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Projects and facilities

Projects and facilities

Brookhaven chosen to host major US nuclear physics facility

10 Jan 2020
Ariel view of the Brookhaven National Laboratory campus
Chosen one: The Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, New York, will host the Electron-Ion Collider. (Courtesy: Brookhaven National Laboratory)

The US Department of Energy (DOE) has chosen Brookhaven National Laboratory in Long Island, New York, as the site of a next-generation Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), beating off competition from the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Laboratory in Newport News, Virginia. The facility, costing between $1.6bn and $2.6bn, will aim to study the structure of protons and neutrons in unprecedented detail. It will be designed and built over the coming decade with the first experiments starting in 2029 or 2030.

The EIC will smash together electrons and protons to probe the strong nuclear force and the role of gluons in nucleons and nuclei. Such an accelerator was rated as one of the top priorities for nuclear physics by a 15-strong National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine panel in 2018. In its report, it highlighted several scientific goals for the facility including how nucleons’ properties emerge from interactions among quarks and gluons; how quark-gluon interactions create nuclear binding; and how a dense nuclear environment affects quarks and gluons, their correlations, and their interactions.

[The Electron-Ion Collider is] not only a success for Brookhaven, but for the world

Doon Gibbs

“This facility will deepen our understanding of nature and is expected to be the source of insights ultimately leading to new technology and innovation,” says US energy secretary Dan Brouillette.

Building the EIC at Brookhaven will involve the lab revamping its existing Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) accelerator complex, which currently collides heavy nuclei such as gold and copper to produce a quark-gluon plasma – a state of matter though to have been present in the very early universe. The 3.8 km-long RHIC is now expected to shut down in 2024 to make way for the EIC, which will involve adding an electron ring and other components to the existing set-up. The EIC will then consist of two intersecting accelerators — one producing an intense beam of electrons and the other a high-energy beam of protons or heavier atomic nuclei. Each high-luminosity beam will be steered into head-on collisions with the particles produced providing clues to the internal nature of protons and their components.

World-class research

Brookhaven director Doon Gibbs told Physics World that the decision for the lab to host the EIC represents “not only a success for Brookhaven, but for the world”. China is the only other country with plans for a similar EIC facility, but its machine would involve significantly lower energy and intensity than the planned Brookhaven facility. Gibbs notes that the cost range will be refined as the design develops in next couple of years, and that funds for the facility are subject to yearly appropriations from the US Congress.

The DOE emphasizes that the project will involve several partners both in the US and abroad. Indeed, the Jefferson Lab is expected to contribute to the construction of the new EIC and the research that it will pursue. According to Robert Tribble, Brookhaven’s deputy director for science and technology, negotiations will soon take place with the Jefferson Laboratory over details of the partnership. Other DOE laboratories will also contribute to the construction of the facility and the research it will carry out.

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