The U.S. ATLAS Research Program: Empowering U.S. Universities for Discoveries at the Energy Frontier

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This proposal from Columbia University requests support for the U.S. ATLAS Research Program. The ATLAS detector is currently under construction for operation at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland with initial data taking scheduled for 2007. The U.S. ATLAS Program aims at providing U.S. university scientists, teams of faculty, postdoctoral, graduate and undergraduate students, with the opportunity to maximize the science from the LHC accelerator. The goal of the Program is to provide a broad based understanding of the physical origin of mass, and how it relates to our other concepts about the material universe. The new particles that may well be found at the LHC are important not only for extending unknown dimensions of the physics of elementary particles, but also for understanding key issues in cosmology. Answers to these questions would provide a major advance toward completing a unified view of the particles in nature, the forces with which particles interact, and their role in the past and future of our universe. This is a time when there are unusually compelling indications that the step taken by the LHC, leading to collision energies far beyond those available at existing facilities, will lead to especially important discoveries with implications over a broad field of fundamental science. This proposal rests on the especially strong scientific case for investigating this new energy regime and benefits from a program in which the international community is providing a major part of the investment. The Research Program will include the technical effort associated with maintenance and operation of the detector. A second element of the program is in the area of information technology, software and computing, which will play a crucial role in allowing scientists at U.S. universities to fully exploit the potential of the LHC. The program also includes R&D for detector upgrades, which will be needed to maximize the physics output during the long period of running expected for the LHC. The NSF-ATLAS groups continue to expand their education and outreach programs, with a particular focus on high school teachers and students (closely coordinated with QuarkNet), and on outreach to traditionally under-represented populations. The U.S. ATLAS group plans on strengthening and expanding their outreach efforts in the run-up to ATLAS data taking and, in this proposal, they describe some ideas for extending their program reach beyond the U.S.