron Collider) theory studies. More than 30 scholars from home and abroad attended the workshop.

At the workshop, IHEP Director Wang Yifang reported on the CEPC status. He encouraged teams of particle physics research at home and young scholars to actively participate in the theory studies of CEPC.

Director of the IHEP Center for Future High Energy Physics Dr. Nima Arkani-Hamed gave a video talk on CEPC and had discussions and exchanges with the workshop attendees.

Four applicants, whose project applications have been accepted, introduced their studies on CEPC theoretical issues. After the talks, discussions and exchanges were made. In addition, the workshop also discussed the CDR of CEPC and made working plans for the next step.

Workshop on CEPC Theory Studies Held at IHEP （Image by IHEP）​

 

[xunzi]

Spin off technology is certainly an intriguing reason to build such expensive project.

 

[JSCh]

China builds mammoth detector to probe mysteries of neutrino mass

BEIJING—It isn't easy to weigh a ghost. After neutrinos were hypothesized in 1930, it took physicists 67 years to prove that these elusive particles—which zip through our bodies by the trillions each second—have mass at all. Now, a Chinese-led team is planning a mammoth neutrino detector, meant to capture enough neutrinos from nearby nuclear reactors to determine which of the three known types, or flavors, of neutrinos are heavier or lighter. That mass hierarchy could be key to explaining how neutrinos get their mass, and measuring it would be a coup for China's particle physicists.

Last month, scientists gathered in Jiangmen, in China's southern Guangdong province, to review plans for the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO). Groundbreaking is slated for later this year on the $300 million facility, which China aims to complete by 2019. The facility, which backers say will be twice as sensitive as existing detectors, should not only pin down key properties of neutrinos themselves but also detect telltale neutrinos from nuclear reactions in the sun, Earth, and supernovas.

Other planned facilities aim to reveal the mass hierarchy (see table), but China could be the first to arrive at an ironclad result. If China can pull it off, says William McDonough, a geologist at the University of Maryland, College Park, JUNO "will not only lead to breakthroughs in neutrino physics, but revolutionize the field of geology and astrophysics." A successful project would also mark another triumph for China's neutrino research, 2 years after the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment in Guangdong nailed a key parameter describing how different types of neutrinos morph into one another (Science, 16 March 2012, p. 1287).

In 1998, physicists working with the subterranean particle detector Super-Kamiokande in Japan showed that neutrinos of one flavor, muon neutrinos generated by cosmic rays in the atmosphere, can change flavor as they zip through Earth. In 2001, researchers at the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory in Canada proved that electron neutrinos from the sun do the same. Such neutrino "oscillations" prove that neutrinos have mass: Without it, the particles would move at light speed and—according to relativity—time would stand still for them, making change impossible.

Knowing a neutrino has mass isn't the same as knowing what it weighs. In the simplest model, neutrino oscillations depend on just six parameters—the three mass differences among the neutrinos and three abstract "mixing angles." Physicists have measured all six—including the last mixing angle, which was measured by Daya Bay. They know that two of the neutrinos are close in mass and one is further off. But they don't know whether there are two lighter neutrinos and one heavier one—the so-called normal hierarchy—or an inverse hierarchy of two heavier ones and one light one.

How the masses shake out "is fundamental for a whole series of questions," says Wang Yifang, director of the Institute of High Energy Physics (IHEP) here, including whether neutrinos, like other particles, get mass from tangling with Higgs bosons or from a more exotic mechanism. The answer depends on whether the neutrino is, oddly, its own antiparticle. Physicists may be able to tell that by searching for a weird new type of radioactive decay. But, if it even exists, that decay would occur at an observable rate only if neutrinos follow an inverse hierarchy.

To explore this frontier, an international team led by Wang will build a detector 700 meters beneath a granite hill near Jiangmen, equidistant from two nuclear power plant complexes. A sphere about 38 meters in diameter will contain 20,000 tons of a material known as a liquid scintillator. About 60 times a day, one of the sextillion or so electron neutrinos spraying from the reactors every second should bump into an atomic nucleus, sparking a flash of scintillation light that the detector can measure and analyze. In the 53 kilometers that the neutrinos will traverse from reactor to detector, about 70% will change flavor, says Cao Jun, a particle physicist at IHEP. By studying the energy spectrum of the neutrinos, physicists should be able to tease out the mass hierarchy. "But it's not going to be easy because the amount of energy to be measured is minuscule," Cao says. He estimates the measurement will require 6 years of data-taking.

