Ukraine is among seven countries with associate
member status.
Russian researchers are involved in a project
for the “high-luminosity” phase of the collider,
which should crank up its performance by
2027 and generate vast new amounts of data,
CERN says.
The Russians are working on physics analysis,
computing, and the operation, construction and
design of new detectors that catch protons after
they are smashed together, Mnich said.
Fully two-thirds of the staffers are Russian on
an experiment known as NA64, which involves
blasting a high-powered electron beam onto a
fixed target and searching for unknown particles
from a hypothetical dark-sector, he said.
Another experiment related to CERN’s
accelerator, which propels particles through
an underground, 27-kilometer (17-mile) ring
of superconducting magnets in and around
Geneva, uses synthetic crystals to split and
deflect beams. Nearly half of the staff working
on the research are from Russia, Mnich said.
Yet another project, to study the internal
structure of protons and neutrons, has
components “delivered by Russian colleagues,”
he said.
“They are here. They arrived already last year.
They’re installed. But we might have problems to
operate the detectors if our Russian colleagues
will not be able to come to CERN as planned in
the future,” Mnich said.
“We are not sending anyone home,” he added.
“We try to continue to keep them here, but it’s a
very difficult situation for us.”