On Monday, members of the P5 panel met at Fermilab for their second of three meetings, gathering information on the Fermilab collider program and the long-term plans of Fermilab and the U.S. particle physics program. Chaired by Abe Seiden, professor at UC Santa Cruz, the P5 panel has been charged with providing advice on how to balance the on-going collider physics programs at SLAC (PEP-II B-factory) and Fermilab (Tevatron collider) with the need to devote resources to planning and advancing the International Linear Collider and other science projects.
"Our job is to take the information and look for balance between science and budget," said Seiden, who is the US manager for the Atlas silicon subsystem and detector upgrades. "We will draft a roadmap for the field. Our first goal is to figure out the criteria by which to make the decision on how long to run the SLAC and Fermilab collider program."
Scientists from CDF and DZero gave presentations on the discovery potential of Run II and the performance of the Tevatron as well as the collider detectors (talks are available online). Fermilab Director Pier Oddone provided an overview of Fermilab's long-term plan and how it intersects with the startup of the LHC and the schedule of the ILC project. He pointed out that the current U.S. accelerator program is the leading program in the world with regard to the neutrino frontier, the flavor frontier, and the energy frontier.
"We do have the greatest window [of discovery] before the LHC turns on," he said, pointing out that the difference in reaching 4 or 8 inverse femtobarns at the Tevatron makes a big difference in terms of discovery. But he stressed the importance of the ILC for the lab and the U.S. high-energy physics program. "The ILC is the highest priority initiative for the lab. It presents an incredibly rich program, and that's what motivates us to put so many resources in this machine."
The P5 panel is a subpanel of the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel that advises DOE and NSF. Following the June, 2005 charge letter, it held its first meeting in Washington, D.C., where panel members received presentations from DOE and NSF, from scientists involved in other studies (APS neutrino study, EPP2010 committee), and from scientists involved in the LHC and the ILC. In October, the P5 panel will meet at SLAC to review the B-factory program. The panel will submit its report with advice on the collider programs in November. A second report, recommending a roadmap for U.S. particle physics within a global context, is expected in early 2006.
—Kurt Riesselmann
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