The "Information Laboratory" - Experimental Particle Physics in the 21st Century
ORAL · Invited
Abstract
Over the past 80 years, progress in experimental nuclear and particle physics has leveraged a series of ever larger facilities, in particular particle accelerators and/or detectors. These are hosted in laboratories such as the DOE national laboratory complex, agency supported laboratories in the universities, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), NSF’s Scott-Amundsen South Pole Station and other (inter)national laboratories. These have lifecycles measured in decades and are built, operated and used by thousands of global collaborators. Older facilities often evolve into laboratory infrastructure to build and support the latest generation facilities. The careers of active physicists revolve around access and visits to these laboratories.
Information technology has always played a central role in these facilities. Systems for data acquisition, processing, analysis, simulation and modeling are key to producing physics results. Experimental challenges from physics have often driven information technology solutions that escape the research domain. A key example is the World Wide Web (WWW), which ushered in our current highly connected society. It also gave birth to what I will call the “Information Laboratory”: data rich, software-driven, networked, open and highly collaborative. The Information Laboratory builds on both the hardware (accelerator/detector) laboratories and the information ecosystems of individual experiments, as well as the highly networked world enabled by the WWW. Modern physicists, sitting at their screens, depend on access to the virtual “commons” of this Information Laboratory as much as the traditional physical laboratories.
We will examine the historical arc of information technologies which enable particle physics research and explore the complex multi-layered information ecosystem in use today. Going forward, how will this “Information Laboratory” and its “resident researchers” evolve and what scientific inquiry will it enable?
Information technology has always played a central role in these facilities. Systems for data acquisition, processing, analysis, simulation and modeling are key to producing physics results. Experimental challenges from physics have often driven information technology solutions that escape the research domain. A key example is the World Wide Web (WWW), which ushered in our current highly connected society. It also gave birth to what I will call the “Information Laboratory”: data rich, software-driven, networked, open and highly collaborative. The Information Laboratory builds on both the hardware (accelerator/detector) laboratories and the information ecosystems of individual experiments, as well as the highly networked world enabled by the WWW. Modern physicists, sitting at their screens, depend on access to the virtual “commons” of this Information Laboratory as much as the traditional physical laboratories.
We will examine the historical arc of information technologies which enable particle physics research and explore the complex multi-layered information ecosystem in use today. Going forward, how will this “Information Laboratory” and its “resident researchers” evolve and what scientific inquiry will it enable?
*This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Cooperative Agreement PHY-2323298 (IRIS-HEP).
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Presenters
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Peter Elmer
- Princeton University