The German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) is supporting the work of scientists in Mainz at the European research center CERN with a significant contribution. Over the next three years, five million euros will be made available for experiments in high-energy physics to investigate the smallest building blocks of our matter. At Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), experimental and theoretical groups are involved in research work at CERN, with a focus on the study of particle collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). “We are very pleased about the great commitment of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. It is a recognition of the outstanding achievements of Mainz physics and a significant support for the upcoming work of our scientists, who are now looking forward to an exciting future with the restart of the LHC,” says university president Univ.-Prof. Dr. Georg Krausch about the approval.

The BMBF is providing a large part of the funding within the framework of the research unit FSP-103 “Physics at the highest energies with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC”, a German research network consisting of sixteen institutions, including JGU. In the new funding period, which started in July 2015 for another three years, a total of around 39 million euros is available for research with the ATLAS experiment. In particular, the BMBF is using project funds to finance the construction and development of detector components for the experiments at CERN.

Physicists from Mainz are particularly involved in the ATLAS experiment. This is one of four large detection devices at the LHC which, together with the CMS experiment, succeeded in discovering the long-sought Higgs particle in summer 2012. Now a new phase began at the LHC a few weeks ago, in which protons collide with extraordinarily high energies. These high-energy collisions at 13 teraelectronvolts (TeV) also pose new challenges for the detectors. In addition, more proton bunches will be transported in the future and there will be more collisions. There are currently 152 proton bunches orbiting in the 27-kilometre ring, but the aim is to increase the number to almost 1000 bunches per beam in the near future – and to increase the intensity even further at a later stage.

“We need staying power for the research and further development of ATLAS – the research programs will run until the 2030s. We are therefore extremely grateful that the BMBF has been funding our work for many years and will continue to do so in the future,” says Prof. Dr. Volker Büscher from the Institute of Physics at JGU. In addition to the experimental and theoretical work at the LHC, the BMBF funds will also benefit the NA62 experiment. Mainz Physics delivered a new particle detector to CERN for this experiment in May 2015. NA62 starts this month and will measure a very rare decay of kaons.

“The research at CERN promises to be very exciting over the next few years. Thanks to support from the federal government, we are playing a key role in a wide range of research and development work,” said Büscher, with instructions that this work fits in perfectly with JGU’s Cluster of Excellence “Precision Physics, Fundamental Interactions and Structure of Matter” (PRISMA).