This award supports a collaborative research project between a US team, headed by Professor Yasar Onel, Department of Physics, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, and a Turkish team headed by Professor Mehmet Zeyrek, Department of Physics, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. These scientists plan to work on the development of special calorimeters capable of operating in very high radiation environments. Such calorimeters are important in the field of experimental particle physics, and will be used in a subsystem (the Very Forward Calorimeter HF) of the high-energy physics experiment, Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The two teams will study the detailed scheme of the calorimeter configuration and assembly scenario, test the performance of appropriate engineering solutions of some critical components of the quartz fiber (QF) calorimeter which has been selected for the HF environment, and perform the relevant simulation of expected calorimeter performance and give a recommendation for design optimization.
Scope: This project will support collaboration between two scientific teams with complementary qualifications and institutional facilities. The US scientist has been quite active in experimental particle physics with funding from the University of Iowa and the Department of Energy. He will include with him in this effort from his university two professors and several graduate students. The Turkish team includes several professors and graduate students from M.E.T.U. and from Cukurova University in Adana, Turkey. Both universities have been active in high-energy physics research in collaboration with CERN. The Turkish science agency (TUBITAK) is contributing SFr. 1.0M to the CMS-HF construction project, indicating a strong commitment to this research. The project fits well within the objectives of the Division of International Programs for support of mutually beneficial collaborative research.
