About the Steering Group
Fermilab Director Pier Oddone convened the Fermilab Steering Group in March 2007. Members comprised particle and accelerator scientists from Fermilab and the national community. Fermilab Deputy Director Young-Kee Kim served as chair. The Steering Group subsequently formed subgroups to provide advice on the best physics opportunities that new facilities could offer. These subgroups drew upon university and laboratory scientists largely from outside Fermilab.
The Steering Group took a number of steps to obtain as much input as possible from a broad spectrum of the U.S. particle- and accelerator-physics community. The Steering Group chair gave presentations and conducted town-hall-style sessions at meetings of all the major collaborations at Fermilab (CDF, DZero, MINOS, MINERνA, MiniBooNE, SciBooNE, NOνA), at US CMS and International Linear Collider Tesla Technology Collaboration meetings, at the June 6–7 Annual Users Meeting of Fermilab, at the June 7 Users Meeting at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and at major laboratory seminars (Argonne National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory). The chair also communicated to the U.S. particle physics and accelerator physics community through the Division of Particles and Fields and the Division of Physics of Beams of the American Physical Society. These sessions advised the community of the Steering Group's purpose, the process it would follow and the mechanism by which it planned to advise the Fermilab director; and how it would provide input to the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel, the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel, and the funding agencies. In addition, the Steering Group solicited input on physics possibilities from the entire community either in the form of letters or in one-page expressions of interest. In its few months of existence, the Steering Group received 17 expressions of interest and seven letters. Input from the community demonstrated a broad interest in a domestic facility that supports a strong U.S. accelerator-based program of particle physics.
The Steering Group held open meetings throughout the process of its deliberations, inviting the chairs of the Fermilab and SLAC users' organizations, the chairs of HEPAP and P5, leaders of the Global Design Effort for the ILC and representatives of funding agencies to attend and contribute.
Fermilab has a long history of community input into its physics program and in years past has held many summer studies to consider the best options for new accelerators being developed at the laboratory. Given the short timeline for the Steering Group report, such a summer study was not possible. However, Fermilab intends to conduct such a study should a decision go forward to provide R&D support for Project X at the intensity frontier. The full span of physics made possible by the proposed high-intensity proton source will be the subject of a future formal call for proposals. However, the Fermilab Physics Advisory Committee and advisory panels including P5 and HEPAP, convened by the funding agencies, will elucidate the prioritization of such experiments.
