The community of High Energy Physicists comes together usually every three years in form of the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA) and goes through a seminar on “Future Perspectives in High Energy Physics”. This year was special for a number of reasons. First, the ICFA seminar had not happened the last time due to the COVID pandemic and thus there had been a six years gap and secondly because the US High Energy Physics community was about to release its long expected important report on the future planning in the US: the P5 report.
The meeting was well attended and the coffee breaks were buzzing with people catching up and uttering their opinions on what the P5 report might say or might not say. The report will be released on December 7/8 during the HEPAP meeting in DC and further discussed in detail at various events.
Wednesday afternoon the attendance moved up another notch from the already high level with the arrival of the lab directors and people that often just do not have enough time to stay for the entire meeting. Thursdays sessions then started with the full suit of accelerator discussions which is a great summary of what is going on. Apart from the big players also the smaller and less conventional accelerator work was presented and discussed.
The afternoon session, arguably the highlight of the meeting, started with an inspiring presentation about the future of HEP by Gavin Salam which even included a wish list for Santa (page 4). The further presentations were the large regional perspectives which mostly confirmed the planning on the different continents and did not offer any big surprises. The panel discussion afterwards with the lab directors on the podium made it clear that CERN is presently in the focus and this is not only because the LHC is the energy frontier, but also because the program for the future might be most clearly defined as this point. Fabiola was holding the microphone a lot and fended well for CERN’s program and the future.
The conference dinner on the same evening was another wonderful event. We were driven in busses to the harbor and had a buffet style dinner on a big old vintage sailing ship, that was of course tied to the docks only for such purposes.
Finally in Friday the astro/cosmo connection to High Energy Physics was made and a number of summaries on precision measurements and new physics searches rounded of the picture and we were released around noon. A wonderful event, I left with a very positive impression a) of the spirit of the community and b) the future perspectives for the field.