The key to JUNO's success will be its energy resolution. The largest liquid scintillation detector to date—KamLAND in Japan, which has 1000 tons of detector fluid—can only make out energy differences of greater than 6%. JUNO needs to double the resolution to 3%—no mean feat, especially as the larger volume of scintillator itself absorbs more light.

If it works, JUNO should also make finer measurements of the known mixing angles and mass differences. "This is particularly important for the search for a possible fourth form of neutrinos," says Lothar Oberauer of the Technical University of Munich in Germany. If the sum of all oscillations doesn't add up to 100%, then the data would point to a fourth flavor (Science, 21 October 2011, p. 304)—a possibility that could topple the standard model of particle physics and help explain a host of astronomical puzzles.

Another mission for JUNO is to observe geoneutrinos emitted during radioactive decay in Earth's deep interior, which generates heat that helps drive plate tectonics and power our planet's magnetic field. Detecting geoneutrinos "is the only way to get a glimpse of Earth's internal heat budget and distribution," McDonough says. The three facilities now detecting geoneutrinos, including the revamped Sudbury detector, record about 45 a year in total. JUNO should spot about 500 a year, enough to test various models of Earth's composition and heat flow, McDonough says. And that would score China another triumph in neutrino physics.

China hopes its planned JUNO detector, 38 meters across, will be the first to nail which of the three neutrino flavors is heavier or lighter.
CREDITS: (INSET) IHEP; (SOURCE) M. BLENNOW ET AL. ARXIV 1311.1822 (2013)​

Source: Science Magazine

Science 7 February 2014:
Vol. 343 no. 6171 pp. 590-591
DOI: 10.1126/science.343.6171.590

China Builds Mammoth Detector to Probe Mysteries of Neutrino Mass

_____________________________________________________________​

Public Release: 28-Jan-2015
Particle physicists from Mainz University participate in JUNO neutrino experiment

Project designed to undertake precise measurement of neutrino oscillation should provide insight into neutrino mass hierarchy

• Johannes Gutenberg
• Universitaet Mainz

This news release is available in German.

The construction of the facilities for the JUNO neutrino experiment has been initiated with an official groundbreaking ceremony near the south Chinese city of Jiangmen. Involved in the Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO) will be more than fifty institutions from China, the US and Europe - with six from Germany alone. Starting in 2020, JUNO will begin to produce new information about the particle characteristics of the neutrino. "The aim of JUNO is to precisely measure the oscillations of neutrinos for the purpose of investigating one of the major issues in neutrino physics today - the sequence or hierarchy of neutrino masses," explains Professor Michael Wurm of the Institute of Physics at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU). He is acting as one of the German JUNO partners and was at the site to watch the start of work on the underground lab.

Neutrinos are elementary particles that have next to no mass and that are emitted by processes such as fusion in the sun and radioactive decays of fission products in nuclear reactors. They have no electric charge and are subject only to the weak nuclear force. This means that they can penetrate matter almost unhindered and can only be captured using massive detectors that are usually located underground. There are three different types of neutrinos - electron, muon, and tau neutrinos. They can change from one type to another, a phenomenon known as neutrino oscillation. It is possible to determine the mass of the particles by studying the oscillation patterns.

"Oscillations only occur because neutrinos have three different masses. But which is the lightest of the three and which is the heaviest? The JUNO experiment will be sensitive enough to allow us to clearly sequence the three neutrino types," said Wurm. The particle physicist, who is also participating in the Borexino experiment that investigates solar neutrinos and is located under Italy's Gran Sasso mountain, sees this as an important step forward for the experimental efforts to find a violation of matter/antimatter symmetry in neutrino oscillations. Scientists hope to find out why matter and antimatter did not completely annihilate one another after the Big Bang.

It will only be possible to determine the sequence of neutrino masses through tiny changes in the oscillation patterns that cannot be detected by currently running experiments. The JUNO detector is thus being built in its own underground lab, which is located some 50 kilometers from two reactor complexes on China's southern coast. The neutrinos emitted by the reactors will be registered in the form of small light flashes in the liquid scintillator target located at the center of the detector. Carefully shielded from radiation background, 20,000 tons of the mineral oil-like target liquid will be contained in an acrylic sphere of 35 meter diameters. Its outer surface will be equipped by a dense array of light sensors detecting the scintillation light. Six years of construction are foreseen for the new detector that will be 100 times larger than the Borexino experiment. Upon start of data taking in 2021, the scientists expect that another five years of measurement will be necessary to answer the question of neutrino mass hierarchy.

