In June 2014, APC organised in Paris, France, the first International Meeting for Large Neutrino Infrastructures since the very large scale of future neutrino infrastructures imposes international coordination and collaboration in order to be realised. The agencies and laboratory directors agreed that the understanding of the neutrino sector is a worldwide priority promising physics beyond the Standard Model, in a unified theoretical framework that goes from the Electroweak Scale to the highest energy scales. This programme is complementary to neutrino related measurements made in cosmology and provides crucial input to the knowledge of the Universe. Key representatives of funding agencies and key proposers of neutrino infrastructures from all the regions of the world were gathered to assess the opportunities of global scale collaborations and eventually set up the forum and tools for the accompaniment of the global coordination effort. A widely cited common press release of the funding agencies that took part in the meeting was released. Many actions followed this meeting considered to be a turning point for the convergence of the scientists of the field to very few global or globally oriented projects.
International Meeting for Large Neutrino Infrastructures
The agencies1 and laboratory directors2 gathered at the International Meeting on Large Neutrino Infrastructures hosted by APPEC3 in Paris on 23 and 24 June 2014, agreed that the understanding of the neutrino sector is a worldwide priority promising physics beyond the Standard Model, in a unified theoretical framework that goes from the Electroweak Scale to the highest energy scales. Furthermore, this program is complementary to neutrino related measurements made in cosmology and provides crucial input to the knowledge of the Universe.
They further examined the neutrino program developing internationally relating to experiments using accelerator beams, reactors, cosmic rays and underground laboratories. They were pleased with the first efforts of coordination of the neutrino community in the above domains.
Concerning the first domain, they welcome the recent approval by the CERN council of the medium-term CERN plan, consistent with the European Strategy document, including the hosting of a neutrino platform at CERN for R&D and prototyping for the next generation of neutrino detectors, as the main CERN investment to the development of a worldwide program.
They also welcome the proposed upgrade of the J-PARC beam and the proposal to construct Hyper-Kamiokande, a megaton scale water Cherenkov detector with large international participation in Kamioka. These upgrades are clearly the continuation of Japan’s tradition of maintaining a leading neutrino program.
They support the vision of the HEPAP/P5 report to host an international facility for short and long-baseline neutrino oscillations at Fermilab, where internationally driven collaborations are encouraged to propose a program optimised in baseline and detector technology. This approach, in parallel with the decision of Fermilab to upgrade its beam infrastructure (PIP-II) gives the opportunity for a rich international neutrino program at Fermilab.
The agencies and laboratory directors invite the neutrino scientific community to develop urgently a coherent international program which exploits the above opportunities. They will meet again in early 2015 in the U.S.A, to evaluate the progress made with respect to this goal.
Furthermore, the situation concerning the “neutrino anomalies” needs to be clarified. This will be addressed by the neutrino short baseline program mentioned above and by smaller scale endeavours putting neutrino sources near the detector.
In the reactor related domain, there are currently two large projects in development in Asia. The approved JUNO experiment located in China, whose goal is to determine the mass hierarchy by using reactor neutrinos while also performing precision measurement of oscillation parameters, studies of supernova neutrinos, geo-neutrinos, solar and atmospheric neutrinos. The JUNO proto-collaboration welcomes more international participation. In parallel, the RENO-50 proposal, with quite similar characteristics, is under evaluation in Korea.
The neutrino mass hierarchy and sinθ23 octant will also be measured through atmospheric neutrinos a) in INO, a 50 kton magnetized iron detector in India, that will start deployment in a few years, calling for international participation to increase its size to 100 kton to address the mass hierarchy problem on a shorter time scale, b) through the proposed upgrades of the neutrino observatory ICECUBE (PINGU) and the projected KM3NeT (ORCA).
Last but not least, there is a rich physics program in development both for single beta and neutrino-less double beta decay measurements currently probing the quasi-degenerate region of neutrino masses. The next ambitious goal for double-beta decay is the coverage in sensitivity of the inverted mass-hierarchy region; achieving this goal will require large enrichment of isotopes and ton scale detectors, boosting the scale of the experiments and therefore demanding international collaborations for their construction. The agencies urge the underground laboratory directors to prepare the ground for an international evaluation in 2-3 years time leading to a selection of the most promising technologies for the next generation detectors worldwide.
While the agencies and the laboratory directors recognise that to realise the success of the above projects there will be a need for investment in theory and necessary support measurements, this document should not be interpreted as a funding endorsement.
Finally, the agencies and the laboratory directors will seek the advice of the Neutrino ICFA panel4 as well as the IUPAP working group of Astroparticle Physics International Committee (APPIC)5 on all the above issues.
