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Proceedings for Lunch and Learn: Making science fun and exciting through social media

Social media channels are vital for outreach and offer huge opportunities for scientists to directly engage with the public using nontraditional methods – including lots of creativity and humor. The physics community’s presence is growing more significant, and this session (designed for early career researchers) provided a lively discussion with experts in the domain. We covered how to best use social media to raise public awareness of science, share excitement and progress, and cultivate support from followers. We also discussed some of the thornier issues in social media, such as capturing the complexity of both the scientific process and the science itself.

Biron, Lauren↗

The Social Science and Engineering of Research Practice.

The verdict is in: the methods of science can significantly enhance the effectiveness of creative teams. Just ask employers like Google and Facebook who are applying ideas from the social sciences to improve the performance of their organizations.1 Over the last few decades, social scientists, including psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists, have made important strides in developing a scientific understanding of how creative individuals and creative communities operate.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

Development of Platforms for Nuclear Science Experiments at the National Ignition Facility

When neutrons are produced in nuclear processes such as fission or fusion, they can interact with any surrounding materials, inducing radioactivity through neutron capture reactions. Neutron reactions are fundamental to many areas of nuclear science, including studies of nuclear reactors, determining the formation of matter in stars, nuclear forensics, medical radiotherapy, and assessing the safety of our nuclear stockpile. The National Ignition Facility (NIF) offers a unique opportunity to use the inertial confinement fusion platform to measure neutron reactions essential to national security or fundamental and applied science applications. A typical fusion experiment at NIF currently produces approximately 10 16 neutrons through the fusion of deuterium and tritium in a target capsule. Materials introduced into the NIF target chamber in close proximity to the capsule will undergo neutron reactions such as capture or fission, and the resultant reaction rates can be evaluated. While neutron reactions can be measured at other facilities, NIF offers unique advantages. The flux of neutrons produced (number of neutrons per square centimeter per second) is much higher than any other available neutron source due to both the small size of the NIF capsule (2-mm diameter before implosion) and the short time (roughly 100 ps) over which the neutrons are produced. This results in less target material required to perform a reaction-rate study (less than or equal to 10 16 atoms) as compared to traditional particle accelerators, which require targets that are approximately 1 mg or roughly 10 20 atoms. Also, the NIF neutron spectrum is peaked at thermonuclear (14 MeV) neutron energy, which means that nuclear reactions with nonthermal energy thresholds can be studied at NIF, whereas neutron energies at a nuclear reactor are generally insufficient for studying higher-energy neutron reactions. Several experimental configurations have been developed that enable the use of NIF fusion capsules as powerful neutron sources for nuclear reaction measurements.

38 RADIATION CHEMISTRY, RADIOCHEMISTRY, AND NUCLEA↗

DOE Office of Science

The DOE Office of Science is the Nation's largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences; and is the steward of 10 of the 17 DOE laboratories. It also provides the world's largest array of scientific user facilities and supports thousands of researchers through competitive awards each year.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

Opportunities for Nuclear Physics & Quantum Information Science

This whitepaper is an outcome of the workshop Intersections between Nuclear Physics and Quantum Information held at Argonne National Laboratory on 28-30 March 2018 [www.phy.anl.gov/npqi2018/]. The workshop brought together 116 national and international experts in nuclear physics and quantum information science to explore opportunities for the two fields to collaborate on topics of interest to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science, Office of Nuclear Physics, and more broadly to U.S. society and industry. The workshop consisted of 22 invited and 10 contributed talks, as well as three panel discussion sessions. Topics discussed included quantum computation, quantum simulation, quantum sensing, nuclear physics detectors, nuclear many-body problem, entanglement at collider energies, and lattice gauge theories.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Astro2020 Science White Paper: First Stars and Black Holes at Cosmic Dawn with Redshifted 21-cm Observations

