In the EU-project STRONG-2020, physicists from leading European research institutions and groups collaborate to investigate the physics of strong interactions. In this project, not only basic questions of strong interactions are going to be studied, but also highly specialized particle detectors are being developed, which will be used for example in medical applications. In total, 44 institutions from 36 countries form the STRONG-2020 collaboration, including the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz.
The STRONG-2020 project provides four different lines of support. The "Transnational Access" allows scientist to apply for beam time at e.g the Mainz Microtron (MAMI), the accelerator of the research center in Juelich or at different accelerators of CERN in Geneva. The second is "Virtual Access", where open access will be provided to research results, algorithms and software. The third line comprises network activities to strengthen the contact among different research groups to develop new ideas and approaches. "Common research projects" form the fourth line. Important for all subprojects supported by STRONG-2020 is that they should not only be useful for the research community but also for the society; also they should be cross-linked and deal with contemporary issues.
The STRONG-2020 project is supported in the framework of the Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme with 10 Million Euro in total. It started in June 2019 and will last for four years.
One million Euro will go to Mainz covering in total 9 subprojects.
The largest part of the funding goes to the Transnational Access to the Mainz Microtron MAMI that supplies scientists from all over Europe with electron beams. The remaining amount is split between networks:
- Proton Radius European Network (PREN)
- Strange Hadrons and the Equation of State of Compact Stars (THEIA)
- Hadron Physics from Lattice Quantum Field Theories (LATTICE)
and common research projects that cover different areas of hadron physics:
- Precision tests of the Standard Model (PRECICION)
- Generalized Parton Distributions (GPD-ACT)
- Light and Heavy Quark Hadron Spectroscopy (HaSP)
- Cryogenic Polarized Target Applications (CryPta)
- Polarized Electrons, Positrons and Polarimetry (P3E)