LNS also includes the activities of MIT's Center for Theoretical Physics. LNS's Bates accelerator is operated under the joint auspices of MIT and the US Department of Energy. About 250 scientists from more than 50 universities and laboratories are involved in its research program. The research there has produced about 60 PhDs from MIT and other universities and currently involves about 25 MIT graduate students. The facility centers on a 200 meter long linear accelerator, around which are arranged various particle detectors and analyzers.
Quarks are particles that compose the more familiar protons and neutrons.
But an understanding of how these exotic quarks glue themselves together as triplets to form protons and neutrons is central to understanding the strong nuclear force, one of the four fundamental forces. Smoothing the beam will help physicists resolve the details of individual collisions, some of which may be rare and unusually important to study. This will be a virtually unique capability in the world community of electron accelerators. Since 1982, Professor Samuel C.C. Ting has been the scientific leader of what may likely be the most widespread international cooperative effort in high energy particle physics. The L3 detector project is the first collaboration between Europe, the Soviet Union, the United States, and the People's Republic of China.