FYI
An abbreviated look at the alphabet soup of HEP-speak

by Pamela Zerbinos

If you’ve ever tried to speak with a member of the military, you know that comprehension is nearly impossible unless you’re familiar with its language. You probably also know that its language of acronyms sometimes seems...well, pointless. They don’t have cars, they have POVs—Privately Owned Vehicles.

While it’s true that acronyms in the HEP—er, High Energy Physics—community have a different purpose, it’s also true that the simple statement, “STAR is a QGP experiment at BNL’S RHIC,” will not draw even a flicker of understanding from the uninitiated. As the list of labs, agencies, accelerators, detectors and experiments grows ever longer, FERMINEWS decided it was time for an AHEP update.

Please note that although space in FERMINEWS is limited, an expanded acronym directory is available online at: www.fnal.gov/pub/inquiring/more/acronyms.html If we missed anything (and we did), please be sure to let us know.

LABS, FACILITIES & RESEARCH INSTITUTIONS

ANL: The Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Ill.
www.anl.gov/

Bates: Not an acronym. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Bates Linear Accelerator Center.
mitbates.mit.edu/

BNL: The Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, Long Island, New York.
www.bnl.gov/

CERN: Originally “Conseil Européenne pour Recherches Nucléaires,” now the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, in Geneva, Switzerland.
www.cern.ch/

CNRS: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France’s equivalent to the NSF.
www.cnrs.fr/

DESY: Deutsches Elektronen-SYnchrotron laboratory in Hamburg, Germany.
www.desy.de/

ESRF: The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France.
www.esrf.fr/

FNAL: The Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill.
www.fnal.gov/

FZK: Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, a nonprofit basic science research center in Karlsruhe, Germany.
www.fzk.de/

GSI: Gesellschaft für Schwerionen-forschung, a heavy-ion research center in Darmstadt, Germany.
www.gsi.de/

HASYLAB: HAmburger SYnchrotronstrahlungsLABor, part of DESY.
www-hasylab.desy.de/

IN2P3: Institut National de Physique Nucleaire et de Physique des Particules, the division of CNRS that oversees nuclear and particle physics.
www.in2p3.fr/

JINR: The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia.
www.jinr.ru/

JLAB: The Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson Newport National Accelerator Facility, or Jefferson Lab, in Newport News, Va. Formerly CEBAF (Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility).
www.jlab.org/

KEK: Koo Energy Ken. The High Energy Research Accelerator Organization in Tsukuba, Japan. w
ww.kek.jp/

LAL: The Laboratoire de L’Accelerateur Lineaire at the University of Paris-Sud in Orsay, France.
www.lal.in2p3.fr/

LANL: The Department of Energy’s Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, N.M.
www.lanl.gov/

LBL: The Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif.
www.lbl.gov/

LEPP: Laboratory for Elementary-Particle Physics at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Formerly the Laboratory for Nuclear Studies (LNS).
w4.lns.cornell.edu/

LLNL: The Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif.
www.llnl.gov/

LNF: Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati, near Rome, Italy.
www.lnf.infn.it/

LNGS: Laboratori Nazionali del Gran Sasso, in L’Aquila, Italy. Usually referred to as “Gran Sasso.”
www.lngs.infn.it/

NUSL: The National Underground Science Laboratory in the Homestake Mine, S.D.
int.phys.washington.edu/NUSL/

ORNL: The Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
www.ornl.gov/

PSI: Paul Scherrer Institut, a research facility in northern Switzerland.
www.psi.ch/

SLAC: The Department of Energy’s Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in Menlo Park, Calif.
www.slac.stanford.edu/

SSRL: SLAC Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory.
ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/

TRIUMF: TRI-University Meson Facility. (Although now there are eight universities involved, TRIUMF started with three.) Located at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada.
www.triumf.ca/

WIPP: The Department of Energy’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a nuclear waste center in New Mexico also being used as an underground laboratory.
www.wipp.carlsbad.nm.us/science/

ACCELERATORS

AD: Antimatter Decelerator. New facility at CERN to study antimatter.
psdoc.web.cern.ch/PSdoc/acc/ad/

AGS: The Alternating Gradient Synchrotron at Brookhaven.
www.bnl.gov/bnlweb/facilities/AGS.html

ATLAS: The Argonne Tandem Linear Accelerator, a heavy-ion accelerator at Argonne.
www.phy.anl.gov/atlas/

AWA: The Argonne Wakefield Accelerator, working on accelerator R&D.
gate.hep.anl.gov/awa/

B Factory: SLAC’s new electron-positron collider, built to produce B mesons, beginning in 1999.
www.slac.stanford.edu/accel/pepii/ home.html

