Elementary Particle Physics: The Higgs and Beyond (2025)
Chapter: 5 Benefits
5
Benefits
Elementary particle physics is a key component of the scientific fabric of the nation. The vast majority of universities have programs and/or faculty in elementary particle physics. In advancing its mission, particle physics has contributed to and benefited from other scientific disciplines; some of the current connections and exchanges with other disciplines are described in Chapter 2. Over previous decades, particle physics has made many contributions to technologies that are used across the sciences and society, and it has helped the United States to develop a highly skilled and flexible scientific and technical workforce that is second to none.
The seemingly impossible technical challenges that particle physics confronts today will stretch all available tools. In pursuing its science, particle physics will advance mathematics and theoretical science, computational methods, accelerator technology, and broad areas of instrumentation well beyond their present state. It will continue to sustain a world-leading scientific and technical workforce.
This chapter discusses some of the benefits that have accrued from particle physics research and, where possible, points to areas where future benefits are likely to develop. If the past is prelude, there is ample reason to believe the future benefits will be even more important.
Finally, a caveat for the reader: The discussion of benefits that accrue from basic research in particle physics—or any field for that matter—is fraught with uncertainties. For example, one could ask, Would such a benefit have occurred in the absence of that basic research? That of course is an experiment one cannot do. Furthermore, many benefits have their roots in multiple places and could be plausibly claimed by several areas of physics, or even science. This is especially true in accelerator- and detector-related benefits because the techniques and instruments of particle physics and nuclear physics are so similar. The origin stories of a few benefits arising from basic research are as clear as the World Wide Web, which traces very cleanly to particle physics. The committee has done its best to cite benefits where there is an arguably connection to particle physics research.
TECHNOLOGY
Experiments in particle physics have produced many technological solutions that have found applications across other sciences as well as in society and the economy. To illustrate, three areas are highlighted where the benefits have been very significant: accelerators, computing, and imaging.
Accelerators
Particle physics has been the primary contributor to the development of accelerators; today, accelerators are used across multiple scientific disciplines, in medicine, in industry, and for national security.
Accelerators in Science
The premier example has been the development of synchrotron light sources. In 1957, the light from accelerating charged electrons was observed first in synchrotrons and at the time was viewed as a nuisance. It was soon realized that synchrotron light could be a source of intense, coherent photons with a variety of applications. The first dedicated synchrotron light source was the Tantalus I storage ring in Wisconsin, completed in 1968. Many efforts around the world began to develop or convert accelerators to storage rings that generated X-ray photons. The SPEAR 2.5 GeV electron–positron collider at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) was the first light source to serve a large community of experimenters using synchrotron X-rays for a wide variety of studies.1
Soon, other particle physics colliders—including the Double-Ring Storage Facility at Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron Laboratory in Hamburg, the Cornell Electron Storage Ring at Cornell University, and VEPP III at Novosibirsk in Russia—started synchrotron radiation programs. All these colliders ran in a mode to both collide electrons and positrons at high energy and to provide X-ray photons as a secondary benefit. This was not optimal for either purpose and led to the development of dedicated light sources, optimized for high-intensity synchrotron radiation. The ability to use existing colliders helped to rapidly establish the field.
Today U.S. synchrotron light sources—an upgraded SPEAR at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source facility at Cornell University, the Advanced Light Source at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory, and the National Synchrotron Light Source II at Brookhaven National Laboratory (Brookhaven)—are used by more than 8,000 researchers across the country. There are nearly 50 synchrotron light sources operating around the world (see Figure 5-1). The science enabled spans many topics in material sciences and nanotechnology, biological microscopy, and protein structure determination, and whose impact is both basic and applied.