Contact:
Stavros Katsanevas
Mobile: +33 6 07 95 31 94
1 In the meeting the agencies were represented by (in agency alphabetical order): J. Siegrist (associate director Department Of Energy, DOE) J. Martino (director Institut National de Physique Nucléaire et Physique des Particules, IN2P3/CNRS), A. Masiero (deputy director Insituto Nationale de Fisica Nucleare, INFN), H. Tanaka (representing the National Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, NSERC) and J. Womersley (Chief Executive of Science et Technology Facilities Council, STFC). G.Patry (president and CEO of the Canada Foundation of Innovation, CFI) also participated as an observer.
2 In the meeting the directors of laboratory present were (in laboratory alphabetical order): S.Bertolucci director of research at CERN, N. Lockyer director of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Y. Wang director of Institute of High Energy Physics, IHEP of Beijing, N. Mondal director of the India-Based Neutrino Observatory, INO, P. Chomaz director of the Institut de Recherche sur les lois Fondamentales de l’Univers, IRFU/DSM/CEA, Y. Okada executive director of the High Energy Accelerator Research Organisation, KEK in Japan, F. Piquemal director of the Laboratoire Souterrain de Modane, LSM and N. Smith director of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory, SNOLAB.
3 Astroparticle Physics European Consortium (APPEC) www.appec.org
There has been extraordinary progress in the understanding of neutrino properties during the last 15 years. Nevertheless, a few important parameters for particle physics and cosmology need yet to be determined, chief amongst them: the neutrino mass hierarchy and absolute scale, the determination of the CP violation parameter, the existence or not of sterile neutrinos.
While the present generation experiments will certainly give hints for the range of the above parameters, very large-scale experiments will be needed to fully accomplish the task. These very large-scale experiments will also naturally have astrophysics potential and increase the sensitivity of the searches for proton disintegration.
The very large scale of these infrastructures imposes international coordination and collaboration in order to be realized. The aim of the International Meeting for Large Neutrino Infrastructures (IMLNI) that will take place in Paris on the 23rd and 24th of June 2014 is to gather key representatives of funding agencies and key proposers of neutrino infrastructures from all the regions of the world to assess the opportunities of global scale collaborations and eventually set up the forum and tools for the accompaniment of the global coordination effort.
The meeting is hosted by APPEC and is prepared in close contact with large funding agencies and the ICFA neutrino panel.
The Cherenkov Telescope Array (CTA) is the planned next generation ground-based very-high-energy gamma ray observatory; an open infrastructure, it will serve a wide particle astrophysics community for many years to come. The CTA will be composed of two arrays, one in the northern hemisphere and one in the south, and aims to push the sensitivity to gamma-ray fluxes down by more than an order of magnitude compared to current instruments. In addition, by using a combination of different-sized telescopes (large (LST), medium (MST) and small (SST) size telescopes), a wide energy range, from about 20 GeV to about 300 TeV, will be covered. Finally, the use of many telescopes will provide unprecedented angular resolution. In the baseline design, the CTA southern array, which will be larger in order to take advantage of its favorable exposure to the Galactic plane, will be composed of up to 70 SSTs, 25 MSTs and 4 LSTs. The northern array will concentrate on extragalactic objects and is not expected to contain SSTs.
2014 will be a crucial one for the CTA Collaboration
The first piece of news is the change of the Project Manager. After 3 years of dedicated work for CTA, John Carr stepped down at the end of 2013. A new Project Manager, Christopher Townsley, has now been appointed. Christopher earned his PhD in Physics in 2003 and since then has worked as project manager for big commercial projects, such as the London Railway Network, and for science projects such as FAIR, the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research. Christopher was welcomed to CTA by the Project Committee in January, and started his new adventure in CTA. Let’s wish him good luck for his new challenge in this fascinating project, and John all the best for the future.
This year’s real cornerstone will be choice of the site; this will make it possible to start the project substantively.. After years of study of the site characteristics and of simulation of the array, a site ranking , endorsed by the Project Committee and the Collaboration Board, has been proposed to the Resource Board. CTA is now in the next phase, in which negotiation with the host countries has started, and a study of the relative costs of the different options is on-going. All of CTA’s work packages will soon know for which particular site simulations and hardware will have to be fine-tuned and finalized.
