Historical overview

Search on for an elementary particle

Institute Dubna - 1959

KM is not yet "sold out" - it is the main problem of the future.

From the diary of D.I.Blokhintsev

The spirit of competition, noticed by Western physicists from their Soviet colleagues during a visit to the Soviet Union in 1956, also pervaded the team of John Adams, preparing to launch the CERN synchrotron at 25 GeV. Here is one of the first entries in the working journal of JINR Director D.I.Blokhintsev for 1959, "Adams: they start assembling. In September 1959, they are going to install a beam in the machine!!!! Instead of the beginning of 1960. They are leading..."

Moscow reminds you: did we make you an international institute? We did. Did we give you accelerators? We did. Where are the results? What achievements? Meanwhile, there were achievements. In May, the theorists drove into their own building - a real palace of science, Dmitry Ivanovich is admiring. And at the next meeting of the Scientific Council, to applause, he wishes the BLTP theorists, "We are waiting for an exhaustive theory of elementary particles in the next six months!"

But to take seriously, there were achievements and a scientific result obtained by young Moscow physicists under Bruno Pontecorvo even got into the State Register of Discoveries of the USSR¹ with a priority on 27 July, 1959. In the same year, a cyclotron prototype with a spatial variation of the magnetic field was put into operation at the Laboratory of Nuclear Problems that was reported at the 2nd International Conference on Accelerators in Geneva by M.G.Meshcheryakov and V.P.Dmitrievsky². And in the summer of the same 1959, bench tests of the future IBR-1 reactor³ were held.

Honored guests in Dubna. British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, a member of his cabinet Foreign Minister Selwyn Lloyd and USSR Foreign Minister A.A.Gromyko are sitting; behind them the personal translator of the highest Soviet party and of the state leaders Viktor Sukhodrev is. "It seems that I already know some Russian words," Macmillan states with surprise: atom, physics, progress... 24 February, 1959

So, there were achievements but not such achievements were expected from Dubna. It was expected to discover high energy physics. Otherwise, why did they build a synchrophasotron? And at the beginning of 1959, there was finally a chance for discovery: the intensity of the synchrophasotron was brought to the project-based 10⁹ particles in the cycle. And the chamber technique immediately went into action. A month and a half before the next international conference on high energy physics, 30 thousand images were obtained. Processing was carried out in two, if not in three shifts, they worked in Stakhanov style. Evgenia Kladnitskaya recalled, "You come to work at 9 AM in the morning, you return home at 9 PM in the evening..." But they saw something new and now, it was possible to go to Rochester not empty-handed.

Rochester-1959 was held in Kyiv, D.I.Blokhintsev was Chairman of the Conference Organizing Committee. This is both honorable and troublesome. Academician I.E.Tamm is sounding the alarm, "Landau is not allowed to attend the conference! So, it's time to join the fight..." From the diary of D.I.: "9 June. Today, they sent an extract with a penalty to Dubna. A bright empty hall, armchairs, tables and away, at a long table, a gallery of faces familiar from portraits rises in memory. One of the portraits spoke and for some minute, I was sentenced. So, I got deaf in the ear because of the wild idea of not letting my people into Kyiv. However, my conscience is completely calm..."

300 scientists from 32 countries came to the conference, as well as another 100 observers from the USSR (as the host) - Dmitry Ivanovich and Vladimir Iosifovich, of course, tried to send as many young people as possible to the conference. When will they still be able to see with their own eyes the living classic of natural science Werner Heisenberg?

In July that year, tropical heat fell on Kyiv, the thermometer at night did not fall below 30°C. The Dnieper saved. It was nearby and the conference participants did not miss the opportunity to plunge into its waters and the future Nobel Prize winner Abdus Salam appeared at the meeting with a terry towel over his shoulder, Maria Shafranova recalled. But what heat! What heat, if you had the opportunity to stand next to people whom you know only from university textbooks! Yukawa, Segre, Amaldi, Peierls, Alvarez, McMillan... Here they are in the meeting room, here they are on the beach: a little American in swimming trunks, with the Polish surname Panofsky, over who Gulliver was hanging an American with an eagle nose named Chamberlain; Canadian physicist Georgy Volkov... Here is the Italian physicist Gleb Vatagin talking to the Soviet physicist Bruno Pontecorvo. Kyiv admires everyone. Soviet Academician I.E. Tamm was surrounded by journalists, they are in a hurry to find out the latest news from the microcosm... The Academician protests: no "academicians"! You also say "Nobel winner"! We're all just scientists here...

Reports, exchange of views on the sidelines, plenary meetings, narrow interest seminars. Emilio Segre is delivering a report. His former colleague Bruno Pontecorvo is speaking. For Segre, he is a man on the other side of the iron curtain and Segre notes with painful satisfaction that Soviet colleagues are asking Bruno Maksimovich to make a report in English since they do not understand his Russian well...

Western physicists have a good equipment, this is their advantage but they do not have access to the range of energies on which their Soviet colleagues work and they wonder what is there? And here's a sensation: Professor Van Ganchan is showing a picture that captures either the decay of a particle that has not yet been predicted by theorists, or some new phenomenon that does not yet have a theoretical justification. A check is underway but the hypothetical particle has already been named: D-meson - in honor of Dubna. From D.I.'s diary, "Everything would be nice if Wang Gang Chen was not chair of the meeting as of the trade union. It caused discontent, was unnecessary. The essence was not there for a penny and the form was too "fragrant". Then, they had to calm down Steinberger that was still angry..."