New high-energy light sources based on free-electron lasers (FELs) have also benefited from the research and development (R&D) initially carried out to solve particle physics problems. In 2009, the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), the first hard X-ray FEL in the world, began operations at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, reusing much of the infrastructure of the SLAC accelerator and benefitting from the accumulated knowledge gained from the operation of the SLAC accelerator over decades. Thousands of users have established techniques to use the extremely bright femtosecond pulses of the LCLS to advance structural biology and other science. A notable example was the study of proteins associated with SARS-CoV-2 proteins.2,3
A superconducting X-ray FEL, LCLS-II, has recently been completed at SLAC, dramatically increasing the rate of the femtosecond X-ray pulses from the initial 120 Hz to 1 MHz. The upgrade will enable revolutionary opportunities in understanding molecular dynamics, fast processes at the nanoscale level, crystallography of difficult to crystalize proteins, complex correlations of atomic or electronic constituents, and many applications in structural biology.4
The use of intense neutron beams enables imaging that cannot be achieved by other means and has applications in material science, geoscience, biology, and forensics. The most powerful neutron source in the United States, the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), benefitted from the development of accelerators in particle and nuclear physics.
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1 A.L. Robinson, 2009, “History of Synchrotron Radiation,” in The X-Ray Data Booklet, A.C. Thompson, D.T. Attwood, E.M. Gullikson, et al., Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, https://xdb.lbl.gov.
2 S. Botha and P. Fromme, 2023, “Review of Serial Femtosecond Crystallography Including the COVID-19 Pandemic Impact and Future Outlook,” Structure 31(11):1306–1319.
3 S. Durdagi, Ç. Dağ, B. Dogan, et al., 2021, “Near-Physiological-Temperature Serial Crystallography Reveals Conformations of SARSCoV-2 Main Protease Active Site for Improved Drug Repurposing,” Structure 29(12):1382–1396.
4 P. Abbamonte, F. Abid-Pedersen, P. Adams, et al., 2015, “SLAC-R-1053: New Scientific Opportunities Enabled by the LCLS II X-Ray Lasers,” https://doi.org/10.2172/1630267.
SOURCE: Courtesy of Lightsources.org.
The enabling technology for LCLS-II and SNS at ORNL is that of superconducting radio frequency (RF) cavities. That technology has a deep heritage in particle and nuclear physics laboratories at Cornell University, Jefferson Lab, and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), as well as R&D carried out for the International Linear Collider program.
Proton colliders were developed by particle physicists to study the highest-energy collisions. The Tevatron, the first proton–antiproton collider to use superconducting magnets, was the highest energy collider in the world until 2009. At the time of the Tevatron construction, the amount of superconducting wire in the United States was very small compared to the needs of the Tevatron. Industrializing the production of superconducting wire not only allowed the construction of the Tevatron but also the industrial production of magnetic resonance imaging for widespread medical uses. Superconducting magnets also enabled colliders in nuclear physics, including the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN.
At present, the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), which will collide high-energy, polarized electrons with nuclei, is to be built at Brookhaven. There are many accelerator challenges in building the accelerator, especially with the large polarization required of the beam, the large crossing angle, and the asymmetry of the machine. EIC will also play an important role in maintaining the technical expertise in building and operating high-energy colliders in the United States.
Another application of accelerators is in mass spectrometry. The ratios of radioactive isotopes to stable isotopes are used to deduce the age and history of a sample. Depending on the radioisotope used, mass spectrometry
SOURCE: B.L. Doyle, F.D. McDaniel, and R.W. Hamm, 2018, “The Future of Industrial Accelerators and Applications,” Sandia National Laboratories, SAND2018-5903B, https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1468902, for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.
can determine ages from 1 year to more than 10 million years old and has revolutionized archaeological research, atmospheric science, and the study of species evolution. While the invention of the mass spectrometer dates back to the late 19th century, more recent advances in accelerator science have increased the sensitivity, range of uses, and widespread application of mass spectrometry.
Accelerators in Industry
As of 2016, more than 46,000 accelerators have been built worldwide for a great variety of industrial applications.5 As Figure 5-2 shows, the most ubiquitous use of accelerators is in the semiconductor industry, where ion implantation is used in the fabrication of semiconductor devices and materials. They are essential for the multi-billion semiconductor industry. Also important for the semiconductor industry, as it strives for even smaller features, is the use of FELs and storage rings for photolithography, now undergoing industrial development.
