This is important for some of the potential applications of this system such as atomic clocks and quantum computing. However, the researchers also believe that trapped ion crystals may provide an interesting system with which to study self-organized criticality. Such a facility would enable high-statistics investigations of every parameter associated with neutrino oscillations, which indicate the presence of neutrino mass. Even a tiny neutrino mass has tremendous implications for cosmology and the standard model of particle physics. Monroe will discuss a neutrino factory idea based on muon beams.
Muons can provide lots of neutrinos, as they rapidly decay into an electron and a neutrino pair.
Monroe and her colleagues have found that a proposed technique known as ionization cooling can reduce the diameter of the beam by a factor of 10, so as to make muons feasible for a Neutrino Factory. In the scheme, muons pass through a block of material, reducing momentum in all their directions. For example, critics have observed that an attacker could send hundreds of harmless decoys along with a single lethal missile. This issue will be addressed by several speakers, among them prominent physicist and arms expert Richard Garwin, a senior fellow for science and technology for the Council on Foreign Relations. Lisbeth Gronlund of MIT's Security Studies Program will make recommendations as to what an adequate NMD test program might look like.