Nuclear Physics
Associate Director of the Office of Science for Nuclear Physics
SC-90/Germantown Building
U.S. Department of Energy
1000 Independence Ave., S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20585-1290
http://www.sc.doe.gov/production/henp/np/index.html
General Goal 5, World Class Scientific Research Capacity: Provide world-class scientific research capacity needed to: ensure the success of Department missions in national and energy security; advance the frontiers of knowledge in physical sciences and areas of biological, medical, environmental, and computational sciences, or provide world-class research facilities for the Nation’s science enterprise.
Nucleons were born in the first minutes after the “Big Bang” and their subsequent synthesis into nuclei goes on in the ever-continuing process of nuclear synthesis in stars and supernovae. Nuclear matter makes up most of the mass of the visible universe. It is the stuff that makes up our planet and its inhabitants. Nuclear matter was once inaccessible for humans to study, but in the first half of the 20th Century, great strides in our understanding of nuclei and nuclear reactions were rapidly made, leading to such profound influences on society as the discovery of fission and fusion and the development of the now vast field of nuclear medicine.
Today, understanding nuclear matter and its interactions has become central to research in nuclear physics and important to research in energy, astrophysics, and national security. However, only with the development of the theory of the strong interaction, a strongly coupled quantum field theory called Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), in just the last few decades, has a quantitative basis emerged to describe nuclear matter in terms of its underlying fundamental quark and gluon constituents. We have only recently acquired more sensitive tools to make the measurements and calculations needed to fully explore this quark structure of the nucleon, of simple nuclei, of nuclear matter, and even of the stars, opening an exciting new era in nuclear physics.
Mission: The mission of the Nuclear Physics (NP) program is to foster fundamental research in nuclear physics that will provide new insights and advance our knowledge on the nature of matter and energy and develop the scientific knowledge, technologies and trained manpower that are needed to underpin the Department of Energy’s missions for nuclear-related national security, energy, and environmental quality. The program provides world-class, peer-reviewed research results and operates user accelerator facilities in the scientific disciplines encompassed by the Nuclear Physics mission areas under the mandate provided in Public Law 95-91 that established the Department.
Program Goal 05.20.00.00: Understand the evolution and structure of nuclear matter, from the smallest building blocks, quarks, and gluons; to the stable elements in the Universe created by stars; to unique isotopes created in the laboratory that exist at the limits of stability and possess radically different properties from known matter.
At the core of this science program, and underpinning all of our objectives, is a fundamental quest for knowledge. Our program history provides a compelling story of how this knowledge has already shaped the world around us, and the future appears even more promising as we focus on such questions as:
What is the structure of the nucleon?
What is the structure of nucleonic matter?
What are the properties of hot nuclear matter?
What is the nuclear microphysics of the universe?
What is to be the new Standard Model?
Below are the main objectives for Nuclear Physics. Complementing this stand-alone Program Plan, and providing additional details of our program objectives are the Office of Science Strategic Plan (February 2004), the Facilities for the Future of Science: A Twenty Year Outlook (November 2003), as well as the most recent Office of Science budget.
Objectives:
Medium Energy Nuclear Physics: Advance medium energy nuclear physics to understand the structure of the nucleon.
Heavy Ion Nuclear Physics: Advance heavy ion nuclear physics to search for and characterize the properties of the quark-gluon plasma.
Low Energy Nuclear Physics: Advance low energy nuclear physics to understand the structure of nucleonic matter, investigate nuclear astrophysics, and investigate the fundamental symmetries that form the basis of the Standard Model.
An accompanying timeline (Road Maps) provides a roadmap for these objectives, including our planned future facilities, performance targets, and the primary connections and program interdependencies. Two important caveats, described below, must be observed when viewing the timeline.
The Objectives, Performance Targets and schedules identified on the timeline are for planning purposes only and do not constitute financial or contractual commitments by the Federal government. More often than not, there are significant discrepancies between planning levels and subsequent, enacted budgets. It is reasonable to anticipate that resources may not be available to fully support every performance target, including but not limited to the schedule for performance. Subsequent annual updates of this plan will reflect and adjust for those fiscal constraints based on the latest available information.
Additionally, there are many more connections (lines) and interdependencies (footnotes in red) than are displayed on the actual timelines. The very nature of science is multi-disciplinary and interdependent. Consequently, those relationships that are depicted are only illustrative, although they are believed to largely representative of the primary relationships.
The NP program conducts frequent and comprehensive evaluations of every component of the program. Progress against established plans is evaluated by periodic internal and external performance reviews. These reviews provide an opportunity to verify and validate performance. Quarterly, semiannual, and annual reviews consistent with specific program management plans are held to ensure technical progress, cost and schedule adherence, and responsiveness to program requirements.
All on-going projects undergo regular (every three to five years) peer review and merit evaluation based on procedures set down in 10 CFR 605 for the extramural grant program, and under a similar process for the laboratory programs and scientific user facilities. Results of these evaluations are used to modify program management as appropriate. Additionally, all new projects are also selected through peer review and merit evaluation.