The irradiation of materials with electrons and photons is used in the production of various “cross-linked materials” such as wire and cable insulation, heat-shrinkable plastic tubing and film, coatings and adhesives,
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5 B.L. Doyle, F.D. McDaniel, and R.W. Hamm, 2018, “The Future of Industrial Accelerators and Applications,” Sandia National Laboratories, SAND2018-5903B, https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1468902, for the Department of Energy’s National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-NA0003525.
tires, and polyethylene foam. Electron and photon beams are used for food sterilization, the treatment of waste materials, and cleaning of stack gases. Ion beams are also used for material characterization. An ion-beam micro-probe can scan materials for composition and characterization, often in quality control processes.
Electron microscopes are miniature accelerators and continue to be improved by advances in their electron optics, innovative techniques to develop contrast, and fast single-electron detectors. Taken together, recent advances have revolutionized cryo-electron microscopy and its applications in the biosciences.
Accelerators in Medicine
From the earliest days of accelerators, X rays were used for diagnostic imaging, and cyclotrons were used for experimental treatments with radiation. Radiotherapy has evolved in the intervening years to be a curative modality for many cancers. Therapies using hard X rays and gamma rays are the most common form of radiotherapy, which can be produced either using radioisotopes, or in a more flexible approach, using linacs for delivery to specific targeted areas. Isotope production by proton accelerators is extensively used to produce isotopes important for medical application and also for national security.
High-energy machines like the Bevalac at LBNL, the proton linac at Fermilab, and the Alternating Gradient Synchrotron at Brookhaven, as well as several facilities abroad, established the efficacy of various particle-beam treatments. Protons and nuclei have energy deposition that increases dramatically at the end of their range, thereby depositing the bulk of their energy in the targeted tumor. Fermilab built the first proton accelerator for proton-beam cancer therapy to be operated at a hospital—the Loma Linda hospital in California—that is still in operation today. Industry now builds proton therapy machines (see Box 5-1).
In principle, heavy-ion accelerators can be even more effective than proton accelerators in depositing most of their radiation in the tumor. The R&D has been done at particle physics and nuclear physics accelerators, and today, there are several centers worldwide to treat cancers with carbon ions; for example, MedAustron6 and The National Centre for Oncological Hadrontherapy7 built by CERN. One carbon-ion accelerator is planned in the United States.
In the future, accelerator technologies developed in particle physics will lead to new, more effective, or cost-efficient therapies for deep tumors. High-energy protons delivered over periods of less than 1 second have proven to be less damaging to normal tissues.8 Linear accelerators are already in use for external beam radiation therapy. Improved designs for electron accelerators could provide deeply penetrating electrons and would be easier to operate in medical facilities than proton accelerators. There are several efforts in Europe and one in the United States at SLAC.9
Accelerators in National Security
Megaelectronvolt gamma rays produced by electron linear accelerators are in extensive use for scanning of cargo containers that enter the United States.10 Research on novel compact accelerators is of interest to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. A particular program, Muons for Science and Security, is aimed at developing compact accelerators to produce muon beams.11 Muons are deeply penetrating particles that lose energy as they penetrate matter, but without showering like gamma rays and electrons. Muons could be used to image and
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6 MedAustron, 2019, “New Era for Cancer Treatment by Irradiation with Carbon Ions,” updated July 23, https://www.medaustron.at/en/beitrage/new-era-for-cancer-treatment-by-irradiation-with-carbon-ions.
7 The National Centre for Oncological Hadrontherapy, n.d., “Hadrontherapy: What It Is and How It Works,” https://fondazionecnao.it/en/hadrontherapy/what-is-hadrontherapy, accessed May 5, 2025.
8 T. Tedeschi, 2022, “FLASH Radiation Therapy Shows Promise in First-in-Human Trial,” University of Cincinnati News, October 24, https://www.uc.edu/news/articles/2022/10/flash-radiation-therapy-shows-promise-in-first-in-human-trial.html.
9 SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, n.d., “PHASER Design - Technology Innovation Directorate (TID),” https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/media/slac-tid-phaser-design-jgd2et9b5ag, accessed May 5, 2025.
10 R.W. Hamm and M.E. Hamm, eds., 2012, Industrial Accelerators and Their Applications, World Scientific.
11 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, n.d., “MuS2: Muons for Science and Security,” https://www.darpa.mil/research/programs/muons-for-science-and-security, accessed May 5, 2025.
