On December 3rd 2016, Prof Lu and I joined a field trip to visit two large experimental facility affiliated to Institute of High Energy Physics, CAS. One is the Chinese Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) in Dongguan, Guangdong. The experimental setups are in the process of installing and debugging. Three beamline stations are designed for the first phase of the project, which are expected to be open to user in 2018. Different from X-rays, neutrons interact only with the nucleus of materials, giving it excellent sensitivity to light atoms as well as isotopes. Besides, it also interacts with magnetic field due to its own spin, which can be used to probe magnetic structure and electron spin fluctuation. We visited the linear accelerator and the beamline stations under construction.
After the lunch, we went to the other one, the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment Station. We passed a 2-km long tunnel leading to the underground detector. Researchers conducted Reactor Experiment for Neutrino Oscillation, obtaining experimental results with the highest accuracy around the world. It attracts many scientists from all over the world to come onsite to conduct experiments and to establish research cooperation.
Though tiring, it was a valuable and horizon broadening tour! Hope we have chance to utilize these state-of-art large facilities for our research in the near future!
-reported by Yiqun