This University research team is focused on the highest energies produced at accelerators. The most powerful accelerator in existence today is the Tevatron at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory outside Chicago. The Tevatron is currently exploring the lower reaches of the Terascale and may make important new discoveries regarding the Higgs boson and the possible existence of new particles predicted in some extensions of the Standard Model before it is scheduled to be shut down by the end of the decade. However, the next major set of discoveries is likely to come from a very exciting set of experiments at a new accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva, Switzerland, which is scheduled to begin operating in 2007. This machine will enable physicists to explore energy regions inaccessible to Fermilab's Tevatron. The LHC is a project of the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN), an international laboratory established in 1954 as a joint venture of 12 European countries; CERN currently has 20 member states, all from Europe. The LHC will make CERN the most important center in the world for particle physics over the next decade. The United States has participated both in building the accelerator and in the large collaborations that are building the detectors. U.S. participation, including Notre Dame has been an important component in realizing this tremendous scientific opportunity.
Notre Dame is a leader in the national education/outreach project called Quarknet, whose purpose is to involve high-school teachers and their students in state-of-the-art research that seeks to resolve some of the mysteries about the structure of matter and the fundamental forces of nature. QuarkNet provides an opportunity for high school science teachers to participate in frontier physics research. Teachers will be integrated into a research group in elementary particle physics at Notre=Dame and other institutions. QuarkNet is a nationwide network that also provides opportunities for participating science teachers to exchange knowledge and experience with their peers.