BOX 5-1
Any Time, Any Place
One in every three people in the United States is expected to develop cancer during their lifetime. While there are several different treatments, many cancers will be treated and cured with external-beam radiation therapy (EBRT) using electrons, photons, or protons. There are about 2,000 sites and 4,000 machines for EBRT in the United States. The most common treatment is with energetic multi-megaelectronvolt photons.
During the committee’s work, one member was treated with photon-beam therapy of the neck, post-surgery for a tongue carcinoma (Figure 5-1-1). The apparatus used, with its electron source, wave-guide acceleration, magnetic steering of electron beams, targeting to produce photons, collimation to shape the beam, dynamic beam control and dosimetry, all have their origin in particle and nuclear physics accelerators.
characterize materials and to detect voids in solid structures. Cosmic-ray muons have been used to search for hidden chambers in the pyramids and other archeological structures.12 Muons from compact accelerators would increase their capability significantly compared to cosmic-ray muons.
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12 S. Procureur, K. Morishima, M. Kuno, et al., 2023 “Precise Characterization of a Corridor-Shaped Structure in Khufu’s Pyramid by Observation of Cosmic-Ray Muons,” Nature Communications 14:1144.
Free-electron lasers continue to be studied as potential directed-energy weapons in naval applications. The tunability of FELs to optimize atmospheric transmission, the capability to deliver large power, and the unlimited capability provided by onboard electrical power make them an attractive defensive system.13
Other accelerator-based applications have been proposed; for example, the transmutation of long-lived radioactive waste into more manageable isotopes.
LOOKING TOWARD THE FUTURE
The focused R&D program described in Recommendation 1 will produce many technologies, including rapid acceleration and cooling of muon beams, specialized superconducting cavities that can operate in magnetic fields, and superconducting magnets with unprecedented field strengths. If this R&D is successful, many applications will follow.
Also in the future, advances in plasma accelerators driven by lasers or beams are likely to lead to useful applications. Other research programs aim at making accelerators more efficient and economical for industry; for example, by the development of higher-temperature superconducting cavities that can operate with a simple cryocooler.
Computing and the Internet
Particle physics research requires powerful computational technologies. The field has not only been an early adopter of many new advances but has also aided in pioneering a number of directions that have since been widely used in many other areas. The following drivers for innovation in computing lie at the heart of the particle physics enterprise: (1) handling and analyzing very large data sets; (2) very high data-acquisition rates; (3) providing access to a large, international community to process, organize, and analyze the data sets; (4) the need to precisely model complex detector systems; (5) accurate modeling from first principles; and (6) the need to model and design advanced accelerators and their control systems.
Elementary particle physics data sets rank among the largest. Many aspects of how the field dealt with the challenges in data curation, management, and analysis have deeply influenced current practices and technologies elsewhere. Perhaps the most well-known is the invention of the World Wide Web at CERN for content sharing over the Internet. Originally intended for automated data sharing among particle physicists, the World Wide Web quickly transformed information access and communication across the digital world.
Another contribution of particle physics is the development of high-throughput, distributed computing for the LHC, in the form of grid computing. Grid computing is characterized by its ability to handle non-interacting, dispersed workloads. The “grid” was a precursor to cloud computing. Based on virtualization, the cloud offers a broad set of distributed computing services, representing an example of how a science-oriented approach can seed the rapid evolution of computational technology from a more specialized to a widely adopted one.
Elementary particle physics has a history of sharing of information, which spans not only experimental data and data bases but also scientific analyses and papers. The idea of democratic, rapid, and open access to scientific publications began in particle physics, with the arXiv e-print repository in 1991.14 The arXiv has now grown to encompass many other fields including astrophysics, computer science, nuclear physics, condensed matter physics, and mathematics, and has spawned similar efforts in other areas, including biology and medicine. The arXiv demonstrated the viability of many technical and operational aspects of electronic publishing and has had a major influence on the development of the open-access movement in scientific publishing.
An essential feature of elementary particle physics is making predictions from a fundamental theory, the Standard Model. Quantum chromodynamics (QCD)—the SU(3) part of the Standard Model—illustrates the chal-
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13 National Research Council, 2009, Scientific Assessment of High-Power Free-Electron Laser Technology, The National Academies Press, https://doi.org/10.17226/12484.