Schematic depiction of the JUNO detector showing the shielded acrylic sphere (lower right). The detector is surrounded by a pool of water to protect it against background radiation (upper left).
source/©: Michael Wurm​

Particle physicists from Mainz University participate in JUNO neutrino experiment | EurekAlert! Science News

_________________________________________________________​

The Sixth JUNO Collaboration Meeting Held at IHEP
2016-01-05

The Sixth JUNO (Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory) Collaboration Meeting was held at IHEP on July 13-17, 2015. More than 100 scholars from institutions and universities at home plus about 50 scholars from abroad attended the meeting.

The meeting was chaired in turns by Wang Yifang, spokesperson of the JUNO Collaboration and Cao Jun, Gioacchino Ranucci, deputy spokespersons of the Collaboration. Wang Yifang introduced the progress of JUNO; he emphasized the critical milestones of the JUNO construction. JUNO is facing fierce international competition. Plans must be adequate, construction milestones must be met, and experiment must start according to the milestones.

At the meeting, Li Xiaonan and researchers from all the sub-systems reported their progress respectively. Reviews on the design of key components were performed, including the review on the central detector, the electronics and the photo-multiplier. Experts suggested that more attention should be paid to reliability, tolerance and heat radiation in the system designs. These suggestions are very significant to the detailed designs in the next phase.

The Collaboration accepted new members at this meeting. They are the University of Milan-Bicocca, the University of Maryland and the Catholic University of Chile. The Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and the Moscow State University were accepted as observers. So far, the Collaboration has boasted 55 formal members. The meeting also discussed and passed the rules on paper publication. It is decided that the next Collaboration meeting will be held in Xiamen University in January, 2016.

 

[Keel]

There were only standing rooms for late comers or sitting on the floor!

Professor Wang YF, his team and other fellow Chinese scientists have won many prestigious prizes before the start of the above projects:

WANG Yifang and His Team Win 2016 Fundamental Physics Breakthrough Award

The 2016 Fundamental Physics Breakthrough Award, announced on November 9 in NASA Ames Research Center, Silicon Valley, USA, goes to WANG Yifang and his team for the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment. This is the first time for Chinese scientists to win the Award.
In 2012, the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment discovered a new type of neutrino oscillation by precisely measuring theta one-three expressed as sin22θ13, paving the way for future understanding of matter-antimatter asymmetry in the universe.

As the studies and discoveries with respect to neutrino oscillation revealed the new frontiers far beyond the standard model, the 2016 Fundamental Physics Breakthrough Award was conferred on seven leading scientists and five research teams for neutrino experiments. They are the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment led by WANG Yifang and Kambu Luk, the KamLAND Experiment led by Atsuto Suzuki, the K2K/T2K Experiment led by Koichiro Nishikawa, the Canadian Sudbury Neutrino Observatory led by Arthur B.McDonald and the Super-Kamiokande Experiment led by Takaaki Kajita and Yoichiro Suzuki.

The Award was founded by Yuri Milner, a well-known Russian investor. The Award, different from the Noble Prize, emphasizes and encourages predictions and discoveries rather than experimental demonstration of theories.

(Cas)
News - WANG Yifang and His Team Win 2016 Fundamental...

Panofsky Prize
Berkeley's Kam-Biu Luk Wins Panofsky Prize for Daya Bay Experiment
Science Shorts Lynn Yarris (510) 486-5375 • SEPTEMBER 30, 2013


Kam-Biu Luk holds joint appointments with Berkeley Lab’s Physics Division, and the University of California Berkeley Physics Department. He is the co-spokesperson for the Daya Bay Experiment.

For the second year in a row, a faculty scientist with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has been named a recipient of the prestigious W.K.H. Panofsky Prize, awarded annually by the American Physical Society (APS) to recognize outstanding achievements in experimental particle physics.

Kam-Biu Luk, who holds joint appointments with Berkeley Lab’s Physics Division, and the University of California Berkeley Physics Department, will share the 2014 Panofsky Prize with Yifang Wang of China’s Institute of High Energy Physics for their work on the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment.

The citation reads, “For their leadership of the Daya Bay experiment, which produced the first definitive measurement of θ13 angle of the neutrino mixing matrix.”

The on-going Daya Bay Experiment in the south of China is a multinational collaboration for the study of neutrinos, the ghostlike particles produced by our sun and other stars, and in nuclear reactors. Luk and Wang are the co-spokespersons for the experiment. Luk was also the scientist who identified the powerful nuclear reactors of the China Guangdong Nuclear Power Group as the ideal site for the experiment. Berkeley Lab is the lead U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratory for the Daya Bay Experiment, which receives support from DOE’s Office of Science High Energy Physics program.

