Given new experiments starting up and on the horizon, and the vastly increasing data volumes even at small experiments, the Nuclear Physics community has in recent years been thinking about the next generation of data processing and analysis workflows that will maximize the science output.
The software computing round table meetings - we had one on Jupyter on Tuesday, December 3, 2019
More information about the status of an electron-ion collider can be found in the documents linked below. In 2018, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine issued a report, “An Assessment of U.S.-Based Electron-Ion Collider Science.” Following the report, the directors of Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility and Brookhaven National Laboratory issued a joint statement of support. More information about the impetus for building an electron-ion collider can be found in the 2015 Long-Range Plan, issued by the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee..
Beyond sparking scientific discoveries in a new frontier of fundamental physics, an Electron-Ion Collider will trigger technological breakthroughs that have broad-ranging impacts on human health and national challenges. Research on the technologies needed to make this machine a reality is already pushing the evolution of magnets and other particle accelerator components.
Some of these advances could lead to energy-efficient accelerators, thereby dramatically shrinking the size and operating costs of accelerators used across science and industry for example, to make and test computer chips; to deliver energetic particle beams to zap cancer cells; to study and design improved sustainable energy technologies such as solar cells, batteries, and catalysts; and to develop new kinds of drugs and other medical treatments. New methods of particle detection developed for an EIC could also lead to advances in medical imaging and national security.
In truth, it’s nearly impossible to predict what will come from the knowledge gained from an EIC. History shows that applications springing from a deeper understanding of matter and fundamental forces things like GPS, microelectronics, and radiological techniques for diagnosing and treating disease often emerge many years after the foundational physics discoveries that make them possible.
But one thing is certain: Building the experiments that inspire and train the next generation of scientific explorers is essential for maintaining U.S. leadership in nuclear science and for developing the high-tech workforce needed to address some of our nation’s deepest challenges.
The Electron-Ion Collider would consist of two intersecting accelerators, one producing an intense beam of electrons, the other a beam of either protons or heavier atomic nuclei, which are then steered into head-on collisions.
The accelerators will be designed so that both beams can be polarized to around 70 percent for electrons, protons and light nuclei. Electrons will be able to probe particles from protons to the heaviest stable nuclei at a very wide range of energies, starting from 20–100 billion electron-volts (GeV), upgradable to approximately 140 GeV, to produce images of the particles’ interiors at higher and higher resolution. At least one detector and possibly more would analyze thousands of particle collisions per second, amassing the data required to tease out the smallest effects required for significant discoveries.
Building the EIC will require the same core expertise that led to the versatility of the polarized proton and heavy ion beams at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the unique polarized electron beam properties of the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) at Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. These two Department of Energy laboratories have been collaborating on initial studies and developing designs that make use of key existing infrastructure and capitalize on investments in science and technology. Each design approach would require the development of innovative accelerator and detector technologies to answer the questions described in this brochure.
There are many scientific questions that researchers expect an Electron-Ion Collider will allow them to answer. Among them are four main topics of study.
The Electron-Ion Collider is a proposed machine for delving deeper than ever before into the building blocks of matter, so that we may better understand the matter within us and its role in the universe around us.
Learn more about this first-of-its-kind machine in the documents linked below.
In light of the evergrowing role that Software & Computing play in High Energy Physics, Nuclear Physics, and related fields, Brookhaven National Laboratory, the HEP Software Foundation, and Jefferson Lab are organizing the Software & Computing Round Table to foster the interplay of computing and science. The monthly round table forum aims for knowledge transfer and to encourage common projects within our scientific community.
Accelerate your career with a new role at the nation's newest national laboratory. Here you can be part of a team exploring the building blocks of matter and lay the ground work for scientific discoveries that will reshape our understanding of the atomic nucleus. Join a community with a common purpose of solving the most challenging scientific and engineering problems of our time.
A career at Jefferson Lab is more than a job. You will be part of “big science” and work alongside top scientists and engineers from around the world unlocking the secrets of our visible universe. Managed by Jefferson Science Associates, LLC; Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility is entering an exciting period of mission growth and is seeking new team members ready to apply their skills and passion to have an impact. You could call it work, or you could call it a mission. We call it a challenge. We do things that will change the world.
At Jefferson Lab we believe in giving back to our community and encouraging the next generation of scientists and engineers. Our staff reaches out to students to advance awareness and appreciation of the range of research carried out within the DOE national laboratory system, to increase interest in STEM careers for women and minorities, and to encourage everyone to become a part of the next-generation STEM workforce. We are recognized for our innovative programs like:
1,500 students from 15 Title I schools engage in the Becoming Enthusiastic About Math and Science (BEAMS) program at the lab each school year.
60 teachers are enrolled in the Jefferson Science Associates Activities for Teachers (JSAT) program at the lab inspiring 9,000 students annually.
24 high school students have internships and 34 college students have mentorships at the lab.
Particle Physicist Francesco Bossu is living out a high school dream of investigating the smallest building blocks of the universe with enthusiasm for discovery top-of-mind
What is your role in the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC)?
My institute, the Saclay Nuclear Research Centre with Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique (CEA-Saclay), is participating in the ATHENA collaboration. The collaboration intends to submit a proposal when the call for EIC detector designs is released. Within this collaboration, I am co-convener of the working group on tracking detectors, and I am also representing my institute on the Institutional Board of the Electron-Ion Collider User Group (EICUG) and in the ATHENA collaboration.
How did you get involved with the EIC project?
When the EIC white paper “Electron-Ion Collider: The Next QCD Frontier: Understanding the Glue that Binds Us All” was published in 2016, I was a postdoctoral researcher in heavy-ion physics. I became very interested in the physics case of the EIC project.