14 D. Garisto, 2019, “Preprints Make Inroads Outside of Physics,” American Physical Society Archives, https://www.aps.org/archives/publications/apsnews/201909/preprints.cfm.
lenges of making first-principle predictions from a complicated theory.15 Among the goals of QCD is the prediction of the masses and properties of the hadronic states seen in nature and computing transition rates for key precision tests of the Standard Model; for example, the Muon g-2 experiment. Doing so, has led to advances in parallel computing, driven by the extreme computational demands of “lattice QCD.” Prototype parallel computers developed by particle physicists influenced the design of parallel supercomputers, such as the well-known IBM Blue Gene systems.
Particle physics projects are characterized by scale and complexity, and also, importantly, by the need to obtain, share, and store accurate and reproducible results. This has resulted in the development of data management, modeling, and simulation software that has much wider applications. Examples include the data analysis framework ROOT, which has been used for decades in particle physics, including to discover the Higgs boson, and is now deployed in other fields; the particle and radiation transport code GEANT4, whose applications range from astrophysics to medicine; and the data management system, Rucio, which can store and archive large data sets across heterogeneous systems.
The data sets of particle physics are characterized by their size, richness, and complexity. For this reason, the field was an early adopter of machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques, and particle physicists have made important contributions in the areas of pattern recognition and anomaly detection. In addition, techniques developed to enhance Monte Carlo methods in Lattice QCD, have been employed in modern statistical sampling.
Detector and Imaging Technologies
It is often said that particle accelerators are the most powerful microscopes that exist, allowing us to see at the subnuclear level. This is true and is made possible by detecting the many particles that emerge from collisions created at particle accelerators. The challenges of doing this are manifold, including the multitude of particle types, enormous range of energies deposited, the positional precision needed, the “shutter speed,” and the complexity of that being imaged. At the LHC, the proton beams collide 40 million times a second in the detector, and there are 50 collisions with thousands of particles produced in each beam crossing.
The detection and measurement of particles is essential not only for particle physics but also for nuclear physics, material and atomic physics, biology and medicine, the environmental sciences, astrophysics, and national security. Today, the number of different detector and imaging methods used across science is enormous, and any of them find their roots or important advances in particle physics and nuclear physics. For example, physicists at CERN made major contributions to the development of positron emission tomography scanners for medical imaging.16
The revolution in microelectronics, with the advent of solid-state pixel detectors and modern interconnection technologies, has enabled experiments in high-intensity machines like the LHC to deal with the enormous data challenges. The hybrid-pixel detector has been revolutionary not only in particle physics experiments but also across a large set of disciplines; see Box 5-2.
Looking ahead, the grand challenge of laboratory detection of dark matter particles requires a multiplicity of approaches, since the properties of the dark matter particle are unknown along with its interactions with ordinary matter, which are very weak. This has proven to be a compelling motivation for recent R&D with quantum sensors, much of it supported by the National Quantum Initiative research centers at national laboratories and at universities. In some cases, these innovative quantum technologies have already demonstrated world-leading sensitivity—examples include experiments using superconducting cavities sensitive to dark photons and using superconducting qubits to make orders-of-magnitude noise reduction in sensors looking for dark matter axions.17,18
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15 QCD illustrates the fluidity of field boundaries: today, much of the research on QCD involves nuclear physicists, especially in the area of lattice QCD.
16 I. Raynova, 2017, “Forty Years Since the First PET Image at CERN,” CERN Courier, December 21, https://home.cern/news/news/knowledge-sharing/forty-years-first-pet-image-cern.
17 A. Romanenko, R. Harnik, A. Grassellino, et al., 2023, “Search for Dark Photons with Superconducting Radio Frequency Cavities,” Physical Review Letters 130:261801.
18 N. Du, N. Force, E. Lentz, et al., 2018, “Search for Invisible Axion Dark Matter with the Axion Dark Matter Experiment,” Physical Review Letters 120:151301.
