On 19 and 20 July, the ALBA Synchrotron is hosting the 102nd Plenary ECFA meeting, with the participation of 70 researchers, including Dr. Fabiola Gianotti, CERN’s Director-General.
The European Committee for Future Accelerators (ECFA) is an advisory body for CERN Management, CERN Council and its Committees, and to other national and international organizations, on the long-term planning of European High-Energy Physics (HEP) facilities, accelerators and equipment adequate for the conduct of a valid high energy research program.
The participants of the plenary ECFA meeting will discuss, during two days, about different topics on high energy physics and the main HEP accelerator facilities in Europe will report on their activities. Fabiola Gianotti, CERN Director, will report on CERN activities and perspectives. The role of ECFA is of particular relevance in the period 2018-2020 due to the on-going update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics, which will shape the future of the HEP community in Europe and, in particular, what lays ahead for CERN after the High Luminosity LHC project (the upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) that aims to increase its luminosity such that the accumulated data will be 10 times larger than with the present configuration).
The Plenary ECFA meets usually twice per year and its members are representatives of all CERN member countries. The Spanish representatives in ECFA, members of the Institut de Física d’Altes Energies (IFAE), the Instituto de Física Corpuscular (IFIC), the Instituto de Física Teórica (IFT), the Centro de Investigaciones Energética, Medioambientales y Tecnológicas (CIEMAT) and the ALBA Synchrotron, have jointly organized the meeting. The Spanish HEP community has reported its activities in front of the European stakeholders of the community. It has also expressed its concern about the delicate situation of the HEP research in Spain, due to the severe funding restrictions in the last six years, which are putting on risk the participation of Spain in HEP flagship projects like, for example, the ongoing upgrade of the LHC experiments.
This meeting has also offered the opportunity to illustrate to the HEP community the variety of applications of the synchrotron light source ALBA, which shares techniques and challenges with the HEP facilities mainly on the accelerator technology side.
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