The goal of this proposal is to realize the physics discoveries made possible by the investments of the U.S. NSF, the U.S. DOE, and others in the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The community of U.S.physicists working on CMS comprises approximately 930 individuals from 49 institutions. This proposal encompasses the activities needed to create the conditions for those individuals to carry out their research.
Intellectual Merit: Discoveries made at the LHC could have revolutionary effects on our understanding of the unification of forces, the origin and stability of matter, the ultimate underpinnings of the observable universe, and the nature of space-time itself. The LHC, which began operation at ?ãs = 7 TeV in 2010, is expected to reach its design energy (14 TeV) and luminosity (10**34 cm−2s−1) during the period covered by this proposal. Early physics papers from CMS have demonstrated the excellent performance of the detector and the analysis chain. The collaboration is poised to explore the standard model Higgs mechanism during the next few years and will probe a wide range of possible phenomena that lie beyond the standard model. U.S. physicists, who constitute approximately 30% of the CMS collaboration, have led many of the early analyses and have made important contributions to virtually all of them. U.S. groups are well positioned to continue this leadership into the discovery phase of LHC operations. It is thus essential to ensure that the detectors developed, constructed, and brought into operation by U.S. groups continue to function at the highest levels of performance; and that data acquired by CMS is made available for analysis by U.S. physicists. There are four main funding categories covered by this proposal: Detector Maintenance and Operations (M&O) and Software and Computing (S&C), Detector Upgrade R&D, and Common Operations, which includes education and outreach (E&O). The uses of the combined resources of the NSF and the DOE on CMS are managed by the U.S. CMS Operations program and are monitored by the Joint Oversight Group (JOG) composed of representatives of the two agencies.
Broader Impacts: LHC research includes advances in technology in several areas, support for university scientific infrastructure, and the opportunity to attract students and the general public to exciting frontier science. Numerous outreach and education possibilities exist, many of which are already being implemented in programs such as QuarkNet. The extensive computing facilities and the interconnecting networks that were established in the past few years will be maintained and expanded. The CMS detector contains a variety of subsystems with numerous technological challenges in areas such as radiation hardness of materials and circuits, precision measurement of ionizing radiation, precision alignment, high-density inter-connecting of electrical signals, and many aspects of computing and data transfer. CMS institutions, often working with industry, have made or implemented innovations in these areas, and R&D continues as part of this proposal. The engineers, technicians, and computer professionals supported in conjunction with the proposed work will maintain and/or add much-needed infrastructure at their respective institutions, facilitating future educational and research opportunities while maintaining a reservoir of the hard-won knowledge gained thus far in building the CMS detector.