BOX 5-2
Hybrid Pixel Detectors
The demands of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), with multiple proton collisions per beam interactions per crossing, requires detectors that can resolve individual tracks in a crowded environment. The hybrid pixel detector is a fast, low-noise device consisting of a pixelated detector plane bonded to a readout chip that reads each individual pixel (Figure 5-2-1 left). By separating the detector plane and the electronics, the integrated chips are enormously flexible since the detector plane can be optimized separately from the microelectronics which can be designed for specific applications. These detectors were developed initially for experiments at CERN by a collaboration of academic institutions and industry. They were demonstrated in fixed target experiments and in the detector with lepton, photon, and hadron identification detector at the Large Electron-Positron collider. These detectors became essential for tracking in the unprecedented high-rate and high-radiation environment of the LHC. Evolutionary developments in microelectronics will allow ever more sophisticated electronic processing per pixel/and or higher resolutions for future colliders and other applications.
At least two lines of increasingly sophisticated hybrid photon–counting detectors evolved from these efforts and revolutionized how data are collected in other fields. The PILATUS detectors revolutionized how data are collected in synchrotron radiation experiments, and the MediPix detectors today dominate the imaging in medical applications (Figure 5-2-1 center and right). The power to optimize the detector material and the microelectronics have led to many other applications and to a number of companies that produce diverse photon counting devices.
SOURCES: Left: © 2015 CERN, https://cds.cern.ch/record/2730889/files/CERN-Brochure-2015-007-Eng.pdf; CC BY-SA 4.0. Middle: © 2025 CERN, https://knowledgetransfer.web.cern.ch/technologies/medipix3. CC BY-SA 4.0. Right: Courtesy of MARS Bioimaging Limited.
Particle-physics expertise also contributes in other ways to the rapidly growing ecosystem of quantum technologies. Particle physicists in partnership with quantum information science researchers and industry have demonstrated high-fidelity quantum teleportation on a metropolitan-scale quantum network, a major step toward the goal of a nationwide quantum internet that can transmit information with security.19,20,21 Particle physicists are adapting superconducting RF technology originally developed for particle accelerators in quantum computers; see Box 5-3.
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19 Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), 2023, “Fermilab Receives DOE Funding to Further Develop Nationwide Quantum Network,” Fermilab News, October 16, https://news.fnal.gov/2023/10/fermilab-receives-doe-funding-to-further-develop-nationwide-quantum-network.
20 Fermilab, 2022, “Quantum Network Between Two National Labs Achieves Record Synch,” Fermilab News, June 27, https://news.fnal.gov/2022/06/quantum-network-between-two-national-labs-achieves-record-synch.
21 Fermilab, 2020, “Fermilab and Partners Achieve Sustained, High-Fidelity Quantum Teleportation,” Fermilab News, December 15, https://news.fnal.gov/2020/12/fermilab-and-partners-achieve-sustained-high-fidelity-quantum-teleportation.
BOX 5-3
Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center
The Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center (SQMS) at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is one of the five centers funded by the Department of Energy as part of the National Quantum Initiative. It brings together more than 500 researchers across 34 institutions, from national laboratories, academia, and industry (Figure 5-3-1 top). It is a multidisciplinary collaboration with the aim to tackle some of the critical areas in quantum information science. It brings deep expertise in material science, cryogenics, microwave devices, and control engineering. It has already achieved the world record quality-factory in superconducting cavities and has improved performance in superconducting cubits and processors. Most importantly, SQMS is creating a community to train and educate the next generation of quantum scientists (Figure 5-3-1 bottom left and bottom right).
SOURCE: Top and Bottom left: Courtesy of MARS Bioimaging Limited. Bottom right: Courtesy of Reidar Hahn/Fermilab.
GLOBAL SCIENCE
As described in Chapter 2, particle physics is one of the most globalized fields in all of science.
Governments have leveraged the large scale of particle physics research infrastructures, their strategic value for technology and workforce, and the maturity of experience in the particle physics community to advance diplomacy through science.
Large particle physics projects have provided impetus for broader science and technology agreements and government-to-government agreements. The LHC program at CERN, with contributions from more than 70 nations, depends heavily on international agreements and cooperation. More recently, the U.S.–UK collaboration on the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility/Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment and the Proton Improvement Plan II projects at Fermilab led to the first-ever umbrella science and technology agreement between these two nations. The same projects led to joint development agreements between the Department of Energy (DOE) and India’s Department of Atomic Energy.
