Memorandum submitted by Marco Ripani and
Paul Stoler (FC 85)
The anticipated cuts of funding for Nuclear
Physics research in the UK have left us deeply concerned. We fear
that the UK, one of the leading nations in this field, risks the
demise of one of its scientifically and strategically most valuable
areas of science.
The CLAS collaboration, which we represent,
is a large-scale multinational research collaboration of 244 scientists
from eight countries and performs leading edge and next generation
nuclear physics experiments utilizing the powerful electron accelerator
available at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility
(or Jefferson Lab), located in Newport News, Virginia, USA. We
are investigating the structure of atomic nuclei, which are at
the very heart of all matter in the universe.
The nuclear physics groups in Glasgow and Edinburgh
have played an important role in this cornerstone field of modern
physical sciences from the very beginning, and in the CLAS collaboration
since its inception more than 10 years ago. If these severe reductions
in the UK's funding for Nuclear Physics were implemented, there
would be a great deal of scientific excellence lost, or at least
severely damaged. Projects like CLAS play an essential role in
the recruitment and training of new young talent for future scientific
and industrial innovation, which are put at risk by severe cuts
in physical science budgets.
During the past decade the CLAS collaboration
has produced numerous publications of experimental results in
high impact peer-reviewed scientific journals, and UK scientists
have been the leading authors on many of these experiments. In
addition, UK institutions have played a significant role in many
major European nuclear physics projects.
At this time, Jefferson Lab is undertaking a
$300 million energy upgrade which will be completed in 2014. This
will allow us to expand significantly on our potential for unravelling
the structure of strongly interacting particles (hadrons) and
find out how quarks and gluons bind together to form protons,
neutrons and nuclei. The JLab upgrade project, and in particular
the CLAS12 experiment, provides an important bridge between Europe
and the USA. European institutions, in particular those in the
United Kingdom, have been playing a very significant part, both
with respect to providing manpower and funding. A withdrawal of
the United Kingdom at this stage would mean pulling out of a highly
successful and promising enterprise. It would severely damage
the UK Nuclear Physics groups that participate in CLAS and CLAS12.
We hope that serious consideration will be given
to the consequences of these dramatic budget cuts for this, as
well as for other prominent activities involving nuclear scientists
in the UK.
Marco Ripani
Paul Stoler
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