This proposal requests funds to empower physicists at U.S. Universities to realize the physics discoveries made possible by the U.S. investment of the DOE and the NSF in building the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. This is an essential part of a broad effort to maximize the scientific return at the high energy frontier. The LHC will commence operation in 2007, opening a new regime in particle physics up to and beyond the TeV energy scale. The unprecedented energy range and luminosity of this new accelerator are expected to lead to discoveries of new elementary particles and novel behaviors of the fundamental forces. Such discoveries at the smallest distance scales 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.
U.S. physicists, who constitute approximately 23% of collaborating LHC scientists, are mostly based at U.S. universities. This fact underlies the basis of this proposal, namely that in order to fully exploit the ambitious and rich scientific program at the LHC, researchers at U.S. universities must have the necessary resources required for full participation in all phases of the scientific program. This opportunity brings with it ongoing responsibilities: to ensure that the detectors developed and constructed by U.S. CMS physicists function and are maintained at full capability and that the data are acquired efficiently and made available for analysis by the U.S. members of the CMS collaboration. A partnership of universities and laboratories is sharing the development of Data Grids to provide a comprehensive framework for collaborative research and training, supporting coordinated data analysis on an unprecedented scale at facilities at many locations in the U.S. and around the world.
The broader impact of the research includes advances in technology, support for university scientific infrastructure, and the opportunity to attract students and the public to exciting frontier science. Numerous outreach possibilities exist which are already being implemented in programs such as QuarkNet. Extensive computer networks are being built as collaborative tools for the LHC, and they can also be used to share the excitement of discovery with non-collaborators.