The Synchrotron-Light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East (SESAME), which opened in Jordan in 2017, is the first synchrotron light source serving the Middle East and neighboring countries, building scientific and cultural connections and fostering mutual understanding and tolerance through scientific cooperation. Particle physicists played an important role in its conception and construction, and SESAME governance is based on the CERN model.
Governments recognize that large projects requiring collaboration across borders need working diplomatic and legal agreements to support them. Frameworks and mechanisms developed in support of international particle physics projects have uses in other areas. For example, DOE developed a new legal instrument, the International Cooperative Research and Development Agreement, to support international contributions to U.S.-hosted particle physics projects; the instrument is now available for other DOE-supported activities. International particle physics initiatives have also provided the opportunity for learning how to plan and develop large facilities with contributions from many countries.
High-profile international particle physics projects are also a powerful tool for U.S. universities and laboratories to recruit the most talented students from the global pool, a brain gain that strategically benefits the United States more broadly, since not all the talent recruited remains in particle physics research.
Historically, basic science has provided a stable basis for international collaboration and cooperation, including during prolonged conflicts such as the Cold War. Particle physics facilities around the world have traditionally been open and an essential element in helping developing countries stay connected and maintain and advance their science and technology.
At the same time, concerns about dual-use technology developments, and on the protection of strategic intellectual property, require careful management of collaboration with potentially adversarial countries. Such concerns make clear the importance of developing and maintaining robust mechanisms for international scientific collaboration.
WORKFORCE BENEFITS
Attracting, training, and strengthening the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workforce is strategically important to the U.S. economy and national security. Elementary particle physics plays an important role in achieving this critical objective in today’s highly competitive world.
The pipeline to scientific careers starts very early. Particle physics’ mysteries, challenges, and discoveries spark young people’s imaginations, attracting them into STEM fields. Thousands of undergraduates work in university research groups and more participate in research through the National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates programs.
The competencies that graduate students and postdocs in particle physics acquire are broad and widely applicable—mathematical and quantitative reasoning; fundamental science, including quantum mechanics; computing and data science, including artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML); engineering, including microelectronics; and working and problem solving in groups of individuals from diverse backgrounds.
BOX 5-4
Case Study Quantifying the Societal Benefits of Large Initiatives in Particle Physics: The Large Hadron Collider
Two published studies in 2016 and 2018 performed a social cost benefit analysis of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, including the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) upgrade. The lead researchers were from the Department of Economics, Management, and Quantitative Methods at the Università degli Studi di Milano, and the studies employed standard methodologies of cost-benefit analysis as applied to large conventional infrastructure projects by international agencies such as the World Bank, European Investment Bank, and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
As stated in these studies, the primary benefits of progress and discoveries in a basic science like particle physics are long term and unpredictable. At the present time, the long-term benefit of the discovery of the Higgs boson cannot be quantified, any more than Benjamin Franklin could have foreseen the full impact of his fundamental insights into the nature of electricity.
These studies instead made quantitative estimates of socio-economic benefits of the LHC program that are realized on a short- to medium-term basis. Two categories of benefits were found to account for the bulk of the quantifiable contributions to the estimated net present value of the LHC program, and the incremental benefits from the HL-LHC upgrade:
- The value of training (or human capital formation) for students and early-stage researchers, in terms of subsequent career development in the broader labor market, and
- Technological or industrial spillovers for collaborating firms and other economic agents.
To quantify workforce benefits, the 2016 study considered 36,800 early-stage researchers comprised of approximately 19,400 students and 17,400 postdocs with tangible connections to the LHC program during some fraction of the time period from 1993 to 2014. The study used interviews with 384 respondents to estimate the mean marginal career value—in effect, the “salary premium”—of the LHC experience and training to the respondent’s overall lifetime career trajectory, either in academia or in other science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and STEM-adjacent careers such as finance, tech industry, computing, and consultancy. The studies applied a social discount rate of 3 percent to account for the opportunity cost of capital returns that are realized gradually over a career. The resulting mean net incremental value to STEM careers from the full LHC program was thus estimated at 7.4 billion USD equivalent (one 2016 USD = 1.17 Swiss franc) plus an estimated additional increment of 2.4 billion USD equivalent from the HL-LHC upgrade. Benefits to industry from involvement in large particle physics initiatives, beyond the direct profits from procurements, include the following:
- Learning new capabilities by doing, which open up new business opportunities,
- Acquiring technical knowledge “for free,”
- Acquiring products for free (mostly open-source software),
- Derisking because academic scientists/laboratories undertake the required research and development at the lower technical readiness levels, and
- Retaining and developing talented staff through association with inspiring cutting-edge science projects.
