China: Marshal in particle physics

ILC giant accelerator model (International Linear Collider) of the European Nuclear Research Organization CERN.The ILC machine will depend very much on the results of China's current particle physics research

It was the particle physics of Mao Zedong's passion that left behind for generations after a fortune. Continuously since 1989, in a building that occupies the entire city block of Beijing City, Chinese physicists have quietly experimented with firing electrons and positron particles at a rate close to the speed of light, in crush a tunnel 73m12 in diameter, and then blast the two particles together in small fireballs of energy.

Golden chance of particle physics

During those years, tests on Beijing accelerators yielded quite good results when compared to the more famous and larger accelerators, in locations of large miles and energy of billions of billions of electrons (electron volts). For example, the Tevatron at the Fermi National Accelerator lab, also known as Fermilab, in Chicago, and the LHC (Large Hardon Collider) accelerator, is expected to be launched in 2008 at the CERN lab, near Geneva.

In the autumn, the Beijing accelerator (currently inactive for upgrading) will be revived with the ability to generate 100 times more explosions than before, allowing physicists to study rescuing quantum properties is said to be attractive and solves some of the remaining quark problems.

At the end of this decade, when physicists around the world turned their concerns and finances into a new CERN (European Nuclear Research Organization) accelerator, experiments at the center Stanford Linear Accelerator of Menlo Park, California and at Fermilab are expected to be stopped. Therefore, the Beijing accelerator will be one of the few particle accelerators that continue to carry out the remaining experiments in the world. And so, Chinese physicists are looking forward to collaboration. In the magazine

Physicist Chen-Ning Yang (born 1922), Nobel Prize in Physics 1957

Symmetry physics, Hesheng Chen, director of Beijing's Institute of High-Energy Physics, said: "Although collaboration is still not much, golden opportunities are present in China."

More importantly, Chinese particle physicists are willing to contribute to the greatest project ever: a giant accelerator also known as the ILC project (International Linear Collider - a Linear Accelerator). international). Physicists around the world determine that it will be the next big machine, but how much it will cost billions of dollars and where it will be built is still being considered.

Road to the top

Until the early 1970s, after the troubles of the Cultural Revolution began to subside, Chinese physics began to recover. Taking the opportunity of Mao's enthusiastic support, Prime Minister Zhou Enlai advocated the development of high-energy physics, expecting to quietly install a Chinese particle accelerator. What has not been anticipated is that particle physics is closely related to atomic weapons.

Mr. Zhou received the support of Chinese scientists from abroad, who started visiting his homeland, like Mr. Chen-Ning Yang, who was working at New York University and Mr. Tsung-Dao Lee from Columbia University. Both of these men have won the Nobel Prize and have appreciated the importance of Mao's basic research and others.

After visiting the laboratories in Western Europe in 1973, a group of Chinese physicists returned with the determination to build an accelerator that would blast protons together at an energy level of 50. billion electronic volts. When visiting China for the first time

Tsung-Dao Lee physicist (born 1926), won the 1957 Nobel Prize with Chen-Ning Yang

In 1976, shortly after the Tangshan earthquake killed hundreds of thousands of people and after the death of two Chinese leaders, Wolfgang Panofsky, the former director of the Stanford accelerator, was impressed by the aspirations of the people. China continues its work, though many people at that time lived in pavements on the street.

But Mr. Panofsky and others, including Mr. Lee, thought that a less ostentatious machine would be more useful for China. Mr. Panofsky said: "We convinced them not to do that." In 1982, amid the economic downturn, the proton machine was canceled in favor of a new machine expected to produce collisions between electrons and positrons with much lower energy levels, at about 2 billion electron volts. Such a machine will produce a sinchrotron radiation that is very useful for the health sector as well as other industries, and also has a role in studying particles. The accelerator place has been moved from an area outside Beijing City, near the Ming Tombs, into the city.

Prime Minister Dang Xiaoping was also present at the groundbreaking ceremony at that time. Mr. Panofsky recalls when he came to Beijing to present physics and accelerator: "Mr. Binh kept us for 90 minutes with a presentation praising the magic of high energy physics. To learn asking for a job, a group of 30 Chinese accelerator engineers spent a summer on the Stanford accelerator. And after only 4 years, a surprisingly short time, Beijing accelerator was born with The size was based on the size that could be achieved at the time, but it turned out to be a random choice, said Chen, who worked at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1980s. The energy is lower, but it's more amazing. "

Frontier left open

Beijing Institute of High Energy Physics

The energy range of the Beijing accelerator in the range of 1-2.2 billion volts of electrons in each cluster, which contains many difficult physical problems, remains unexplored, including tau-a type of electricity. ultra-fat element (superfat electron), and another type of particle called J / psi. J / psi - consisting of a pair of quarks, which each particle exhibits particle characteristics known as a gravitational force - has sparked a revolution and brought Nobel prizes when it was delivered currently in 1974.

University of Hawaii physics professor Frederick A. Harris, who often works with Beijing accelerators, said: "There are many things that are operating in that energy region." By adjusting the energy levels of the colliding beams, Chinese researchers were able to measure the mass of the tau particles very accurately, as well as conducting detailed studies of J / psi and particles. the same, similar.

When physicists at CERN started the new LHC accelerator with the aim of colliding protons with 7 billion volt electron energy to find new particles and unified physical rules. new, the Beijing data on this parameter will be very important for their studies. "It all depends on measurements made in China at low energy levels," Harris explained. The improvement of the Beijing accelerator will further expand China's dominion in this energy zone, allowing experiments to collect more data 100 times.

The accelerator of Beijing's High Energy Physics Institute has been upgraded with an investment of 77.3 million USD in 2004.

The ILC accelerator is expected to fire electrons and positron particles together with an energy source of 500 billion volts of electrons, through a 20-mile tunnel. Because this accelerator is planned to keep up with the discoveries made at CERN at a cost of several billion dollars, it may not be approved by governments that are preoccupied with resolving the financial recovery problem for until the end of this decade, when the new accelerator CERN will have something to show.

However, the race for the location has begun. The host country of the accelerator will have advantages when it comes to being the center of 21st century physics, though it will incur larger costs than other countries. And China is a heavyweight candidate.

Particle accelerators have their power based on the equilibrium theory of Einstein's famous mass and energy. Placing more and more energy into that tiny ball of fire, physicists are getting closer to the conditions for a big bang explosion, and more and more large and strange particles are created - what has been recognized by the laws of physics.

Ngan Giang