Another achievement expected this year is the completion of many telescope prototypes. One MST and three SST designs, one employing a single mirror (SST-1M) and two using a dual-mirror design (SST-2M), will be completed. Prototypes of the MST and the SST-1M structures have already been deployed in Berlin (Fig. 1.a) and Krakow (Fig1.b) respectively, and in the second half of 2014 the ASTRI SST-2M prototype will be deployed on Mount Etna in Italy and the SST-GATE dual-mirror telescope will be deployed in Paris. Prototypes of the different camera solutions, using both the traditional photomultiplier tubes and newer silicon-based detectors, will be tested on the telescope structures. These prototypes will be of fundamental importance for assessing the design performance and applying improvements before the pre-production phase. All these activities will culminate in the Critical Design Review of the whole project, which is scheduled for late 2014.
CTA’s project organization also sees a turning point in 2014. The present preparatory phase, funded by FP7, is ending. For the next phase, during which talks about site deployment will start, it would be useful to establish an interim legal entity to bridge the present organization towards the final open observatory. Different options are under discussion for both this intermediate phase and also for the long-term organization of CTA. At present it seems that a German GmbH is the most straightforward option for the interim entity. A final word on this should arrive soon, but the discussion about the evolution of the whole organization towards the final observatory, which involves many different organizations, including the funding agencies, is unlikely to stop any time soon.
Many fundamental things are going to happen in 2014 for the CTA project at every level – technical, scientific and managerial. Let’s wish this challenging and interesting project bon voyage – and please stay tuned to hear further exciting news!!
On 10 April 2014, the 12 country delegates mandated by their governments to decide about the start of site negotiations for CTA met in Munich. They took note of the report of the international Site Selection Committee (SSC) and thanked the members of the SSC as well as the CTA consortium for their extensive inputs on the merits of the proposed sites.
The delegates representing Argentina, Austria, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Namibia, Poland, Spain, South Africa, Switzerland and the UK decided, based on the 75% majority required, to start the negotiations on the two sites in the southern hemisphere, namely Aar in Namibia and ESO* in Chile, keeping Leoncito in Argentina as a third option. After negotiations finally one site will be selected at the end of the year. With the selection of the potential telescope sites in the southern hemisphere an important step towards the realization of the international Cherenkov Telescope Array has been made.
As far as the northern site of the CTA Observatory is concerned – candidate sites are located in Mexico, Spain and the USA – further considerations are necessary. Therefore, the delegates decided to postpone their decision and to ask the CTA board of agency representatives – the Resource Board – to take this forward.The decision for the negotiations about the northern hemisphere site will be taken as soon as possible.
“We are very happy that this important step has been reached” said B. Vierkorn-Rudolph, chair of the CTA Resource Board. “CTA will be a unique large-scale infrastructure for astronomy – with this decision we now can start the negotiations with the potential site countries in the southern hemisphere and advance the implementation of CTA.” The spokesperson of the CTA Consortium, Professor Werner Hofmann said “The site choice is on the critical path towards implementing CTA; this decision represents a major step forward and we appreciate very much the engagement and support of the funding agencies and the country delegates involved in the decision”.
CTA – the Cherenkov Telescope Array – is a multinational, worldwide project to construct a unique instrument exploring the cosmos at the highest photon energies. Over 1000 scientists and engineers from 5 continents, 28 countries and over 170 research institutes participate in the CTA project. CTA will provide an order-of-magnitude jump in sensitivity over current instruments, providing novel insights into some of the most extreme processes in the Universe. CTA will consist of over 100 Cherenkov telescopes of 23-m, 12-m and 4-m dish size located at one site in the southern and a smaller site in the northern hemisphere. Potential candidate sites have been identified in the northern and southern hemisphere. Extensive studies of the environmental conditions, simulations of the science performance and assessments of costs of construction were conducted. The Site Selection Committee, composed of international experts in the evaluation of sites for astronomical observatories, has reviewed the studies and provided an independent assessment of the various candidate sites.
Please note, profiles of colleagues who registered as evaluators in FP7 are not automatically transferred to the new database. You must log in at the above website and confirm your profile again to be registered again as evaluator for Horizon 2020.
The discovery of cosmic high energy neutrinos with IceCube has been awarded by the PHYSICS WORLD magazine as the breakthrough of the year 2013. An interview with Maarten de Jong, Professor at NIKHEF and spokesperson of KM3NeT.
Maarten, the IceCube Collaboration has been awarded the PHYSICS WORLD breakthrough of the year 2013. What do you feel about this as (1) a neutrino physicist and (2) as the responsible project manager of KM3NeT?
Maarten de Jong: I appreciate this recognition for the important achievements of the IceCube collaboration. The latest results do not only consolidate the relatively new field of neutrino astronomy, they put neutrino astronomy at the heart of the wider astroparticle physics programme. While IceCube has shown that the detection of cosmic neutrinos is possible today, the foreseeable future may tell us the answers to many long-standing questions such as: what is the origin of cosmic rays and how do cosmic particle accelerators work?
