By Giorgio Bellettini, August 16, 2020
My esteemand gratitude for Alvin were born out of how he accepted in 1979 to collaborate with me and with my Italian group to design and build a collider detector at the newly approved Tevatron. He proved to be both courageous and wise, a truly a far-viewing leader and a fair and reliable collaborator. Our long friendship which followed, although based primarily on our professional roles, could grow sincere and solid at all times.
In december 1979 I met at CERN with him and with Robert Diebold (representing the DOE, I believe) to discuss how Italians could have a role in the research program at the newly approved Tevatron Collider. A collaboration between a US group under his leadership and a Tsukuba/KEK group headed by Kunitaka Kondo had already been extablished with the intent to design a general purpose detector for the Tevatron.
I ambitiously proposed a USA-Japan-Italy Collaboration for designing and operate a full coverage magnetic detector. Italy would be represented by a group under my leadership. At that time i was leading a Frascati-Pisa group who had been approved for building a 4ꙥ magnetic detector for a forthcoming high-luminosity electron-positron collider at Frascati. I declared that I would abandon that project, get approval for the new project at the Tevatron and involve in it a wide INFN community. I had no guaranteed budget since the INFN Directorate had not been informed of my decision, but I would be fighting for approval and support as soon as I was back to Italy .
Alvin listened in silence and asked a week for answering. He said that he had to discuss that plan back at home.
What did he have in mind to check in those consultations at home? I did not ask. I was a high level INFN research staff and an established group leader but I had no role in the INFN Directorate. Could that be enough?
Seven days later he called me and said that he was happy to start the Collaboration. He left it to me to seek approval and support in Italy. We did not elaborate more. It was a yes, enough. I felt that he wanted the Collaboration to go ahead no matter what and had obtained the support that he needed in the US.
In January 1980 I started commuting with Fermilab. By spring I was able to recruit a solid group including many smart physicists of my former Pisa-Stony Brook experiment at the CERN ISR. The 15th floor of the Hirise had been cleared and made fully available to the newly born Collaboration. On that wide empty floor there were a number of drawing boards displaying white sheets of paper. It was a frightening scenario.
After long discussions and confrontations of many wild ideas, the sketches on the drawing boards turned into projects and in one year CDF was outlined. The idea of colliding two proton beams of different energies, the Tevatron against the Main Ring, was abandoned and a solenoidal magnetic detector on a p-pbar single ring collider was chosen.
in 1981 the Design Report of CDF1 was presented as a USA-Japan-Italy endeavor signed by 13 Institutions comprising 57 American, 15 Japanese and 15 Italian Physicists. We did start within a three Nations groups but by working together in front the boards people mixed and an integrated community was born. People with similar stile of work merged together to design the detector parts. In 1995 at the moment of the discovery of the top quark the Japanese and Italian authors in the top discovery paper were still about 13% each of the Collaboration. At that point a Swiss Geneva group was the only European group beside the Italians in the Collaboration. The patient and understanding style of Alvin had a key role in smoothing and overcoming several fights that started inside the Collaboration in that period.
In the few years from the discovery of the top quark and the start of Run2 in 2001 European groups from Germany, Russia, Finland, United Kingdom, Spain, France joined CDF. Also non-European Institutions joined from Canada, Japan, Korea, Taiwan. As a consequence of its great success the USA-Japan-Italy project had gone through a mutation. CDF had turned into a fully International Collaboration.
I did not regret and neither did Alvin, I believe. When the experiment was shut down in 2011 CDF comprised 30 US and 27 non-US Institutions with 438 authors, about 50% of which were non-American. The era of the world-wide collaborations in major HEP experiments had been born. Physicists of different nations, races and genders got together in the US and produced good physics.
New technologies were developed. One major discovery was achieved. The study in depth of heavy flavor physics became possible at hadron colliders. Many of CDF results will stay forever in the HEP books.
Alvin had been instrumental to this important development. He must have been proud of his daring move made in 1979.
What should one learn from this experience, which that the best possible policy?
The original political scheme of a Collaboration among three Countries was reasonable at that point in time but it faded away and was forgotten during the experiment. Since the results were unique and of world-wide interest, physicists from everywhere wanted to be involved.
Why was CDF so successful?
The right accelerator and the right field of search were chosen, where important discoveries were possible. With no high luminosity Tevatron and no top quark such a success would have been impossible.
Next, the way was paved open to good leaders, primarily to the right American leader. They brought along smart scientists and established a creative style of work. The rule “let the physics interest lead policy” was followed.
The rule can be expressed simply as:
- Let’s chose powerful physics instruments and attach fundamental physics questions,
- Let’s focus on the leaders. At the end only people matter.
Alvin followed these rules. He cared primarily about physics and accepted to collaborate on equal grounds with my Italian group even if had no granted money, just because we had gained unique experience on experimenting at the ISR and the group comprised researchers of great quality. That daring attitude was rewarded by the Italians, primarily by myself, with great respect and consideration. I have a much more aggressive temper than his, but in our sometimes hot discussions there was no hint of any fight. Alvin original decision based on science paved the way to the success of CDF and of the Italians at Fermilab.
Alvin, this is my way of telling how important you were for CDF and for the Italians. Thanks.