In 2017, I joined CEA-Saclay as a staff scientist, and I finally got the opportunity to work on the EIC. The amount of time I am dedicating to the EIC is becoming larger and larger. In 2019, I was part of the local organizing committee of the EICUG meeting that was held in Paris. In 2020, within the Yellow Report initiative, I have been involved in studies both on physics observables and on detector simulations. I am also involved in research and development studies at CEA-Saclay on micro-pattern gaseous detectors for particle tracking that aim to deliver competitive technology solutions for the EIC detector.
Why do you feel that the EIC is an important facility?
The EIC will definitely provide high-precision data over a broad phase space that will allow us to refine our understanding of key properties of nucleons and nuclei. The interconnection of EIC physics and the research at other facilities, such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, will also underline the importance of the EIC project. In addition, the EIC environment is very demanding in terms of detector and computing performance, and it is already driving advanced R&D programs that will result in innovative technological solutions.
What do you hope to learn with the EIC?
There are several questions that I wish to investigate with the EIC. In particular, I hope that the EIC will allow us to learn more about the characteristics of gluon distributions inside hadrons. On a personal growth level, I am looking forward to learning, using and maximizing the most modern data mining technologies that will be needed to make the most out of the EIC data.
What features or capabilities of the EIC are essential to your research?
In order to study in detail the characteristics of gluons in nucleons and nuclei, one needs to collect massive quantities of data regarding rather rare events. The EIC will provide very large luminosities, allowing us to reach the needed statistical precision in most of the phase space. The EIC’s ability to collide electrons with a variety of different nuclei as heavy as uranium will be crucial to studying the effect of the nuclear environment on the distribution of quarks and gluons inside nuclei.
What is the biggest software or data challenge you expect to face in your EIC research?
With the large amount of data that the EIC will provide, we will be able to perform precision multidimensional measurements. Traditional analysis techniques may not be sufficient to enable us to extract the interesting features with the needed precision. I think that physicists will have to increasingly embrace the machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies to fully exploit the EIC data.
However, these technologies, although very powerful, should not be used blindly, as they might obfuscate the data analysis procedure and make the validation of the results harder. I think that one of the challenges we will face will be to stay up-to-date with the latest techniques, and then to use the “right” tools for each problem.
What fascinates or excites you most about your work? Why?
Being a particle physicist, I feel privileged: I have the opportunity to live out what was my high school dream. The most fascinating thing in my work is the interaction with colleagues at my local institute and from around the world; after every formal or informal discussion, I find that I have learned something new.
What is currently the most prominent 'thing' on your desktop, physical or virtual?
A “drinking bird.” It was a gift my former colleagues gave to me at the end of my postdoc with them. This toy heat engine reminds me that there are very intriguing physics phenomena even behind simple objects. I stare at its periodic movement for minutes and minutes while I am thinking about how to solve some issue.
What does a typical workday look like for you?
In the last year and a half, the COVID-19 pandemic radically changed the typical workday. Today, after taking my daughter to the nursery, I sit at my kitchen table with my laptop open and, likely, listen to the discourses of colleagues attending a videoconference in my earphones. A couple of days per week, I go to the lab for rare in-person meetings and for some R&D-related work. One thing that I miss now are the discussions during the coffee breaks with my colleagues at the lab.
What do you like to do when you aren't working on EIC science?
Since her birth, my little daughter has captured basically all of my attention. In my (rare) spare time, I like to read novels, mainly sci-fi, or do some gardening.
This story is a pilot project conceived by the Software Working Group of the EIC User Group to become part of a series of profiles of future users of the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), a next-generation nuclear physics research facility being built at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory in partnership with DOE’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility and collaborators around the world. The Software Working Group seeks to develop user-friendly tools to meet the data and software needs of the international group of physicists who will conduct research at the EIC.
* This profile features a member of the A Totally Hermetic Electron-Nucleus Apparatus (ATHENA) collaboration, which is developing an EIC detector concept inspired by the Yellow Report and based on a new central detector magnet up to 3 Tesla. Other profiles in this series feature members of the EIC Comprehensive Chromodynamics Experiment (ECCE) consortium, which is currently developing a general detector concept that meets the design requirements and performance goals for an EIC detector as laid out by the EIC Yellow-Report process.
The EIC project is funded primarily by the DOE Office of Science.
As told to Carrie Rogers
The Jefferson Lab campus is located in southeastern Virginia amidst a vibrant and growing technology community with deep historical roots that date back to the founding of our nation. Staff members can live on or near the waterways of the Chesapeake Bay region or find peace in the deeply wooded coastal plain. You will have easy access to nearby beaches, mountains, and all major metropolitan centers along the United States east coast.
To learn more about the region and its museums, wineries, parks, zoos and more, visit the Virginia tourism page, Virginia is for Lovers.
To learn more about life at Jefferson Lab, click here.
We support our inventors! The lab provides resources to employees for the development of patented technology -- with over 180 awarded to date! Those looking to obtain patent coverage for their newly developed technologies and inventions while working at the lab are supported and mentored by technology experts, from its discovery to its applied commercialization, including opportunities for monetary awards and royalty sharing. Learn more about our patents and technologies here.
"There is world-class research going on here. Any given day you can be in the room with genius physicists and that’s just amazing.”
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"Everybody in the chain is working towards the same goal: to ensure that everything is built safe and to the code specifications"
"Today, we use a lot of those same teamwork traits [learned from the military] on a daily basis as we're all working toward similar goals here at the lab in better understanding nuclei!"
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