The 2018 study quantified the first three kinds of benefits to industry over the full extent of the LHC program. The resulting mean estimated benefit value was 9.6 billion USD equivalent, plus an estimated additional increment of 2.2 billion USD equivalent from the HL-LHC upgrade.
SOURCES: M. Florio, S. Forte, and E. Sirtori, 2016, “Forecasting the Socio-Economic Impact of the Large Hadron Collider: A Cost-Benefit Analysis to 2025 and Beyond,” https://arxiv.org/abs/1603.00886; A. Bastianin and M. Florio, 2018, “Social Cost Benefit Analysis of HL-LHC,” https://cds.cern.ch/record/2319300.
Many students and postdocs have spent time working in a global environment, learning to communicate across geographical and cultural boundaries. They are comfortable with international assignments and working remotely across time zones.
In the course of doing particle physics research, graduate students and postdocs discover that they are in great demand across society. As discussed in Chapter 3, the majority of particle physics graduate students find careers outside of particle physics and contribute to the U.S. technical workforce.
For example, an American Institute of Physics study22 identified 130 U.S. employers who hired multiple U.S. physics bachelor’s degree recipients from the classes of 2018–2022 into technical positions. The employers include most of the largest U.S. corporations, defense contractors, financial firms, biomedical institutions, consulting firms, leading AI developers, and government laboratories.
It is clear that the investment in the particle physics workforce boosts the U.S. economy through human capital development. This type of societal benefit was studied quantitatively for the Large Hadron Collider program (see Box 5-4). It is also possible to gain some quantitative insights into long-term human capital benefits from the publicly available LinkedIn database, where one can perform searches for keywords and phrases in the professional highlights text provided by each LinkedIn user.
For example, searching for mentions of CERN or Fermilab as of 2024 returns 37,500 distinct individuals who considered their connection to these laboratories of sufficient importance to include it in their self-described professional highlights. A significant fraction of these individuals has gone on to senior leadership positions in companies and other institutions; for example, 1,300 at the vice president or senior vice president level and more than 500 chief executive officers.
STEM alums of particle physics in the United States hold key technical and management positions in a variety of STEM fields. For example, approximately 700 are working on medical imaging, applying technical knowledge and research skills gained from particle physics. More than 3,000 are working in data science, leveraging their training with complex data sets and AI-based analyses.
FINDINGS AND CONCLUSION
Finding: Technological developments in particle physics have enabled and/or sped up their development more broadly, with important societal impacts.
Finding: Particle physics is an essential component of the scientific fabric of the United States and has synergistic interactions with many other fields.
Finding: The short-term societal benefits of particle physics include technology transfer, the technology pull of challenging requirements in accelerators, electronics, computing, imaging, and advanced materials, and a workforce in the form of highly skilled individuals who are trained in particle physics and move to industry.
Finding: Historically, the long-term benefits associated with seeking to understand the fundamental rules that govern the physical world include the advances and discoveries in chemistry, electricity, atomic energy, and quantum mechanics that make the modern world possible. In particular, the technological applications of quantum theory, from chips to sensors, that underpin the current information age.
Finding: The extreme challenges and amazing accomplishments of particle physics research provide other benefits to the United States, including prestige and making the nation a magnet for the most talented individuals from around the globe.
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22 American Institute for Physics, 2024, “Employers Who Recently Hired Three or More New Physics Bachelors,” updated March 21, https://ww2.aip.org/statistics/employers-who-recently-hired-three-or-more-new-physics-bachelors.
Finding: The highly globalized field of particle physics contributes to science diplomacy and makes the United States a science beacon for the world.
Conclusion: The United States should continue its leadership in elementary particle physics because of its many benefits to science, the nation, and humanity.