The "cosmic dawn" refers to the period of the Universe's history when stars and black holes first formed and began heating and ionizing hydrogen in the intergalactic medium (IGM). Though exceedingly difficult to detect directly, the first stars and black holes can be constrained indirectly through measurements of the cosmic 21-cm background, which traces the ionization state and temperature of intergalactic hydrogen gas. In this white paper, we focus on the science case for such observations, in particular those targeting redshifts z $\gtrsim$ 10 when the IGM is expected to be mostly neutral. 21-cm observations provide a unique window into this epoch and are thus critical to advancing first star and black hole science in the next decade.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

The Future Landscape of High-Redshift Galaxy Cluster Science

Modern galaxy cluster science is a multi-wavelength endeavor with cornerstones provided by X-ray, optical/IR, mm, and radio measurements. In combination, these observations enable the construction of large, clean, complete cluster catalogs, and provide precise redshifts and robust mass calibration. The complementary nature of these multi-wavelength data dramatically reduces the impact of systematic effects that limit the utility of measurements made in any single waveband. The future of multi-wavelength cluster science is compelling, with cluster catalogs set to expand by orders of magnitude in size, and extend, for the first time, into the high-redshift regime where massive, virialized structures first formed. Unlocking astrophysical and cosmological insight from the coming catalogs will require new observing facilities that combine high spatial and spectral resolution with large collecting areas, as well as concurrent advances in simulation modeling campaigns. Together, future multi-wavelength observations will resolve the thermodynamic structure in and around the first groups and clusters, distinguishing the signals from active and star-forming galaxies, and unveiling the interrelated stories of galaxy evolution and structure formation during the epoch of peak cosmic activity.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Energy Frontier Research Centers: Science For Our Nation’s Energy Future (July 2019)

As world demand for energy rapidly expands, transforming the way energy is collected, stored, and used has become a defining challenge of the 21st century. At its heart, this challenge is a scientific one, inspiring the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES) to establish the Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) program in 2009. The EFRCs represent a unique approach, bringing together creative, multidisciplinary scientific teams to perform energy-relevant basic research with a complexity beyond the scope of single-investigator projects. These centers take full advantage of powerful new tools for characterizing, understanding, modeling, and manipulating matter from atomic to macroscopic length scales. They also train the next-generation scientific workforce by attracting talented students and postdoctoral researchers interested in energy science. To date, BES has supported 82 EFRCs, of which 46 are currently active, involving more than 1,600 senior investigators and at least 5,400 students and postdoctoral researchers at over 170 institutions. The EFRCs have collectively demonstrated the potential to substantially advance the scientific understanding underpinning transformational energy technologies. Both a BES Committee of Visitors and a Secretary of Energy Advisory Board Task Force have found the EFRC program to be highly successful in meeting its goals. The scientific output from the EFRCs is impressive, and many centers have reported that their results are already impacting both technology research and industry. This report on the EFRC program includes selected highlights from 2016-2019.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

In Situ Visualization for Computational Science

In situ visualization, i.e., visualizing simulation data as it is generated, is an emerging processing paradigm in response to trends in the area of high-performance computing. This paradigm holds great promise in its ability to access increased spatio-temporal resolution and leverage extensive computational power. However, the paradigm is also widely viewed as limiting when it comes to exploration-oriented use cases and further will require visualization systems to become more and more complicated and constrained. Additionally, there are many open research topics with in situ visualization. The Dagstuhl seminar 18271 "In Situ Visualization for Computational Science" brought together researchers and practitioners from three communities (computational science, high-performance computing, and scientific visualization) to share interesting findings, to identify lines of open research, and to determine a medium-term research agenda that addresses the most pressing problems. This report summarizes the outcomes and findings of the seminar.

