Photonic materials, devices and techniques have major global commercial significance, spawning technologies that underpin many economic sectors from aerospace, automotive and communications to consumer products and healthcare, and SUPA will actively promote research and knowledge transfer supporting such technologies. The development of novel and high quality materials is essential for advances in many areas of photonics. Currently there exist world class activities in photonic material fabrication, characterisation and spectroscopy across a number of the partner universities. These are broad-based, with growth, basic materials physics and device fabrication capabilities in light-emitting polymers and dendrimers at St Andrews, III-V semiconductors and notably GaN at Strathclyde, II-VI materials and quantum dots at Heriot-Watt and colloidal materials in Edinburgh.

Photonics is facilitating revolutionary advances in the life sciences, biotechnology and medicine, and the emerging field of biophotonics is widely expected to deliver major scientific and commercial rewards. A co-ordinated programme drawing on Scotland’s manifest strengths in key photonics areas such as optical manipulation, multi-photon and spectral imaging, time-resolved fluorescence, as well as non-linear techniques and sensor technologies is strategically important in achieving the goal of global competitiveness. New permanent posts and SUPA Fellowships will play a key role in this initiative area.

World-class groups engage in both theory and experiment, with strong and developing collaboration across several institutions. We are particularly well placed in quantum information and quantum metrology, with the RAE-flagged CNQO group at Strathclyde linked to experimental work on entanglement (Glasgow, St Andrews), quantum key distribution (Heriot-Watt) and optimised measurements (Strathclyde). There is excellent work on cold atoms and BEC at Strathclyde and St Andrews, on novel trap designs at Heriot-Watt and St Andrews, and on quantum dots as single photon generators and single photon detection for quantum cryptography at Heriot-Watt.

This initiative has two strands:

We are bringing together theorists and experimentalists in a unique programme to maximise the discovery potential from the LHC for the Higgs particle and supersymmetry. We will also begin detector developments for a future Linear Collider.

     A possible Higgs event expected at LHC

We are exploiting the new 10Teraflops custom supercomputer, QCDOC, built for the UK-wide lattice QCD collaboration UKQCD, to make precision calculations from the theory of the strong force. These calculations are needed along with experiment for testing the current Standard Model of particle physics to find inconsistencies that point to new physics.

     The new QCDOC computer installed at Edinburgh

It has long been a puzzle as to why the Universe appears to be predominantly made of matter, whilst anti-matter is relatively rare. The situation presumably has its roots in the formation of the early Universe, and the violation of CP symmetry that allows nature to tell the difference between matter and antimatter. The B meson system is particularly interesting as the effects of symmetry violations are very large (although rates are small). The B meson contains the bottom, or b, quark. To understand the B meson system requires a close synergy between experiment and theory for whilst B mesons can be produced and studied at low energy e+e- colliders, and in great abundance at the Large Hadron Collider as a result of proton collisions, it requires lattice based calculations to provide many of the parameters needed to be able to interpret the results. We are involved in both the current BaBar experiment at SLAC and the future LHCb experiment at CERN studying these issues as well as in the relevant lattice QCD calculations.

Links to the experiments:

Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) describes the interactions of quarks and gluons through the force of nature called the strong force. It predicts in principle the masses and properties of their bound states, called hadrons. The proton and neutron are important hadrons, the key constituents of atomic nuclei. There are many other hadrons, however, made from the different types, or flavours, of quarks in different combinations and they range in mass from one tenth the proton mass to many times the proton mass. The calculation of hadron masses can only be done by numerical simulation of QCD on a lattice of space-time points. This is a numerical ‘Grand Challenge’ project and needs fast supercomputers to solve it. The calculations are important since, together with experimental results, they can test the Standard Model of particle physics precisely in a way that we hope will uncover inconsistencies that lead to new understanding of how particle physics works at a deeper level.

Glasgow and Edinburgh theorists work together as part of the UK-wide UKQCD collaboration in this area as well as with other groups internationally.

The very successful Standard Model of particle interactions has, as a crucial ingredient, the so called Higgs mechanism, named after Edinburgh physicist Peter Higgs. Whilst we have so far measured compelling indirect evidence for the Higgs mechanism at previous experiments, there is today no direct signature. The search for the Higgs boson is, therefore, one of the key goals of the Large Hadron Collider programme (LHC) at CERN. Current research interests include the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider in CERN, theoretical studies of dynamic models for the top and Higgs particle masses, models for the neutrino mass matrix, and experimental and theoretical work towards precision studies at a future linear e+e- collider.

The Edinburgh and Glasgow groups all have a strong involvement in experiments at existing hadron colliders where we can search for new physics signals and study the properties of the proton in great detail. The HERA accelerator in Hamburg collides electrons or positrons with protons, allowing detailed study of the internal structure of the proton. The Tevatron collider at Fermilab in Chicago collides protons and anti-protons at 2 TeV, providing the highest energy data available today. This allowed for the discovery of the top quark and work continues on determining the top quark mass and studying hadrons containing the bottom quark. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in CERN started operations in 2009 with proton-proton collisions at 7 TeV. This is the highest energy facility in the world and will be the focus of collider physics for the next decade, with the hope of discovering the Higgs particle. We collaborate in experiments at each of these, and are active in the associated phenomenology calculations.

Particle detectors have a number of components arranged around the beam pipe that must follow particle tracks coming from the interaction region, often bent by a magnetic field, and provide information for particle identification. The development of new detector components for upcoming experiments focusses on materials that give a fast response with good resolution and survive in a environment in which there is a lot of radiation. The fabrication and characterisation of these detector components is very important. Semiconductor detector development for LHC experiments has produced spin-offs in medical imaging.

A new radiation-hard fast particle detector

The ATLAS detector for LHC

The Edinburgh and Glasgow Nuclear Physics Groups have very strong ties. These have mainly developed through an internationally recognised collaboration on the use of electromagnetic probes of Nuclear Structure. This work developed 'Hadrons in Nuclear Physics', a field where exciting new developments were taking place, and for which major new international facilities have been constructed to significantly improve our understanding of nuclear and hadronic matter.

The SUPA initiative had two strands: