NWO Roadmap funding for crucial program for the future of accelerator physics

The Institute for Gravitational and Subatomic Physics (GRASP) makes an important contribution to the future ALICE detector at CERN. Under the leadership of Alessandro Grelli and Raimond Snellings, GRASP is participating in FASTTRACK, a project in the Roadmap program for large-scale research infrastructure that NWO is funding. In total, this involves 21.7 million euros for material investments in ALICE, ATLAS and LHCb.

NWO has announced this on Monday in The Hague. FASTTRACK is crucial for the future of accelerator physics at Nikhef and CERN for the ALICE heavy-ion program, among others.

The FASTTRACK project focuses on new sensor techniques that allow particle detectors at CERN to record up to fifty times more particle collisions at the same time. This acceleration is necessary to untangle the deluge of particles in the LHC accelerator that will be created if the particle beams will become up to ten times more intense in the coming years.

The support from NWO's National Roadmap for Large-Scale Research Facilities ensures that the Netherlands can continue to play at the forefront of particle physics for the next ten years through the Nikhef partnership. The program budget is more than 53 million euros, of which NWO is contributing almost 22 million euros. This investment guarantees, among other things, the development of new detector hardware and the continuation of the Dutch contribution to ALICE.