First Announcement


Stepping Forward To FRIB

The North American nuclear physics community has worked tirelessly for more than two decades in advancing the case for a next generation exotic beam facility in the USA. Now, with the site of FRIB chosen as Michigan State University, it is time to gather the potential user community of the facility and discuss the capabilities we need and start to plan the path ahead to real experiments.

To take this next step, we are organizing a Users Workshop on 30th and 31st May 2009 at Argonne National Laboratory. The workshop will start with a reception and buffet at 5:00 pm on Saturday 30th May, followed by presentations about the proposed MSU Facility starting at 6:00pm. The mechanisms for interaction between the MSU management team and the Users Group will be discussed. The open science questions for the User community, the opportunities, and the challenges will be laid out. Sunday 31st will be spent in Working Groups set up to discuss these issues, and mechanisms established for resolving them. For some of the challenges, extensive detailed homework will be involved, and then later, specialized future workshops will be needed.

The specific issues we need to address are:

  1. Identify the pressing issues in the scientific program that can be pursued prior to FRIB, and in the earliest phases of FRIB operation.
  2. Identify the key facility requirements of FRIB to reach those science goals.
  3. Identify equipment and manpower resources needed to achieve those goals at FRIB.

Clearly, setting priorities and discussing alternatives will be a major and difficult challenge we have to face. This is a step we must take that will move us beyond previous workshops. Now the resources that will be available to us are being defined, we must find the optimal science program that fits into these constraints.

We are developing a detailed program for the workshop now, which will be posted shortly. Also, we are working to update the RIA Users Web page in order for it to be a useful, dynamic, up-to-date, resource for the community. In the meantime, please mark your calendars with the workshop on Sat./Sun. 30/31st May, immediately after RNB8, and plan to attend. This is a time when major decisions are being made and we need to hear your voices. The funding agencies are also listening, and they too need to hear your opinions.