High energy-frontier accelerators have provided the necessary research tools to establish the Standard Model by precision investigation of the strong and, subsequently, electro weak interactions at their characteristic energy scales of O(10-1000) MeV and O(100) GeV. What should be our next steps? Should we remain on the inertial progress-path and devote most of our resources to investigate the O(100) TeV scale with new high-energy frontier collider(s) -- even if we do not have any hint for new interactions at this energy scale, and the cost of the new high energy frontier colliders becomes large? Shouldn’t we investigate, in parallel, complementary development paths focused on studies of the emergent phenomena by developing new, unprecedented intensity and quality particle beams in the anthropomorphic energy domain?
In this talk, I shall discuss two attempts going in such a direction. I shall concentrate mainly on the Gamma Factory project, being developed at CERN over the last 7 years. Its goal is to significantly broaden the present CERN research programme by including new components based on the novel-type light source. The proposed, partially-stripped-ion beam-driven light source is the backbone of the Gamma Factory project. It could be realized at CERN by re-using the infrastructure of the already existing accelerators and by profiting from the recent progress in laser technology. It could extend the scientific life of the LHC storage rings beyond its HL-LHC phase. The Gamma Factory could push the intensity limits of the presently operating light-sources by at least 7 orders of magnitude, reaching the flux of up to 10^18 photons/s, in the particularly interesting gamma-ray energy domain of 0.1 — 400 MeV, which is presently not accessible to the FEL photon sources. The partially stripped ion beams, the unprecedented-intensity energy-tuned gamma beams, together with the gamma-beam-driven secondary beams of polarized positrons, polarized muons, neutrinos, neutrons, and radioactive ions constitute the basic research tools of the Gamma Factory. A broad spectrum of new research opportunities, in a vast domain of uncharted fundamental and applied physics territories, could be opened by the Gamma Factory. Examples of new research opportunities and the status of the project development will be presented in this talk.