Bauer, Andy↗

The science of "Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse"

Science fiction sometimes borrows from science fact. In the movie “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse,” the writers blended multiverses and alternate realities with the real world Large Hadron Collider and the Compact Muon Solenoid. In this video, Fermilab’s Dr. Don Lincoln gives you the low-down on what is real and what is made up.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

Optimizing the LSST Observing Strategy for Dark Energy Science: DESC Recommendations for the Wide-Fast-Deep Survey

Cosmology is one of the four science pillars of LSST, which promises to be transformative for our understanding of dark energy and dark matter. The LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC) has been tasked with deriving constraints on cosmological parameters from LSST data. Each of the cosmological probes for LSST is heavily impacted by the choice of observing strategy. This white paper is written by the LSST DESC Observing Strategy Task Force (OSTF), which represents the entire collaboration, and aims to make recommendations on observing strategy that will benefit all cosmological analyses with LSST. It is accompanied by the DESC DDF (Deep Drilling Fields) white paper (Scolnic et al.). We use a variety of metrics to understand the effects of the observing strategy on measurements of weak lensing, large-scale structure, clusters, photometric redshifts, supernovae, strong lensing and kilonovae. In order to reduce systematic uncertainties, we conclude that the current baseline observing strategy needs to be significantly modified to result in the best possible cosmological constraints. We provide some key recommendations: moving the WFD (Wide-Fast-Deep) footprint to avoid regions of high extinction, taking visit pairs in different filters, changing the 2x15s snaps to a single exposure to improve efficiency, focusing on strategies that reduce long gaps (>15 days) between observations, and prioritizing spatial uniformity at several intervals during the 10-year survey.

Lochner, Michelle↗

Single-object Imaging and Spectroscopy to Enhance Dark Energy Science from LSST

Single-object imaging and spectroscopy on telescopes with apertures ranging from ~4 m to 40 m have the potential to greatly enhance the cosmological constraints that can be obtained from LSST. Two major cosmological probes will benefit greatly from LSST follow-up: accurate spectrophotometry for nearby and distant Type Ia supernovae will expand the cosmological distance lever arm by unlocking the constraining power of high-z supernovae; and cosmology with time delays of strongly-lensed supernovae and quasars will require additional high-cadence imaging to supplement LSST, adaptive optics imaging or spectroscopy for accurate lens and source positions, and IFU or slit spectroscopy to measure detailed properties of lens systems. We highlight the scientific impact of these two science drivers, and discuss how additional resources will benefit them. For both science cases, LSST will deliver a large sample of objects over both the wide and deep fields in the LSST survey, but additional data to characterize both individual systems and overall systematics will be key to ensuring robust cosmological inference to high redshifts. Community access to large amounts of natural-seeing imaging on ~2-4 m telescopes, adaptive optics imaging and spectroscopy on 8-40 m telescopes, and high-throughput single-target spectroscopy on 4-40 m telescopes will be necessary for LSST time domain cosmology to reach its full potential. In two companion white papers we present the additional gains for LSST cosmology that will come from deep and from wide-field multi-object spectroscopy.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Accelerating Science: A Computing Research Agenda

The emergence of "big data" offers unprecedented opportunities for not only accelerating scientific advances but also enabling new modes of discovery. Scientific progress in many disciplines is increasingly enabled by our ability to examine natural phenomena through the computational lens, i.e., using algorithmic or information processing abstractions of the underlying processes; and our ability to acquire, share, integrate and analyze disparate types of data. However, there is a huge gap between our ability to acquire, store, and process data and our ability to make effective use of the data to advance discovery. Despite successful automation of routine aspects of data management and analytics, most elements of the scientific process currently require considerable human expertise and effort. Accelerating science to keep pace with the rate of data acquisition and data processing calls for the development of algorithmic or information processing abstractions, coupled with formal methods and tools for modeling and simulation of natural processes as well as major innovations in cognitive tools for scientists, i.e., computational tools that leverage and extend the reach of human intellect, and partner with humans on a broad range of tasks in scientific discovery (e.g., identifying, prioritizing formulating questions, designing, prioritizing and executing experiments designed to answer a chosen question, drawing inferences and evaluating the results, and formulating new questions, in a closed-loop fashion). This calls for concerted research agenda aimed at: Development, analysis, integration, sharing, and simulation of algorithmic or information processing abstractions of natural processes, coupled with formal methods and tools for their analyses and simulation; Innovations in cognitive tools that augment and extend human intellect and partner with humans in all aspects of science.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Nuclear Science Training for Secondary School Teachers at Argonne National Laboratory - 2019

In continued support of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) project RAS/0/079, with its stated goal to educate 1 million students on the topic of nuclear science by 2021, Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne) hosted its second two-week nuclear science and technology training course for secondary school teachers in October 2019. A modified course format was adopted based on experience from the first course held at Argonne in 2018, along with similar project workshops held across the world. The results of the course, in terms of both technical knowledge retention and teaching capabilities, demonstrated the benefits of the revised approach.

