Stanford University Department of Physics

The MINOS Experiment

Professor Stanley Wojcicki retired this past August as chairman of the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel (HEPAP) after six years of service. HEPAP is a peer group originally instituted by the Atomic Energy Commission in 1967 to provide ongoing advice about relative priorities in the high energy physics program. Currently the committee advises the Secretary of the Department of Energy on issues relevant to particle physics. Professor Michael Witherell of UC Santa Barbara will replace Wojcicki as the new HEPAP chair.

During the last six years HEPAP dealt with a number of important issues. Early in Wojcicki's tenure as chairman, the cancellation of the Supercollider project led to the formulation of a new vision for particle physics in the US. The energy frontier, at least for the next decade and a half, will be provided by the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Europe. US groups are interested in participating in the construction of this facility and its future use. The negotiations with CERN on US participation are reaching the final stage. Two medium sized frontier facilities, the B factory at SLAC and the Main Injector at Fermilab, are currently in construction phase and will provide exciting opportunities for the US high energy physicists at home.

Professor Wojcicki plans to devote more time to research and teaching. The focus of his new research activities will be the MINOS project, a search for neutrino oscillations (i.e., transmutations in flight from one flavor to another). The experiment will use a neutrino beam produced at Fermilab and a detector at the Soudan mine in Minnesota, about 730km away. Professor Wojcicki is the spokesperson of this international collaboration, which currently includes scientists from 21 institutions and four countries.

The question of masses of elementary particles is a very important topic in particle physics. To oscillate, neutrinos have to have mass; furthermore, if they have mass, they might account for some of the dark matter in the universe. There are a number of suggestions that neutrinos do indeed oscillate, and the MINOS experiment is designed to provide a clear answer to this question. The importance of this experiment was underscored by the national review panel on the neutrino oscillation program, which stated: "Discovery of neutrino oscillations accessible to accelerator experiments would revolutionize particle physics."

As with many large new projects, the big hurdle for MINOS is obtaining adequate funding for construction in a timely manner. However, both Fermilab and the MINOS Collaboration are optimistic that data taking can begin in the year 2001.

Back to 1996 Newsletter Table of Contents