“It is a great honor to share this prize with Yifang,” Luk said. “The Panofsky prize holds a special meaning to the Daya Bay Experiment. Professor Pief Panofsky offered valuable advice, support, and assistance in cementing this major U.S.-China collaboration. I am sure he would have been very pleased to witness the truly remarkable discoveries being made at Daya Bay.”

The Panofsky Prize, which was established in 1985 to honor the late Stanford physicist Wolfgang “Pief” Panofsky, consists of $10,000, an allowance for travel to the APS meeting at which the prize is to be awarded, and a certificate citing the contributions made by the recipient. The 2013 Panofsky prize was shared by Bernard Sadoulet, who also holds joint appointments with Berkeley Lab Physics Division and UC Berkeley’s Physics Department.

“This is a timely and well-deserved recognition for both Kam-Biu and Yifang, whose scientific vision and perseverance have led to the remarkable success of the Daya Bay experiment,” said Natalie Roe, director of Berkeley Lab’s Physics Division. “I expect we will see ever greater precision on neutrino properties from Daya Bay in the coming years.”


The Daya Bay Experiment in the south of China is a multinational collaboration for the study of neutrinos that could help answer some of the most vexing mysteries of our universe

There are a great many unanswered questions about our universe, none more basic than why it even exists as it does. In the aftermath of the big bang, particles of matter and antimatter should have annihilated one another, resulting in a universe of pure energy. Something happened to favor matter over antimatter, resulting in the universe we observe today. Neutrinos are nearly massless and electrically neutral particles that travel pretty much untouched through space and time. Because of this phantomlike nature, neutrinos are believed to hold invaluable clues about the history of our early universe.

The Daya Bay experiment, for which Luk and Wang are being recognized, is designed to reveal details of how the three types or “flavors” of neutrinos – electron, muon and tau – mix together and exchange identities as they travel, a phenomenon called “neutrino oscillation.” The experiment also measures key difference in neutrino masses, a property known as “mass splitting.” This information could help answer many of the questions we have about the universe.

“The Daya Bay collaboration has had to overcome numerous obstacles but in the end, the accomplishments of the Daya Bay Experiment have exceeded our expectations,” Luk said. “We are grateful that the Daya Bay experiment has been recognized by the particle-physics community.”

Luk, who was born in Hong Kong, attended the University of Hong Kong from 1973 to 1976 and received his B.Sc. in Physics. He was awarded his Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 1983 and did postdoctoral research at the University of Washington in Seattle. In 1986 when he went to Fermilab where he received the R.R. Wilson Fellow of Fermilab during his three years there. He has been a faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab and UC Berkeley since 1989.

Berkeley's Kam-Biu Luk Wins Panofsky Prize for Daya Bay Experiment | Berkeley Lab


The 20th Nilkei Asia Prize (2015) in Science, Technology and Environment
NIKKEI ASIA PRIZES｜WINNERS 2014

王贻芳荣获第六届周光召基础科学奖
2013-05-28

　　第十五届中国科协年会5月25日在贵阳开幕。中共中央政治局委员李源潮出席开幕式并讲话，全国政协副主席、中国科协主席韩启德致开幕词，全国政协副主席马培华出席。包括诺贝尔奖获得者在内的国际知名科学家、海外专家学者和国内外科技组织代表2500余人参加开幕式。

　　开幕式上，颁发了第六届周光召基金会科技奖。经过周光召基金会严格的推荐、评审，高能所所长、大亚湾中微子实验首席科学家王贻芳获得“基础科学奖”。周光召基金会奖励顾问委员会代主席徐冠华在颁奖时介绍说：“王贻芳是我国粒子物理实验研究的主要学术带头人。他领导完成了北京正负电子对撞机上的北京谱仪（BESⅢ）探测器的设计、研制和运行及物理研究，还原创性地提出了大亚湾反应堆中微子实验方案，并领导完成实验的设计、研制、运行和科学研究，取得了重大的科研成果。该项成果入选美国《科学》杂志2012年全球十大科学突破。目前他在主持用反应堆中微子测量质量顺序的项目。”


2013年度何梁何利基金奖物理学奖

中科院7人获2013年度何梁何利奖　潘建伟获成就奖
文章来源：发展规划局 发布时间：2013-11-01


　　10月30日，香港何梁何利基金2013年度颁奖大会在北京钓鱼台国宾馆举行，全国人大常委会副委员长陈昌智出席并作重要讲话。全国政协副主席、科技部部长万钢，中国科学院副院长詹文龙等出席并向获奖者颁奖。

　　今年共有46位中国科学家荣膺何梁何利基金奖，其中“科学与技术成就奖”1位、“科学与技术进步奖”32位、“科学与技术创新奖”13位。中科院共7名科技工作者获奖，其中中国科技大学教授、中国科学院院士潘建伟获得“科学与技术成就奖”，其余6人获“科学与技术进步奖”。（详见名单）

