Particle Physics, Medicine and Policy

by Ronan McNulty (University College Dublin)

Thursday 7 Nov 2024, 11:00 → 13:00 UTC

Particle physics has driven forward our understanding of the fundamental structure of our universe, and produced significant societal benefits with advances in engineering, computing, health and education.  In this presentation, I will show how basic research leads to a deeper understanding of the strong force, and how the tools used have relevance for imaging and dosimetry in medical physics.  In Ireland, this work has contributed to a greater political awareness of the benefits of particle physics and I will give some context leading to the recent application by the country to become associate members of CERN.

The strong force is the least well-understood of the forces due to its strength and the fact that the gluon force-carriers can self-interact.  Many theoretical phenomena such as pomerons, odderons, saturation and tetraquarks are only starting to be elucidated and can be probed using data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in which, paradoxically, this intrinsic colour-charge is hidden.  The experimental results I will describe build on the theoretical groundwork performed at IFJPAN.

With multiple interactions occurring every beam-crossing at the LHC, ultra-fast detectors and electronics are needed.   One spin-off of this technology is in the area of medical physics where detectors have been deployed in an electron linac in Dublin and at the AIC-144 proton cyclotron at Krakow.  I will describe the results of this research, the ability to observe the temporal structures of the beams, and the relevance for future FLASH therapy, where very intense ionising radiation can be delivered to a patient for a very short amount of time.