CLIC: CERN’s proposed Compact LInear Collider.
ps-div.web.cern.ch/psdiv/ CLIC/Welcome.html

CESR: The Cornell Electron Storage Ring. Ahigh-luminosity electron-positron collider at the Wilson Synchrotron Laboratory, Cornell University.
w4.lns.cornell.edu/public/CESR/

DAFNE: (Sometimes DAPHNE) Double Annular Factory for Nice Experiments. 1.0 GeV high luminosity phi factory at LNF in Italy.
www.lnf.infn.it/accelerator/dafne/ dafne.html

EPA: CERN’s Electron Positron Accumulator.
psdoc.web.cern.ch/ PSdoc/acc/lpi/lpidoc .html

FMI: The Fermilab Main Injector, which began operating in 1999 as an injector to the Tevatron.
www-fmi.fnal.gov/

HERA: Hadron-Electron Ring Accelerator at DESY.
www.desy.de/f/hera/engl/

ISAC: TRIUMF’s Isotope Separator and ACcelerator for astrophysics study.
www.triumf.ca/isac/isac_home.html

KEKB: An electron-positron collider to study CP violation in the B meson, at KEK.
wwwacc. kek.jp/www-ACC-exp/KEKB/KEKBhome. html

LANSCE: Los Alamos Neutron Science CEnter (formerly LAMPF, the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility).
lansce.lanl.gov/index_ext.html

LEIR: Low Energy Ion Ring. Used to be LEAR, an antiproton ring. LEAR is being converted into LEIR, a machine to store ions for the LHC at CERN.
www.cern.ch/PSdoc/acc/lear/ leardoc.html

LEP: The Large Electron Positron Collider at CERN.
www.cern.ch/PSdoc/ acc/lear/ leardoc.html

LHC: The Large Hadron Collider, a new international 14 TeV proton-proton accelerator now being built at CERN, to begin operating sometime after 2005.
lhc-new-homepage.web.cern.ch/lhc-newhomepage/

LIL: The Linear Injector for LEP at CERN.
psdoc.web.cern.ch/PSdoc/ acc/lpi/lpidoc. html

NLC: Next Linear Collider, now under study. Apossible future electron-positron accelerator, proposed by SLAC to be built with international participation.
www-project.slac.stanford.edu/ nlc/home.html

NLCTA: The Next Linear Collider Test Accelerator at SLAC.
www-project.slac.stanford.edu/lc/local/ Projects/NLCTA/nlcta.htm

PEP: SLAC’s Positron Electron Project, now the site of the B Factory.
www.slac.stanford.edu/accel/pepii/ home.html

PEP-II: The official name for the SLAC B Factory.
www.slac.stanford.edu/ accel/pepii/ home.html

PS: CERN’s Proton Synchrotron.
psdoc.web.cern.ch/PSdoc/acc/ps/psdoc. html

RHIC: Brookhaven’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider began operation in 2000. RHIC collides beams of gold ions to study what the universe looked like in the first few moments after its creation.
www.bnl.gov/RHIC/

SLC: SLAC Linear electron-positron Collider.
www.slac.stanford.edu/welcome/slc.html

SPEAR3: Proposed upgrade for the Stanford Positron Electron Accelerating Ring, completed in 1965. Now being used as a synchrotron light source for SSRL.
www-ssrl.slac.stanford.edu/spear3/ SPEAR3_main_page.html

SPS: CERN’s Super Proton Synchrotron.
sl-div.web.cern.ch/sl-div/

TESLA: TeV-Energy Superconducting Linear Accelerator, a possible future linear collider, proposed by DESY to be built with international participation.
tesla.desy.de/

Tevatron: Fermilab’s 2-TeV protonantiproton accelerator, the world’s highest-energy accelerator.
adcon.fnal.gov/userb/www/tevatron/

TTF: TESLAT est Facility at DESY.
tesla.desy.de/

VLHC: Very Large Hadron Collider, possible new accelerator now under study as an international follow-on to the LHC.
www.vlhc.org/

DETECTORS AND EXPERIMENTS

ALEPH: Apparatus for LEP PHysics, a detector at CERN.
alephwww.cern.ch/

ALICE: ALarge Ion Collider Experiment, destined for the LHC at CERN.
www.cern.ch/ALICE/

AMS: Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer. Adetector on the international space station to search for dark matter and antimatter. Scheduled to launch in 2003.
ams.cern.ch/

ANTARES: Astronomy with a Neutrino Telescope and Abyss environmental RESearch.
antares.in2p3.fr/

