Grant: Subatomic Physics Envelope - Major Resources Support Program

Nine (9) grant eligible members of two (2) groups, the Centre for Particle Physics (CPP) group at the University of Alberta (UofA) and the University of Regina (UofR) group, are collaborating in this MRS application. These groups also support 7 postdocs, 13 grad students and 2 research scientists. In the next three (3) years, the CPP group will grow to include two (2) additional faculty members, in the areas of collider physics and astroparticle physics. This collaborative research effort, (partially) supported by the requested MRS grant, is broad in scope. It ranges from astroparticle physics at SNOLAB (experiments DEAP/Clean, PICASSO, SNO+), through QCD physics with the GlueX and Hall C Collaborations at Jefferson Lab (Jlab) in the US, thence to high energy (HEP) collider physics with the ATLAS collaboration at the European Centre for Particle Physics (CERN) in Switzerland. It should be noted that ATLAS and SNOLAB have been recognized by the Canadian Subatomic Physics community as two (2) of their three (3) "highest priority" projects. The CPP is a well manned and comprehensively equipped facility that in its totality has no equivalent in any other Canadian University. We believe that only TRIUMF has similar or superior resources, but with more demand on its infrastructure than we do at the CPP. The research resources available at the CPP at the UofA consist of three (3) major facilities for electronics, machining and computing. These major facilities are complemented by large assembly areas and an X-ray facility for radiation testing. Importantly, as part of its SNOLAB initiative, a Radon Free Laboratory and a Low Background Counting Facility will be constructed at the UofA. This MRS application requests the funds to continue the employment of a physicist/engineer (J. Soukup) and a technologist (P. Price replacement) who form the core support of the CPP facility. In addition, we are requesting funds for an technologist to help support the SNOLAB initiative spear-headed by two (2) recent hires: A. Hallin (Senior CRC) and C. Krauss (Ass. Prof). The experiments involved in this initiative are all in the startup phase.