A strategic seminar for the development of China’s high energy physics after BEPCII was held from May 5th to 7th at the

group photo of the strategic seminar

Institute of High Energy Physics in Beijing. More than 110 experts in high energy physics including officials from MOST, CAS and NSFC attended the seminar.

Dr. ZHAO Guangda, CAS Academician and President of the High Energy Physics Branch under the Chinese Physical Society (CPS) chaired the seminar. Dr. ZHAO commented that research on high energy physics in China has been thriving over the years; IHEP leads the way in high energy physics experiments by operating BEPCII and BESIII. Great achievements have been achieved, such as in tau and R measurements, and new particle studies at BESIII. Incredible progress has been made in Daya Bay neutrino and Yangbajing cosmic ray experiments. All these achievements have laid a solid foundation for the future development of high energy physics in China.

Dr. CHEN Hesheng, IHEP Director expressed his appreciation for the support from different departments to China’s high energy physics. He introduced at great length the progress of the high energy physics programs under IHEP. BEPCII’s peak luminosity is now 65 times higher than that of the BEPC before its upgrade, BESIII starts to collect ψ (4040), and Daya Bay neutrino experiment will start data collection soon. However, he raised the question: Where should we go and how could we obtain continuous development of high energy physics in China during the post-BEPCII period? High energy, high precision and non-accelerator are the three frontiers of high energy physics that lay in front of us, how should we arrange their priorities?

Four sessions were arranged with topics covering high energy physics theory, physics experiment, underground and space dark matter detection. 25 speakers reported following Chen's remarks. Many good suggestions were made.

Dr. Wang Yifang summarized the seminar. He thanked all the attendees for their care and concern about the development of high energy physics in China. He promised that all the suggestions and different points of view would be seriously studied; more of such seminars would be organized to have even deeper studies over the development directions until a common ground is achieved.