APEX: AntiProton Experiment. Fermilab experiment to search for antiproton decay.
www-apex.fnal.gov/

ATLAS: AToroidal LHC ApparatuS. Detector for the LHC under construction at CERN. U.S. HEP community plays a major role.
atlasinfo.cern.ch/Atlas/Welcome.html

BaBar: B-Bbar (anti-B) detector at SLAC’s B Factory. Named for the elephant in Laurent DeBrunhoff’s children’s books.
www.slac.stanford.edu/welcome/ babar.html

BELLE: B detector at KEK in Japan.
belle.kek.jp/

BOREXINO: (sometimes Borex): An underground solar neutrino experiment at Gran Sasso in Italy.
almime.mi.infn.it/

BTeV: Proposed dedicated B physics experiment at Fermilab’s Tevatron.
www-btev.fnal.gov/btev.html

CAT: Cherenkov Array at Themis, an imaging telescope in France to detect very high-energy gamma rays.
lpnp90.in2p3.fr/~cat/index.html

CDF: Collider Detector at Fermilab, studies proton-antiproton collisions at the Tevatron.
www-cdf.fnal.gov/

CDMS: Cryogenic Dark Matter Search. AFermilab/university experiment to search for the interaction of dark matter particles with the nuclei of silicon and germanium detectors, now at Stanford. Will place a detector in Soudan Mine, Minnesota.
ppd.fnal.gov/experiments/cdms/

CHAOS: Canadian High Acceptance Orbit Spectrometer.
chaos.triumf.ca/

CHOOZ: An international long-baseline reactor neutrino experiment located at the CHOOZ Anuclear power station, les Ardennes, France.
duphy4.physics.drexel.edu/chooz _pub/

CHORUS: CERN Hybrid Oscillation Research apparatUS.
choruswww.cern.ch/welcome.html

CKM: Charged Kaons at the Main Injector, a proposed Fermilab experiment to measure charged kaon decay.
www.fnal.gov/projects/ckm/Welcome.html

CLEO: Not an acronym. Goes with CESR. Get it? Upgrade of detector at Cornell’s CESR accelerator.
w4.lns.cornell.edu/public/CLEO/

CMS: Compact Muon Solenoid. Detector now being built for CERN’s LHC by international collaboration including many U.S. physicists.
cmsdoc.cern.ch/ cms/outreach/ html/index.shtml

CNGS: CERN Neutrinos to Gran Sasso, a long-baseline neutrino oscillation experiment.
proj-cngs.web.cern.ch/proj-cngs/

COBE: COsmic Background Explorer, a satellite launched by NASA in 1989 to search for evidence of the Big Bang. Currently in data analysis. aether.
lbl.gov/www/projects/cobe/

COSMOS: Cosmologically Significant Mass Oscillation Search at Fermilab to detect muon neutrino to tau neutrino oscillations.
pooh.physics.lsa.umich.edu/e803/ e803.html

CRESST: Cryogenic Rare Event Search with Superconducting Thermometers. An experiment in the Gran Sasso Underground Laboratory to search for Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (yes, WIMP) dark matter using cryogenic detectors.
avmp01.mppmu.mpg.de/cresst/

DAMA: Particle DArk MAtter search with highly radiopure scintillators at Gran Sasso, searching for WIMPs.
www.lngs.infin.it/lngs/ htexts/dama/ welcome.html

DELPHI: Detector with Lepton Photon and Hadron Identification at CERN’s LEP accelerator.
www.cern.ch/Delphi/Welcome .html

DONUT: Direct Observation of the Nu Tau. AFermilab fixed-target experiment to detect direct interactions of the tau neutrino.
www-donut.fnal.gov/

DZero: (named for location on the Tevatron Ring) Collider detector studies proton-antiproton collisions at Fermilab’s Tevatron.
www-d0.fnal.gov/

EXO: Enriched Xenon Observatory, searching for neutrinoless double beta-decay at WIPP.
www.wipp.carlsbad.nm.us/science/ DBDecay/DBDecay.htm

FOCUS: FOtoproduction of Charm: Upgraded Spectrometer. AFermilab fixed target experiment to study charm physics.
www-focus.fnal.gov/

GALLEX: The Gallium EXperiment at Gran Sasso, which has now been replaced by GNO.

