Quantum to Cosmos Workshop Objectives

Ulf Israelsson, JPL

Airlie, May 21, 2006

ACCOMPLISHMENTS

• Three Space Shuttle flight experiments completed

• ~70 funded investigators

• Funded plans for ISS research facilities aimed at studying

• General Relativity

• Equivalence Principle

• Bose Einstein Condensation

• Atom Interferometers

• Inverse square law

Laboratory Physics at NASA Code U before 2004

PROGRAM GOALS

• To discover and explore fundamental physical laws governing matter, space, and time.

• To discover and understand organizing principles of nature from which structure and complexity emerge.

2004 – a year of change

• NSTC Committee on Science Interagency Working Group on the Physics of the Universe.

• Chartered to respond to Quarks to Cosmos NRC report

• Coordinated pursuit of the 11 Q2C questions by NASA, DOE, and NSF.

• NASA Code S – Observational Physics

• NASA Code U – Laboratory Physics

2004 – a year of change, continued

• NASA’s Vision for Exploration announced

• Code U absorbed into newly formed Exploration Systems Mission Directorate

• Physics program in last year of funding

• Beyond Einstein program struggling today

• Enhanced physics funding for NSF and DOE only

Q2C Meeting Objectives

• To serve as completion workshop for the Code U/ ESMD laboratory physics program

• To document the extent to which Laboratory Physics in Space can contribute to answering the Physics of the Universe questions– Synergism between NSF, DOE, NIST, and NASA

– Collaborations between ESMD and SMD?

• To discuss with the assembled scientific community what can be done to establish a future program in this area, if warranted– Synergism between NSF, DOE, NIST, and NASA

– Importance of International Collaborations

OBSERVATIONAL PHYSICS• Studies are exclusively observational in nature with signals

emanating beyond the solar system.

• Understanding the source and location of the signals is crucial.

• Domain of the current Beyond Einstein program– Gravity waves, strong gravity tests of GR, dark energy surveys, dark

matter searches, CMB measurements, high energy cosmic rays,

LABORATORY PHYSICS• Studies of matter, space, and time with signals originating

primarily within the solar system.– Also included are existence proof detection of novel dark matter

candidates, such as the sterile neutrino– Tests of GR in the solar system, laser ranging, 1/r^2 force law

deviations, edm

Laboratory versus Observational Physics