The recent observations by IceCube represent a major boost to the KM3NeT project. I am delighted because it validates my firm believe that neutrino astronomy has a bright future and because KM3NeT is now in an ideal position to fulfil this future.
The neutrino window to the cosmos has now really been opened by IceCube?
Maarten de Jong: Yes, now it is time to look through the window and see what is behind.
How about the science case of KM3NeT, frozen in concrete by the Icecube results?
Maarten de Jong: IceCube demonstrates the requirements, in particular the size, for building a neutrino telescope capable to detect cosmic neutrinos. Compared to IceCube, an experiment in water offers a better angular resolution and can be easier expanded to a larger sensitive volume. KM3NeT will provide the capability for really doing neutrino astronomy.
Furthermore, IceCube and KM3NeT complement each other to cover the full sky. Scientifically very interesting, the field of view of KM3NeT includes the central region of our Galaxy, which hosts many potential sources of high-energy neutrinos. So, KM3NeT may well be the first to identify the sources of the observed high-energy neutrinos.
And let’s face it, as an underwater infrastructure KM3NeT offers a lot of opportunities that go far beyond neutrino astronomy. Antares demonstrates that there is synergy with Earth and sea sciences.
Can you explain what is KM3NeT phase-1.5?
Maarten de Jong: Following the design study and preparatory phase, the KM3NeT “phase-1” project was launched in January 2013 with an available budget of about 31M euro. The costs for the complete infrastructure, which we call “phase-2”, amount to about 220–250M euro. During a joint meeting with Antares, IceCube, KM3NeT and Lake Baikal in October 2013, the idea of an intermediate phase emerged. The main objective of “phase-1.5” is to be as sensitive as IceCube and measure the IceCube signal with different systematics, improved resolution, and complementary field of view.
IceCube’s technology has been developed in the 1990s/early 2000s, which is more than 10 years ago. Concerning KM3NeT, what major technology developments have been made since that time?
KM3NeT DOM at Nikhef
Maarten de Jong: In general, a neutrino telescope consists of a huge three-dimensional array of photosensors deployed in a transparent medium such as deep water or ice. Among many developments made to increase sensitivity and reduce costs I would like to emphasize that the last decade demonstrated that even the well-known photo-multiplier tube (PMT) technology could be advanced to substantially higher sensitivities. Compared to the traditionally used large PMTs of typically 10 inch size inside a glass sphere, KM3NeT developed an alternative based on incorporating many newly designed small PMTs of 3 inch size inside the same glass sphere. This design helped maximizing the total photo-cathode area, improving photon counting and directionality and reducing costs. The KM3NeT design has attracted interest from other scientific groups as well as industry for the implementation of the low-power high voltage. Following the demand of KM3NeT, the price of small PMTs is now competitive -if not better- compared to large PMTs. In addition to a price reduction, the segmentation of the photo-cathode brings in better data for science. This is like in your digital camera: more pixels yield a better picture!
The readout of the detector is based on the “All-data-to-shore” concept pioneered in Antares. In this, all analogue signals from the PMTs are digitized and all digital data are sent to shore for real-time processing by a farm of commodity PCs. Modern electronics and fiber-optics combined with state-of-the-art firmware and software provide for a flexible and cost-effective implementation of the readout system.
All in all, the costs for the KM3NeT detector are significantly less than those of previous detectors. In short, the KM3NeT telescope will be at least five times larger than IceCube for less than double of the price. In this respect, KM3NeT can be considered as the next generation neutrino telescope.
As a final question for today: In the global context, where do you place KM3NeT?
Maarten de Jong: In October 2013, the Antares, IceCube, KM3NeT and Lake Baikal collaborations signed the Memorandum of Understanding for a Global Neutrino Network (GNN). This step formalized the already active cooperation between the different groups. Once infrastructures of similar scale are operational on the three continents, the stated aim of the GNN is a worldwide Global Neutrino Observatory.
After signing the MoU on GNN: From left to right Christian Spiering (DESY, Zeuthen), Maarten de Jong (Nikhef, Amsterdam) Tyce deYoung (PennState Univ., University College), Zhan-Arys Dzhilkibaev (INR, Moscow), Juan-José Hernandez-Rey (Univ. Valencia), Paschal Coyle (CPPM, Marseille), Olga Botner (Univ. Uppsala), Uli Katz (Univ. Erlangen).