GNO: Gallium Neutrino Observatory, the successor to GALLEX.
www.lngs.infn .it/site/exppro/gno/ Gno_home.htm

H1: Collider experiment at DESY.
www-h1.desy.de/

HDMS: Heidelberg Dark Matter Search. Double beta decay and dark matter searches taking place at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.
www.mpi-hd.mpg.de/non_acc/dm .html

HERA-B: Fixed-target experiment at DESY, to investigate CP violation in the B meson.
www-hera-b.desy.de/

HERMES: DESY fixed-target experiment to explore spin.
hermes.desy.de/

Hi Res Fly’s Eye: High-energy cosmic ray experiment in Dugway, Utah.
nevis1.nevis.columbia.edu/~hires/hires .html

HOMESTAKE: Asolar neutrino experiment in the Homestake Gold Mine in South Dakota.
durpdg.dur.ac.uk/scripts/ explist2.csh/1289/

HYPER-CP (e871): Asearch for direct CP Violation in Hyperon decays. Fermilab fixedtarget experiment.
ppd.fnal.gov/experiments/ e871/welcome.html

ICARUS: Imaging Cosmic and Rare Underground Signal. Neutrino experiment proposed at CERN/Gran Sasso.
www.lngs .infn.it/site/exppro/icarus/icarus.html

ISOLDE: Isotype On-Line separator at CERN.
www.cern.ch/ISOLDE/

K2K: KEK to Kamioka. Long-baseline neutrino experiment using a beam from KEK accelerator to Super-Kamiokande detector in Japan.
neutrino.kek.jp/

KAMIOKANDE: Asolar neutrino experiment at the Kamioka Observatory in Japan.
www-sk.icrr.u-tokyo.ac.jp/doc/kam/ index.html

KAMLAND: KAmioka Liquid Scintillator Anti-Neutrino Detector, under construction in Japan.
www.awa.tohoku.ac.jp/html/ KamLAND/

KARMEN: Karlsruhe-Rutherford Medium- Energy Neutrino Experiment. Aneutrino interaction experiment using a detector at the ISIS spallation neutron source at Rutherford- Appleton Laboratory in England.
wwwik1. fzk.de/www/karmen/karmen_e.html

KATRIN: KArlsruhe TRItium Neutrino experiment at FZK to measure neutrino mass.
ik1au1.fzk.de/~katrin/

KLOE: AKlong experiment studying CP violation at LNF.
www.lnf.infn.it/kloe/

KOPIO: AKlong decay experiment at Brookhaven.
www.bnl.gov/rsvp/KOPIO.htm

KTeV: Kaons at the Tevatron, a Fermilab fixed-target experiment to study CP violation in kaon decay.
kpasa.fnal.gov:8080/public/ktev.html

L3: Detector named for its location on CERN’s LEP accelerator.
l3www.cern.ch/

LHCb: Large Hadron Collider B Experiment, being built at the LHC at CERN.
lhcb-public.web.cern.ch/lhcb-public/ LSND: Liquid Scintillator Neutrino Detector. Neutrino oscillation experiment at Los Alamos. (no website)

LVD: Gran Sasso’s Large Volume Detector, looking for neutrino bursts from stellar collapses.
www.lngs.infn.it/site/exppro/lvd/lvd.html

Majorana: Not an acronym. Adouble beta decay experiment taking place at the DOE’s Pacific Northwest Laboratory.
majorana.pnl.gov/

MECO: Muon to Electron COnversion, an RSVP experiment at Brookhaven’s AGS.
www.bnl.gov/rsvp/MECO.htm

MiniBooNE: Booster Neutrino Experiment, petite size. Planned experiment to study neutrino oscillations using Fermilab’s Booster accelerator.
www-boone.fnal.gov/

MINIMAX / T-864: Asearch for disoriented chiral condensates at Fermilab.
www-minimax.fnal.gov/

MINOS: Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search. An experiment to study neutrino oscillations using the NuMI beam from Fermilab’s Main Injector accelerator.
www-numi.fnal.gov/

MIPP: Main Injector Particle Production, a proposed experiment at Fermilab.
ppd.fnal.gov/experiments/e907/e907.htm

MONOLITH: Massive Observatory for Neutrino Oscillations or LImits on THeir existence. Atmospheric neutrino detector at Gran Sasso.
www.to.infn.it /monolith/

MPS: The Microdrop Particle Search at SLAC, searching for extremely massive charged particles.
www.slac.stanford.edu/exp/ mps/FCS/FCS.html

MUCOOL: MUon COOLing experiment, which hopes to develop a muon ionization cooling channel for a high-luminosity muon chamber.

