MREFC: US ATLAS HL-LHC Upgrade Project award

Through decades of prior research, scientists have developed the Standard Model of Particle Physics, a theoretical framework that quantitatively describes physical phenomena such as radioactivity, the interaction of light with matter, and the structure of nuclei. The last piece of the Standard Model to fall into place was the Higgs boson, the particle whose interaction with other components of the Standard Model gives rise to their various masses. It was discovered at CERN in 2012, resulting in the award of the 2013 Nobel Prize in Physics to Peter Higgs and Francois Englert. The Standard Model is incomplete, as it does not explain, for example, phenomena such as the astrophysical observations of Dark Matter and Dark Energy, or why anti-matter is so rare. Researchers want to investigate whether there are additional particles with exotic properties, unlike any forms of matter observed so far, whose existence is predicted by some theories that extend the Standard Model. Further study of the properties of the Higgs boson may shed light on these questions, but this will require a far greater data sample than that produced so far. CERN is upgrading the LHC to produce a much larger number of proton-proton collisions. After upgrading is complete in 2027, when it will be known as the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), the rate of interaction will be about ten times greater than when the Higgs boson was discovered. Concurrently, the ATLAS detector will be upgraded to operate in the much-higher-intensity HL-LHC environment, and it will incorporate critical Higgs boson detection sensitivity enhancements. The upgrade activities are an internationally coordinated effort, managed by CERN and involving the participation and individual contributions of more than 40 funding agencies globally.

NSF will award $75M to Columbia University as the lead institution in a consortium of 18 US universities that will fabricate and deliver key elements of the ATLAS detector upgrade: faster electronics and additional detector elements for measuring and recording the energies, momenta, and directions of particles produced in collisions, and more sophisticated electronics and software to select data for recording from among the torrent that will be produced. NSF is coordinating its participation with the US Department of Energy, who is also funding elements of the ATLAS upgrade. This continues a highly successful inter-agency partnership that has jointly enabled US scientists to participate in cutting edge research at the LHC for more than two decades. Columbia University and its 18 subrecipients will leverage the NSF award to increase the diversity of participation in physics research by hundreds of undergraduate and high school students. Hands-on involvement in detector fabrication and testing will enable a broad range of unique education and outreach activities that are coupled to institutional undergraduate and graduate programs. These will advance NSF goals promoting STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) workforce development.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.