UK to help lead detector development of powerful Particle Collider

UK Scientists at forefront of Particle Accelerator Detector Design

UK physicists are to lead preliminary work in helping to design the detectors for the next particle accelerator in the United States, to be built at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Funding of £3million through the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) over two and a half years, will help support three work packages associated with this project:

Development of tracking detectors based on state-of-the art Monolithic Active Pixel Sensor (MAPS) technology. These are exceptionally thin silicon detectors with high position resolution and covering a large area to act like a powerful digital camera, capturing the products of the collisions in exceptional detail. This work package is led by University of Birmingham and involves the universities of Brunel, Lancaster and Liverpool together with STFC’s Particle Physics and Technology Departments at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and the Nuclear Physics Group at Daresbury Laboratory.

Development of smaller silicon-based detector arrays for particle tracking in challenging regions of very high intensity, requiring excellent rate capability and timing resolution. This work package is led by the University of Glasgow, working closely with members of the CERN, Timepix4 collaboration and STFC’s Nuclear Physics Group at Daresbury Laboratory.

Technology evaluation and advanced simulation developments for precision nucleon polarimetry. This work package is led by the University of York.

STFC Associate Director, Nuclear Physics, Justin O’Byrne said: “The UK nuclear physics community is a small yet highly impactful research community, and is international recognised for its leadership and expertise. “This early work will ultimately influence the capabilities and the scope of the experiment, and therefore the results that will come out of it. “Through this funding, we are positioning UK scientists to take a strong leadership role in influencing what the EIC detectors will be.”

The EIC will be the world’s first collider of polarised electrons with polarised protons or polarised light ions; alsothe world’s first collider of polarised electrons with heavy nuclei. This new facility will allow scientists to image, in exquisite detail, the quarks and gluons that are found inside protons and atomic nuclei, studying not only how they are distributed but also how they move and interact with one another.

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