The Nuclear Science Advisory Committee (NSAC), consisting of leading members of the nuclear science community, provides advice to the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation on a continuing basis regarding the direction and management of the national basic nuclear science research program. One of the most important functions of NSAC is development of long-range plans that express community-wide priorities for the upcoming decade of nuclear physics research. In addition, NSAC is charged with providing advice on:
university and national laboratory facilities to assess their scientific productivity,
major components of the Office of Nuclear Physics research program, and
the scientific case for new facilities.
A Committee of Visitors (COV) was appointed under the guidance of the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee to review the management practices of the Nuclear Physics program. In particular they examined the decision process for awarding grants and for determining priorities of funding among the various activities within the Nuclear Physics program.
Change control and off-ramps:
Science changes rapidly and breakthroughs in knowledge by our science programs, other agencies, industry and the international science community create a constant state of flux. Although there are long-term research themes and lengthy horizons for new cutting-edge tools, basic research must be constantly revisited in a context of new discoveries and the most promising current opportunities.
Additionally, basic research is, by its nature, unpredictable. Results that appear to mark a failed experiment are sometimes much more significant to progress in the field than a “successful” result. This is the reason that expert review will be used to assess progress toward our objectives. It is critical that all evaluations take this unique aspect of research into account so that success will be judged as advancing the field rather than meeting the specifics of an objective or target.
Underpinning the Office of Science change control process and our off-ramps are a strong dependence on our program advisory committees, for us the NSAC. Our program and our advisory committee are driven by the following three major criteria for evaluating change and possible off-ramps: Quality, Relevance, and Performance. These criteria are also the criteria that the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) applies to basic research.
As part of the Office of Science Strategic Planning process, our advisory committee is consulted on the actual Objectives for the program. A broader array of stakeholders from government, national laboratories, and academia are also consulted. Such input helps form the basis for a new focus or direction at this more aggregate level, and the current objectives for this program were the result of a recently completed cycle and preparation of a new Office of Science Strategic Plan. The objectives from the Strategic Plan form the basis for this Program Plan.
Key Targets were also developed in consultation with NSAC as part of OMB’s Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) process. Progress reviews for these key targets will be conducted by NSAC every five years. These reviews will allow us to assess progress so that the program can continue, redirect or discontinue the efforts that support those targets.
Ultimately, all decisions on focus, emphasis, resources, and possible shifts are vetted at the appropriate levels within our program - from the researchers to the program managers, and often to the level of the Associate Director. Depending on the scope of the issue and the venue, the Director of the Office of Science may be involved. For major off-ramps, the Director of the Office of Science is always involved and assumes final responsibility.
The NP program has many connections with other organizations, and is dependent on their planning needs, identified challenges, information, scientific data sharing, and more. The NP program is closely coordinated with activities of the National Science Foundation, particularly through the jointly chartered NSAC. Researchers supported by the NSF play key roles in collaborations and NSF supports development of instrumentation for DOE NP supported facilities. Other key external factors for the NP program include: the SC-wide SciDAC effort (linkages to ASCR and HEP), research leading to enhancements to the Standard Model and complementary research on supersymmetry (linkages to HEP), international support for the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and Thomas Jefferson National Laboratory (TJNAF) activities (linkages to international researchers, instrumentation development, and dependencies on data analysis to provide answers to key scientific questions), development of superconducting radiofrequency technology that is used for cutting-edge free electron lasers for the Navy as well as for other applications, atomic trapping techniques with radioactive ions that have important geophysical and environmental contamination detection applications and are informed by those user communities, a beam-line at the Brookhaven RHIC complex that is funded by NASA to look at radiation damage of electronic circuits in space and radiobiological effects (for shielding studies for the mission-to-Mars program), and linkages in turn for the RHIC program for which NASA contributes to accelerator upgrades to enhance capabilities as part of their research program (upgrades will provide additional capabilites to the NP RHIC research program).
Scientists supported by the Nuclear Physics program collaborate with researchers from many countries. These countries support a large number of scientists, as well as provide significant contributions of experimental equipment, that heavily utilize all of the Nuclear Physics user facilities, especially RHIC at BNL and the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) at TJNAF. The program also supports some collaborative work at foreign accelerator facilities. The program promotes the transfer of the results of its basic research to a broad set of technologies involving advanced materials, national defense, medicine, space science and exploration, and industrial processes. In particular, nuclear reaction data are an important resource for these programs. NP user facilities are utilized by other Office of Science programs (e.g., High Energy Physics and Basic Energy Sciences), other DOE Offices (e.g., National Nuclear Security Administration and Nuclear Energy), other Federal agencies (e.g., National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and industry to carry out important studies of the effects of particle beams (radiation) in a variety of materials and biological systems.
External factors that affect the programs and performance include: (1) mission needs as described by the DOE and SC mission statements and strategic plans; (2) evolving scientific opportunities, which sometimes emerge in a way that revolutionizes disciplines; (3) results of external program reviews and international benchmarking activities of entire fields or subfields, such as those performed by the National Academy of Sciences; (4) unanticipated failures, for example, in accelerator and instrumentation component systems, that cannot be mitigated in a timely manner; (5) strategic and programmatic decisions made by other (non-DOE) Federal agencies and by international entities; and (6) the evolution of the commercial market for high performance computing and networking hardware and software.