　　潘建伟于12年前回国组建实验室，在量子力学基础问题检验、量子通信和量子计算等方面取得了令人瞩目的科学成就，为我国在量子信息研究领域迅速走到世界前列做出了突出贡献，成为国际上多光子纠缠操纵和量子信息实验研究方面的杰出科学家，并为我国培养了一批量子信息研究领域的科技英才。

　　何梁何利基金自1994年3月成立并设奖至今，已成功进行20届评选和颁奖活动，先后有1048位优秀科学家获奖，其中30位杰出科学家获“科学与技术成就奖”、884位科学家获“科学与技术进步奖”、134位科学家获“科学与技术创新奖”。


中国科学院获2013年度何梁何利奖名单
1 潘建伟 成就奖
中国科学技术大学

2 王贻芳 物理学奖
中国科学院高能物理研究所

3 江 雷 化学奖
中国科学院化学研究所

4 崔向群 文学奖
中国科学院南京天文光学技术研究所

5 朱 江 地球科学奖
中国科学院大气物理研究所

6 姜文汉 电子信息技术奖
中国科学院光电技术研究所

7 沈保根 冶金材料技术奖
中国科学院物理研究所



Daya Bay experimental results listed among China's top 10 Science & Technology

The Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the highest academic institutions in China, unveiled on January 19 the top 10 news events on domestic science and technology progress for the year 2012. The discovery of a new kind of neutrino transformation from the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment was on top of the list.

The 10 news events were selected via a vote by academicians from the both organizations. Previously, the Daya Bay experimental results had been announced as the top ten science Breakthroughs of the Year 2012 by Science Magazine. The results suggest that in the coming decades, neutrino physics will be as rich as physicists have hoped for and may even help explain how the universe evolved to contain so much matter and so little antimatter.

The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment is a China-based multinational particle physics project studying neutrinos. The collaboration includes researchers from China, the United States, China's Taiwan, and the Czech Republic. The U.S. side of the project is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of High Energy Physics.

Daya Bay neutrino experiment results listed Breakthrough of the Year 2012

On December 20, 2012, Science Magazine announced the top ten Breakthroughs of the Year 2012 to the public. The discovery of a new kind of neutrino transformation, the

scientific achievement of the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment was selected as one of the nine runners-up of this year’s breakthrough, and the winner went to the discovery of the Higgs Boson.

It is written in the magazine that scientists in China have measured the third and final “mixing angle” that can be used to describe neutrinos. Sometimes it's not the result itself so much as the promise it holds that matters most. This year, physicists measured the last parameter describing how elusive particles called neutrinos morph into one another as they zip along at near–light speed. And the result suggests that in the coming decades neutrino physics will be every bit as rich as physicists had hoped—and may even help explain how the universe evolved to contain so much matter and so little antimatter.

The Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment is a China-based multinational particle physics project studying neutrinos. The multinational collaboration includes researchers from China, the United States, Taiwan, and the Czech Republic. The US side of the project is funded by the US Department of Energy's Office of High Energy Physics. It is situated at Daya Bay, approximately 52 kilometers north of Hong Kong and 45 kilometers east of Shenzhen.

The experiment studies neutrino oscillations and is designed to measure the mixing angle θ13 using antineutrinos produced by the reactors of the Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plant and the Ling Ao Nuclear Power Plant. On 8 March 2012, the Daya Bay collaboration announced discovery of a new kind of neutrino transformation and an accurate measurement of theta13. This significant achievement received strong responses from the international field of physics and was commented as a milestone in the research of neutrino physics.

For the original news in Science, please click:

Science/AAAS | Special Issue: Breakthrough of the Year, 2012

 

[Keel]

Particle Physics is perhaps one of the areas where China is in pole position considering just in China alone we have
In proposal and planning stages:

Proposed: Qinhuangdao
In planning: Juno

In operations:
BEPCII / BESIII
Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plant and the Ling Ao Nuclear Power Plant

No wonder Pinceton's professor Arkani-Hamed believes :

China can build and operate a massive collider project. "No matter where such a machine happens, developing and building it is going to require a huge influx of new people into the field. China has an ocean of the necessary raw talent needed to make this happen," he said, citing the country's growing economic power and its desire to improve the basic level of research as prime factors.

and that may be one of the reasons why they are continuously bad-mouthing about our economy beyond sound reasons

Really mind provoking readings above. Thank you guys for your contributions

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[hexagonsnow]

Congratulation for all the scientist!Great achievement for basic physics about atoumic study!