NOE: Neutrino Oscillation Experiment, at Gran Sasso.
www1.na.infn.it/wsubnucl/ accel/noe/noe.html

NOMAD: Neutrino Oscillation MAgnetic Detector, at CERN.
nomadinfo.cern.ch/

NuMI: Neutrinos at the Main Injector, a project to send a beam of high-energy neutrinos from Fermilab to a detector in northern Minnesota, beginning in 2005.
www-numi-fnal.gov/

NuSEA: Nucleonic Sea, Los Alamos-led collaboration at Fermilab to measure the proton’s excess of anti-down quarks relative to anti-up quarks.
p25ext.lanl.gov/e866/e866.html

NuTeV: Neutrinos at the Tevatron, a Fermilab fixed-target experiment using a neutrino beam for precision measurement of the mass of the W boson.
www-e815.fnal .gov/NuTeV.html

OMNIS: Observatory for Multiflavor Neutrinos from Supernovae, an underground experiment at WIPP.
hwww.physics.ohiostate. edu/OMNIS/

OPERA: Oscillation Project with EmulsiontRacking Apparatus, the neutrino detector at Gran Sasso for the long-baseline experiment CNGS.
operaweb.web.cern.ch/operaweb/ index.shtml

ORLaND: Oak Ridge Large Neutrino Detector, searching for neutrino oscillations at Oak Ridge.
www.phys.subr.edu/orland/

PHENIX: Pioneering High-Energy Nuclear Interaction eXperiment, at Brookhaven.
www.phenix.bnl.gov/

PHOBOS: Not an acronym. Phobos is a moon of Mars, which was the name of the original proposed detector. Studies heavy-ion collisions at Brookhaven.
www.phobos.bnl.gov/

Pierre Auger Project: (No acronym, sometimes just “Auger”) International experiment to track down the origin of ultra-high-energy cosmic rays.
www-td-auger.fnal.gov/ projects/auger.html

pp2pp: proton-proton to proton-proton elastic scattering experiment at Brookhaven.
www.rhic.bnl.gov/pp2pp/

SDSS: Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Astrophysics project to create largest-ever three-dimensional map of the sky.
www.sdss.org/

SELEX: SEgmented Large X baryon spectrometer EXperiment. Afixed target experiment at Fermilab to study charm baryons.
fn781a.fnal.gov/

SLD: SLAC Large Detector, optimized for physics at the SLC interaction point.
wwwsld. slac.stanford.edu/sldwww/sld.html

SNO: Sudbury Neutrino Observatory. Asolar -neutrino detector near Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.
www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/

SOUDAN II: Detector in an underground laboratory in the Tower-Soudan Iron Mine in Soudan, Minnesota, to search for nucleon decay and study atmospheric neutrino physics.
hepunx.rl.ac.uk/soundan2/

STAR: Solenoidal Tracker At RHIC, looking for quark-gluon plasma at Brookhaven.
www.bnl.gov/RHIC/STAR.htm

Super-K: Super-Kamiokande experiment to detect neutrino oscillations from atmospheric neutrino flux, in Japan.
www-sk.icrr.u-tokyo .ac.jp/doc/sk/

TAPS: Two-Arm Photon Spectrometer, German experiment to measure hard photons and neutral mesons.
www.physik.unigiessen. de/taps/index.htm

UNO: Underground Nucleon decay and neutrino Observatory, located at WIPP.
superk.physics.sunysb.edu/nngroup/uno/ main.html

ZEUS: (Not an acronym, but goes with HERA) Collider experiment at DESY’s HERA.
www-zeus.desy.de/

ETC.

AIP: American Institute of Physics. Publishes Physics Today.
www.aip.org/

APS: American Physical Society. Publishes physics journals, organizes meetings and conferences, communicates to policymakers and the public.
www.aps.org/

DOE: The U.S. Department of Energy. Funds the lion’s share of U.S. HEP.
www.energy.gov/

ER: DOE’s Office of Energy Research. Funds basic science research, including HEP.
www.er.doe.gov/

HENP: DOE’s Office of High Energy and Nuclear Physics; part of ER.
www.er.doe .gov/production/ henp/henp.html

HEPAP: High Energy Physics Advisory Panel. Advisory to DOE and NSF.
www.hep.net/doe-hep/hepap_general.html

HEPIC: High Energy Physics Information Center, a clearinghouse of HEP info.
www.hep.net/

NSF: National Science Foundation. Funds university physics research, physics experiments and projects, and the HEP lab at Cornell University.
www.nsf.gov/

OSTP: Office of Science and Technology Policy. Advises the President.
www.ostp.gov/

PRL: Physical Review Letters, the main journal of the APS.
prl.aps.org/

SPIRES: Stanford Public Information REtreival System. Online gold mine of physics information.
www.slac.stanford .edu/find/spires.html

URA: Universities Research Association. Contracts with DOE to run Fermilab.
www.ura-hq.org/

An expanded version is available online: www.fnal.gov/pub/inquiring/more/acronyms.html