CERN Accelerating science

TWIST: TOF PET with Strip SiPMs 

Using the breakthrough of the Strip Silicon PhotoMultiplier (SSiPM) obtained during  the ERC TICAL project;  TWIST will build a new type of detector modules for PET scanners that will offer high sensitivity together with precise position and time resolution. 

The objective of TWIST is to capitalise on this novel SSiPM development to deliver higher resolution PET images with a lower background and as a consequence use a much lower dosage of the injected radio-tracer. 

Coordinator: CERN, Switzerland

Scientists in Charge from CERN: 
Paul Lecoq, Crispin Williams

Full costs of the project: 150 k€ 

EU funding: 150 k€

EU funding for CERN: 150 k€

1 January 2018 - 30 June 2019

PanScales: Spanning TeV to GeV scales for collider discoveries and measurements

The PanScales project will radically transform the way in which parton showers are conceived, by introducing innovative methods that establish the relation with another field of research called resummation, to which the PI has made ground-breaking contributions. The main outcome of the project will be a novel parton shower with accuracies up to an order of magnitude higher than in current approaches. This will be essential for reliably exploiting the information that is present across the full range of energy scales at high-energy colliders.

Coordinator: UOXF, United Kingdom

Scientist in Charge from CERN: 
Gavin Salam

Full costs of the project: 2.3 M€ 

EU funding: 2.3 M€ 

EU funding for CERN: 566 k€

1 October 2018 - 30 September 2023

Ampl2Einstein: Scattering Amplitudes for Gravitational Wave Theory

The observation of gravitational waves from a binary black hole merger in 2016 marked the beginning of an exciting new era for astronomy. More findings about black holes and neutron stars are expected to be revealed in the future. To make use of the new observations, theoretical physicists will need to develop more accurate numerical methods and better mathematical descriptions of gravitational signals. Ampl2Einstein will build on advances in quantum scattering amplitudes that are used to calculate collisions of elementary particles. Furthermore, use of the Yang–Mills theory will play a key role in making this route simpler than direct classical calculations. The project's advances will allow astronomers to detect weaker gravitational signals and resolve long-standing puzzles regarding the internal structure of neutron stars.

Coordinator: CEA, France

Scientist in Charge from CERN: 
Gian Giudice

Full costs of the project: 2.3 M€ 

EU funding: 2.3 M€ 

EU funding for CERN: 75 k€

1 January 2021 - 31 December 2025

Neo-Nat: Understanding the mass scales in nature

The experimental results of the first run of the Large Hadron Collider led to the discovery of the Higgs boson but have not confirmed the dominant theoretical paradigm about the naturalness of the electro-weak scale, according to which the Higgs boson should have been accompanied by supersymmetric particles or by some other new physics able of protecting the Higgs boson mass from quadratically divergent quantum corrections. This project aims at exploring and developing new non-conventional ideas about the origin of mass scales in nature and in particular of the electroweak scale.

Coordinator: UniPi, Italy

Scientist in Charge from CERN: 
Alessandro Strumia

Full costs of the project: 1.8 M€ 

EU funding: 1.8 M€

EU funding for CERN: 1.4 M€

1 December 2015 - 30 November 2021

4DPHOTON: Beyond Light Imaging: High-Rate Single-Photon Detection in Four Dimensions

The 4DPHOTON project aims to develop and construct a photon imaging detector with unprecedented performance. The proposed device will be capable of detecting fluxes of single-photons up to one billion photons per second, over areas of several square centimetres, and will measure - for each photon - position and time simultaneously with resolutions better than ten microns and few tens of picoseconds, respectively. 
With its excellent granularity, timing resolution, rate capability and compactness, this detector will represent a new paradigm for the realisation of future Ring Imaging Cherenkov detectors, capable of achieving high efficiency particle identification in environments with very high particle multiplicities, exploiting time-association of the photon hits.

Coordinator: INFN, Italy

Scientist in Charge from CERN: 
Michael Campbell

Full costs of the project: 1.9 M€ 

EU funding: 1.9 M€

EU funding for CERN: 368 k€

1 June 2019 - 31 May 2024

mPP: machine learning for Particle Physics

This project proposes to use modern Machine Learning (ML),  particularly Deep Learning (DL), as a breakthrough solution to address the scientific, technological, and financial challenges that High Energy Physics will face in the decade ahead.

The project aims to apply cutting-edge ML technologies to HEP problems, paving the way to self-operating detectors, capable of visually inspecting events and identifying the physics process generating them, while monitoring the data, the correct functioning of the detector components and, if any, the occurrence of anomalous events caused by unspecified new physics processes.

Coordinator: CERN, Switzerland

Scientist in Charge from CERN: 
Maurizio Pierini

Full costs of the project: 1.7 M€ 

EU funding: 1.7 M€

EU funding for CERN: 1.7 M€

1 April 2018 - 31 March 2023

nuDirections: New Directions in Theoretical Neutrino Physics

Thanks to tremendous advances in terrestrial, astrophysical and cosmological experiments, neutrino physics has again become one of the driving forces of progress in astroparticle physics. nuDirections aims to investigate from a theoretical point of view a multitude of unexplored phenomena within and beyond the Standard Model of particle physics that are now becoming experimentally accessible in new neutrino experiments. The three main pillars of the project are: (1) Light sterile neutrinos; (2) Decoherence effects in dense neutrino gases; (3) Neutrinos and dark matter. The final goal is to develop a new mechanism for the production of sterile neutrino dark matter in the early Universe and to play a leading role in the theory and phenomenology of neutrino signals from dark matter annihilation or decay.

Coordinator: CERN, Switzerland

Scientist in Charge from CERN: 
Joachim Kopp

Full costs of the project: 800 k€ 

EU funding: 800 k€

EU funding for CERN: 264 k€

1 September 2015 - 31 August 2020

MIRACLS: Multi Ion Reflection Apparatus for Collinear Laser Spectroscopy of radionuclides

MIRACLS aims at producing a novel type of ion trap, an Electrostatic Ion Beam Trap in order to benchmark modern theoretical models utilizing 3-body forces in a quest to understand the evolution of nuclear shells.

KAIROS: Bootstrapping Time - Colliders, Schocks, Strings, and Black Holes

Many interesting questions either in the realm of QFT or Gravity are intractable with the usual perturbative methods. When perturbation theory fails one has to rely on general principles, such as symmetry, causality, analyticity, unitarity to make progress. This is an idea of bootstrap: use general principles to make nontrivial predictions. The aims of this project are to develop new nonperturbative bootstrap methods as a part of a larger quest of revealing the unifying mathematical structure that underlies both Quantum Mechanics and Gravity.  To use these methods for state-of-the-art computations of physical observables which are not accessible using conventional methods. This will lead to new insights into fundamental properties of Quantum Field Theory, Gravity, and holography which relates the two.

Coordinator: CERN, Switzerland

Scientist in Charge from CERN: 
Alexander Zhiboedov

Full costs of the project: 1.45 M€

EU funding: 1.45 M€

EU funding for CERN: 1.3 M€

1 December 2020 - 31 December 2025

MathAm: Mathematical Structures in Scattering Amplitudes

The goal of MathAm is to investigate in detail the relationship between scattering amplitudes, number theory and algebraic geometry, with the final aim of developing novel computational techniques for scattering amplitudes that are beyond reach of conventional state-of-the-art technology.

Coordinator: CERN, Switzerland

Scientist in Charge from CERN: 
Claude Duhr

Full costs of the project: 1.4 M€ 

EU funding: 1.4 M€

EU funding for CERN: 919 k€

1 September 2015 - 31 August 2020