Boat tour of the Dnieper. Landings. Conversation with locals. "Why don't you come back?" they ask. The question, of course, is addressed to Gleb Vasilievich Vatagin - he is almost his own, from the Kherson Region... "There is a desperate but benevolent conversation, "Leave your Italian gum, we have a lot of garnet girls!" - "Yes, he is already old..." - "We know how you work for the world!" - "Why do you keep your work secret?!" Our overseas guests have undergone many transitions from joyful expressions to sour mines and back again..."

And behind the facade of the conference, work is also in full swing. From the D.I.'s diary, "The shadow team is going... They are very upset that the espionage abilities of scientists are below average... A.M.Ryzhov made a reservation, "Since, unfortunately, contacts cannot be avoided, then... - made everyone very happy..."

And finally, "Tomorrow is the last day. We are devilishly tired: from fuss, from receptions, from meetings... and even from science." Ahead - vacation with a backpack behind your shoulders, Baikal. Fabulously beautiful. How many berries there are in the taiga!..

A short record of an informal meeting with I.V.Kurchatov on 10 November. There is about him in the memoirs of V.P.Dzhelepov. In addition to the two of them, Kurchatov had two more people: ITEP Deputy Director V.V.Vladimirsky and D.V.Efremov. They talked about the future of high energy physics in the USSR.

"Conversation with I.V.Kurchatov.

1. Developing JINR as a high energy centre.

2. Another, application centre is needed (reactor, hot laboratory, others) In Voronezh? In countries? At the expense of countries?

3. Five-Year Plan of JINR

a) Dmitrievsky's accelerator is reasonable.

b) Reconstruction of the accelerator (synchrocyclotron? - approx.'s)

4. Solution

a) Establishing a section of average and low energies - Flerov, Frank, Mostovoy.

b) Do not get engaged into applied physics..."

Igor Vasilievich approved the construction of a synchrotron with an energy of 70 GeV that had already started to be developed headed by Vladimirsky and approved the Dmitrievsky accelerator. He was full of energy, made plans, was going to develop high energy physics in Ukraine... Several months will pass and watching how quickly the power vacuum developed after Kurchatov's sudden death fills up, D.I. will write in his diary, "There is no gardener in the garden and you can be mischievous as you like..."

What about the D-meson? What's wrong with it? About it - in the records of the writer Galina Nikolaeva that talked to young physicists of LHEP three years later, "We returned home, looked at 10 thousand pictures, there is no particle. But they announced it at the highest level. Scandal... Who will take responsibility? Here you have two months - to open!"

Two months is no coincidence. As if the high authorities looked into the water. At the end of November, a message came from CERN that the first proton beam with an energy of 25 GeV was obtained at the synchrotron. Dmitry Ivanovich wrote in his diary, "This is such a blow which the ball flies into the goal from with the goalkeeper!" And summing up the results of the outgoing year out of habit, a month later, he added, "Tomorrow is the party conference. A "Dubna satellite" is expected from us. The only hope seems to be for the D-particle. But who knows if it's a ghost?"

S.Ya.Nikitin (ITEP), during a visit to CERN, handed John Adams and his team a bottle of "Stolichnaya", wishing to drink it when they break the Dubna record. And this day has come. Adams has an empty bottle in his hands - now, he will put a picture in it that has captured a beam of protons accelerated to an energy of 25 GeV and a report on the investigation carried out will fly to the USSR

Footnotes

¹ Venedikt Petrovich Dzhelepov in his declining years said that the first Dubna laboratory was conceived from the very beginning as an all-Union laboratory, so that anyone who had an idea could come and carry out his own experiment. In 1958, the idea appeared among young Moscow physicists, whom their directorate sent to Dubna. Bruno Maksimovich, becoming interested, emphasized that the idea is good but it will be difficult to implement it on a synchrocyclotron and proposed another one, "simpler and more beautiful experiment" - to confirm the theorists' prediction that a muon planted on an electronic shell, when moving to a lower level, can give all energy to the core. The equipment was remade for a new task and another officially recognized opening of JINR became more.

² Such an accelerator (at the same energy as the synchrophasotron) would give a beam with an intensity of 1000 times higher. Neutrino experiments could be carried out on such an accelerator and Bruno Pontecorvo counted on it, he proposed a scheme for one of such experiments at a conference in Kyiv. But there was no money for the accelerator. Three years later, three American physicists at the Brookhaven accelerator discovered a muon neutrino. And although they had their own experimental scheme, different from the one proposed by Bruno Maksimovich, the authors considered it their duty to express gratitude to Pontecorvo for raising the question and when being awarded the Nobel Prize, they highlighted the role of Pontecorvo again.

³ Looking at the simple design that imitated the rotation of a disk with a uranium insert, the MEPhI graduate Evgeny Shabalin having received a higher education diploma four months ago, almost said out loud, "Is it the cutting edge of science?" Nevertheless, the tests were successful. The Obninsk scientists processed the measurement results and were satisfied: the results coincided with the calculated ones - and they returned home in high spirits. And the young specialists Evgeny Shabalin and Vladimir Ananiev, under the supervision of Kim Hyun Bon, a member of the JINR Scientific Council, sat down for calculations and their pulse duration of the future reactor turned out to be four times higher than the design one that was then confirmed during IBR-1 launch.

Newspaper "For communism", No. 1, 1960

On 4 November, 1959, the first passenger train from Moscow arrived at the Dubna railway station of the Savelovskaya Railway

Alexey Nikolaevich Sinaev is a unique person: he was Deputy of the City Council of all convocations - from the first to the last, elected in 1990 on an alternative basis and all this time, he had headed the committee on transport and communications.

Alexander RASTORGUEV