Grabaskas, David↗

Accelerator Technologies and Science: Progress and Outlook

For over half a century, high-energy particle accelerators play a key role and shape modern nuclear and particle physics, they are also the instruments at the forefront of research for material science and biology. The physics needs continuously push us to invent novel ways to increase energy and improve the performance of accelerators, reduce their cost and make them more power-efficient. Here we briefly overview the most notable accelerator facilities which recently became operational and are now employed for research in nuclear physics, basic energy sciences, neutrinos, high energy particle frontier. We also present upcoming and planned future facilities and outline their main goals, challenges, and required R&D. Focus will be given to the core accelerator technologies such as magnets, RF acceleration, and targets as we as leading beam physics developments such as beam cooling, colliding beams and plasma acceleration.

Shiltsev, Vladimir D.↗

Ion Coulomb Crystals in Storage Rings for Quantum Information Science

Quantum information science is a growing field that promises to take computing into a new age of higher performance and larger scale computing as well as being capable of solving problems classical computers are incapable of solving. The outstanding issue in practical quantum computing today is scaling up the system while maintaining interconnectivity of the qubits and low error rates in qubit operations to be able to implement error correction and fault-tolerant operations. Trapped ion qubits offer long coherence times that allow error correction. However, error correction algorithms require large numbers of qubits to work properly. We can potentially create many thousands (or more) of qubits with long coherence states in a storage ring. For example, a circular radio-frequency quadrupole, which acts as a large circular ion trap and could enable larger scale quantum computing. Such a Storage Ring Quantum Computer (SRQC) would be a scalable and fault tolerant quantum information system, composed of qubits with very long coherence lifetimes. With computing demands potentially outpacing the supply of high-performance systems, quantum computing could bring innovation and scientific advances to particle physics and other DOE supported programs. Increased support of R$\&$D in large scale ion trap quantum computers would allow the timely exploration of this exciting new scalable quantum computer. The R$\&$D program could start immediately at existing facilities and would include the design and construction of a prototype SRQC. We invite feedback from and collaboration with the particle physics and quantum information science communities.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

Grand Challenges in the Science of Making Torque from Wind: Then and Now

Shifting the electricity supply to renewable sources within the next two decades is the first step in decarbonizing the energy sector, and wind energy will play a central role in enabling this rapid energy transition to clean energy. The international wind energy research community - including NREL researchers - has determined that for wind power to fulfill its expected role as a major global supplier of carbon-free energy, critical challenges around the design, development, and deployment of wind energy must be addressed - quickly. Paul Veers and other NREL researchers joined 100 worldwide wind energy experts in writing a series of 10 articles for publication in Wind Energy Science. With the support and guidance of the European Academy of Wind Energy Publications Committee, the articles synthesize and clarify the most critical wind energy science needs. This presentation introduces the concept of the Grand Challenges and its 10 articles.

decarbonization↗

Embedding Ethics and Trustworthiness for Sustainable AI in Earth Sciences: Where Do We Begin?

As in many other research domains, Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques have been increasing their footprint in Earth Sciences to extract meaningful information from the large amount of high-detailed data available from multiple sensor modalities. While on the one hand the existing success cases endorse the great potential of AI to help address open challenges in ES, on the other hand on-going discussions and established lessons from studies on the sustainability, ethics and trustworthiness of AI must be taken into consideration if the community is to ensure that its research efforts move into directions that effectively benefit the society and the environment. In this paper, we discuss insights gathered from a brief literature review on the subtopics of AI Ethics, Sustainable AI, AI Trustworthiness and AI for Earth Sciences in an attempt to identify some of the promising directions and key needs to successfully bring these concepts together.

Ambrozio Dias, Philipe↗