The idea to closer link the neutrino telescope projects underwater and in ice has been discussed in the international community of high-energy neutrino astrophysicists for several years. Finally, at October 15 of this year, representatives of the collaborations ANTARES, BAIKAL, IceCube and KM3NeT signed a Memorandum of Understanding on a Global Neutrino Network (GNN). The signature act (see picture) was part of the annual common meeting of all four collaborations, this time in Munich.
GNN aims for a closer collaboration and a more coherent strategy among the neutrino telescope communities and for exploitation of the resulting synergistic effects. It will serve as a forum for formalizing and further developing the present annual Mediterranean-Antarctic Neutrino Telescope Symposium (MANTS) meetings and biannual international workshop on Very Large Volume Neutrino Telescopes (VLVNT).
Goal of GNN include the coordination of alert and multi-messenger policies, exchange and mutual checks of software, creation of a common software pool, establishing a common legacy of public documents, developing standards for data representation, cross-checks of results with different systematics, the organization of schools, and other forms of exchanging expertise, e.g. through mutual working visits of scientists and engineers or by forming ad-hoc advisory committees of members of the four participating collaborations.
No doubt, the recent evidence for extraterrestrial neutrinos by IceCube gave wings to GNN and encourages KM3NeT (Mediterranean Sea) and GVD (Lake Baikal) to focus their efforts towards a first Northern cubic kilometre detector and to ask for appropriate funding. At the same time, also IceCube considers extension of its present configuration. Once the Northern projects KM3NeT will have evolved to a comparable scale as IceCube, GNN might be even develop into a more formal consortium, tentatively christened GNO (Global Neutrino Observatory).
The APPEC Horizon 2020 Workshop on November 4/5, 2013 has put the magnifying glass on the coming EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation
This time the big questions were not about fundamental research in astroparticle physics, but what to expect from the new Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (Horizon 2020). Very soon, with the adoption of the Horizon 2020 work programme on December 11, 2013 the first calls for proposal shall be published, the most recent draft documents can be found online. It is important to note that first deadlines will already be in April 2014.
More than 120 astroparticle physicists from 12 European countries followed the invitation to attend the APPEC workshop at DESY in Zeuthen. The aim of the workshop was to provide participants with firsthand information on funding opportunities for both, individual researchers as well as groups applying for collaborative projects.
Structure of Horizon 2020
Horizon 2020 is structured in three pillars: excellent science, industrial leadership, and societal challenges. While it is not excluded that there may be opportunities also in the last two pillars, excellent science is the main target for basic research and thus was put in the focus of the workshop.
On the first day, EU experts from National Contact Points (NCPs) presented the various funding instruments based on the currently available information. Together with the general conditions to apply for the European Research Council (ERC) grants and Marie Skłodowska Curie Actions (MSCA) the experts gave practical advice on competitive proposal writing and changes in comparison to the 7th Framework Programme (FP7).
Giorgio Rossi, the vice chair of the Physical Sciences and Engineering (PSE) strategy working group of ESFRI (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures), was invited to present the ESFRI strategy and the relation to Horizon 2020. He reported on the European Commission’s goal to have 60% of the projects on the current ESFRI roadmap implemented in 2015. Therefore, ESFRI initiated an assessment of all projects (including the two astroparticle RIs CTA and KM3NeT) concerning the management, governance, and financial aspects. The results are summarized in the high level expert group report “Assessing the projects on the ESFRI roadmap”.
A fourth presentation took a detailed look at the topic Future Emerging Technologies (FET), a programme with several funding instruments to support R&D projects closely linked to application. For instance, the thematically open calls within FET-Open shall allow submitting proposals for exploring novel ideas almost anytime.
On the second day, the workshop continued with parallel working groups (conveners in parenthesis) thematically focusing on:
Cosmic Rays (A. Haungs)
Gamma Rays (J. Knapp)
Gravitational Waves (M. Punturo)
Underground Physics (L. Baudis)
Underwater Research (P. Coyle)
Neutrinos (M. Mezzetto)
Computing (G. Lamanna)
Theory (A. Masiero)
Technology (S. Katsanevas)
The individual groups were asked to develop ideas and strategies for collaborative projects and coordinate proposals for the upcoming calls in 2014 and 2015. The results have been presented to the full audience; the presentations can be accessed at the APPEC workshop website. In the final discussion of the workshop it has been agreed that APPEC shall continue to collect and prepare all relevant Horizon 2020 information for the community. The working groups shall act as the information hubs into the entire astroparticle physics community, so if you want to be part of any of these groups please fill in this formand/or please get in touch with the convener(s) of your preferred topic(s).
