Director's Corner 14 August 2008 Spain's…

Director's Corner
14 August 2008
                       Spain's increasing involvement in large international science

                        Did you know that Spain joined CERN as a Member State in 1961, but left seven years later? The
                        modern era in Spanish particle physics was marked by Spain rejoining CERN in 1983, and the
                        country's investments and programme in particle physics have continued to grow and thrive ever
                        since. This is not the only large investment in Spanish science: I recently had the opportunity to
                        visit the astronomical facilities at 2200 metres altitude on the Spanish island of La Palma, one of
                        the Canary Islands. The La Palma Observatory is interesting to us in the ILC as we study
                        examples of how international collaborations work for large science projects in preparation for
                        developing our own models of international collaboration for the ILC. The Roque de los
                        Muchachos Observatory on La Palma has it all: the largest segmented telescope in the world
  Barry Barish
                        (10.4 metres and built by Spain), advanced technical developments in adaptive optics that are
                        extending the science programme of the
4.7-metre Isaac Newton Group telescope and an important high energy gamma ray telescope, MAGIC, with a 17-metre
reflecting surface to detect Cerenkov radiation from gamma ray induced showers by focusing the Cerenkov radiation.

In June, I participated as a guest speaker in the "Campus of Excellence"
programme organised by the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and the
Vitalia Foundation, a non-profit organisation created for running academic and
cultural events in the Canary Islands. The programme is energetically directed by
José R. Calvo, who brings together a prominent set of lecturers and panelists
from science and government, providing an interdisciplinary event that covers a
diverse set of subjects related to science and society for about 100 graduate
students chosen from around the world. At our request, the meeting organisers
arranged a long one-day flying-driving excursion that enabled a group of us to
visit the European Northern Observatory on the remote island of La Palma. This         Roque de los Muchachos Observatory
was very informative and a most enjoyable day!                                                on La Palma at sunset

La Palma is one of the seven major volcanic islands called the Canary Islands, a
part of Spain that is located in the Atlantic Ocean about 100 kilometres off of the
west coast of Africa. The La Palma volcano rises almost 7 kilometres above the
ocean floor and is alleged to be the steepest island in the world. There is road
access from the airstrip to the very top, which we traversed through changing
vegetation marking the different altitudes all the way to the summit at 2421
metres. The summit is part of the rim of a giant 9 kilometre wide and 1.5
kilometre deep crater where the various telescopes of the observatory are
located - a most spectacular site. This is a near-perfect location for astronomy
                                                                                     Laser guide star aided adaptive optics
and it has therefore attracted a large set of modern astronomical instruments,              for the 4.3 m telescope
ranging from solar to giant telescopes. The air is typically very dry and the clouds
form between 1000 and 2000 metres, making for a very clear sky at the
telescopes above the cloud layer.

The workhorse telescopes at the observatory have been the Isaac Newton Group
(ING) that includes the 4.2-metre William Herschel Telescope. That telescope has
an ambitious adaptive optics system to correct for the effects of scattering of
light in the atmosphere and a laser guide star system to enable larger sky
coverage. The ING is an international collaboration between the Science and
Technology Facilities Council (STFC) of the United Kingdom, the Nederlandse
Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek (NWO) of the Netherlands, and the
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) in Spain. Recent scientific results           The 10.4-metre Gran Telescopio
include comparisons of eight examples of populations of galaxies falling towards                   Canarias
the centres of galaxy clusters with control samples of galaxies far from the
clusters. The collaboration found that the infalling galaxies in the cluster were predominantly distorted in shape and
had higher than normal rates of star formation, suggesting the conditions needed for slow galaxy interactions and
mergers are more likely to occur in galaxies falling into a galaxy cluster compared to the general population of galaxies
outside clusters.

The ambitious Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC), nicknamed GranTeCan, is at present time the largest reflecting
telescope in the world with its 10.4 metres diameter. This around 130-million-Euro construction project represents a
major investment in science by Spain, and the facility includes collaboration with institutions from Mexico and the
University of Florida.

Another major facility at the observatory is MAGIC (Major Atmospheric Gamma-ray Imaging Cerenkov Telescope), a
high-energy gamma ray telescope that detects Cerenkov radiation from particle showers released by cosmic
gamma-rays. MAGIC has a 17-metre diameter reflecting surface, the largest in the world. MAGIC is sensitive to cosmic
gamma rays with energies between 50 GeV and 30 TeV and will work in conjunction with the Gamma-ray Large Area
Space Telescope GLAST recently launched into space to study sources of high-energy gamma rays. A second MAGIC
telescope (MAGIC 2) located 85 metre away is almost complete.

In addition to these astronomical facilities, Spain has started a major
third-generation light source project, ALBA, near Barcelona costing nearly 200
million Euros. They also have significant involvement in the LHC and have
recently joined the ILC. Spain is very ambitious towards attracting large
international projects and was a serious bidder to host ITER before France was
selected. They are presently one of three countries bidding to host the more than
1-billion-Euro European Spallation Neutron Source (ESS).
                                                                                    The ALBA Light Source Facility, under
We fully expect Spain to play an important developing role in the ILC. The next
                                                                                         construction near Barcelona
meeting of the Funding Agencies for Large Colliders (FALC) will be hosted by
Spain and held in Madrid next January. We plan to use that opportunity to arrange separate meetings with Spanish
physicists and authorities where we will explore furthering our collaborations with Spain leading toward the ILC.

-- Barry Barish