If the Higgs can reach the Hidden Valley, we will see new physics already in next-generation accelerators

Peer-Reviewed Publication

THE HENRYK NIEWODNICZANSKI INSTITUTE OF NUCLEAR PHYSICS POLISH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

 

IMAGE: THE SEARCH FOR EXOTIC HIGGS BOSON DECAYS IN FUTURE LEPTON COLLIDERS: 1) AN ELECTRON AND A POSITRON FROM OPPOSING BEAMS COLLIDE; 2) THE COLLISION PRODUCES A HIGH-ENERGY HIGGS BOSON; 3) THE BOSON DECAYS INTO TWO EXOTIC PARTICLES MOVING AWAY FROM THE AXIS OF THE BEAMS; 4) EXOTIC PARTICLES DECAY INTO PAIRS OF QUARK-ANTIQUARK, VISIBLE TO DETECTORS. view more 

CREDIT: SOURCE: IFJ PAN

It may be that the famous Higgs boson, co-responsible for the existence of masses of elementary particles, also interacts with the world of the new physics that has been sought for decades. If this were indeed to be the case, the Higgs should decay in a characteristic way, involving exotic particles. At the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow, it has been shown that if such decays do indeed occur, they will be observable in successors to the LHC currently being designed.

When talking about the 'hidden valley', our first thoughts are of dragons rather than sound science. However, in high-energy physics, this picturesque name is given to certain models that extend the set of currently known elementary particles. In these so-called Hidden Valley models, the particles of our world as described by the Standard Model belong to the low-energy group, while exotic particles are hidden in the high-energy region. Theoretical considerations suggest then the exotic decay of the famous Higgs boson, something that has not been observed at the LHC accelerator despite many years of searching. However, scientists at the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFJ PAN) in Cracow argue that Higgs decays into exotic particles should already be perfectly observable in accelerators that are successors to the Large Hadron Collider – if the Hidden Valley models turn out to be consistent with reality.

“In Hidden Valley models we have two groups of particles separated by an energy barrier. The theory is that there could then be exotic massive particles which could cross this barrier under specific circumstances. The particles like Higgs boson or hypothetic Z’ boson would act as communicators between the particles of both worlds. The Higgs boson, one of the most massive particle of the Standard Model, is a very good candidate for such a communicator,” explains Prof. Marcin Kucharczyk (IFJ PAN), lead author of an article in the Journal of High Energy Physics, which presents the latest analyses and simulations concerning the possibility of detecting Higgs boson decays in the future lepton accelerators.

The communicator, after passing into the low energy region, would decay into two rather massive exotic particles. Each of these would, in picoseconds – that is, trillionths of a second – decay into another two particles, with even smaller masses, which would then be within the Standard Model. So what signs would be expected in the detectors of future accelerators? The Higgs itself would remain unnoticed, as would the two Hidden Valley particles. However, the exotic particles would gradually diverge and eventually decay, generally into quark-antiquark beauty pairs visible in modern detectors as jets of particles shifted from the axis of the lepton beam 

“Observations of Higgs boson decays would therefore consist of searching for the jets of particles produced by quark-antiquark pairs. Their tracks would then have to be retrospectively reconstructed to find the places where exotic particles are likely to have decayed. These places, professionally called decay vertices, should appear in pairs and be characteristically shifted with respect to the axis of the colliding beams in the accelerator. The size of these shifts depends, among other things, on masses and average lifetime of exotic particles appearing during the Higgs decay”, says Mateusz Goncerz, M.Sc. (IFJ PAN), co-author of the paper in question.

The collision energy of protons at the LHC, currently the world's largest particle accelerator, is up to several teraelectronvolts and is theoretically sufficient to produce Higgs capable of crossing the energy barrier that separates our world from the Hidden Valley. Unfortunately, protons are not elementary particles – they are composed of three valence quarks bound by strong interactions, capable of generating huge numbers of constantly appearing and disappearing virtual particles, including quark-antiquark pairs. Such a dynamic and complex internal structure produces huge numbers of secondary particles in proton collisions, including many quarks and antiquarks with large masses. They form a background in which it becomes practically impossible to find the particles from the exotic Higgs boson decays that are being sought.

The detection of possible Higgs decays to these states should be radically improved by accelerators being designed as successors to the LHC: the CLIC (Compact Linear Collider) and the FCC (Future Circular Collider). In both devices it will be possible to collide electrons with their anti-material partners, the positrons (with CLIC dedicated to this type of collision, while FCC will also allow collisions of protons and heavy ions). Electrons and positrons are devoid of internal structure, so the background for exotic Higgs boson decays should be weaker than at the LHC. Only will it be sufficiently so to discern the valuable signal?

In their research, physicists from the IFJ PAN took into account the most important parameters of the CLIC and FCC accelerators and determined the probability of exotic Higgs decays with final states in the form of four beauty quarks and antiquarks. To ensure that the predictions cover a wider group of models, the masses and mean lifetimes of the exotic particles were considered over suitably wide ranges of values. The conclusions are surprisingly positive: all indications are that, in future electron-positron colliders, the background of exotic Higgs decays could be reduced even radically, by several orders of magnitude, and in some cases could even be considered negligible.

The existence of particle-communicators is not only possible in Hidden Valley models, but also in other extensions of the Standard Model. So if the detectors of future accelerators register a signature corresponding to the Higgs decays analysed by the Cracow researchers, this will only be the first step on the road to understanding new physics. The next will be to collect a sufficiently large number of events and determine the main decay parameters that can be compared with the predictions of theoretical models of the new physics.

“The main conclusion of our work is therefore purely practical. We are not sure whether the new physics particles involved in Higgs boson decays will belong to the Hidden Valley model we used. However, we have treated this model as representative of many other proposals for new physics and have shown that if, as predicted by the model, the Higgs bosons decay into exotic particles, this phenomenon should be perfectly visible in those electron and positron colliders which are planned to be launched in the near future”, concludes Prof. Kucharczyk.

The research in question was funded by an OPUS grant from the Polish National Science Centre.

The Henryk Niewodniczański Institute of Nuclear Physics (IFJ PAN) is currently one of the largest research institutes of the Polish Academy of Sciences. A wide range of research carried out at IFJ PAN covers basic and applied studies, from particle physics and astrophysics, through hadron physics, high-, medium-, and low-energy nuclear physics, condensed matter physics (including materials engineering), to various applications of nuclear physics in interdisciplinary research, covering medical physics, dosimetry, radiation and environmental biology, environmental protection, and other related disciplines. The average yearly publication output of IFJ PAN includes over 600 scientific papers in high-impact international journals. Each year the Institute hosts about 20 international and national scientific conferences. One of the most important facilities of the Institute is the Cyclotron Centre Bronowice (CCB), which is an infrastructure unique in Central Europe, serving as a clinical and research centre in the field of medical and nuclear physics. In addition, IFJ PAN runs four accredited research and measurement laboratories. IFJ PAN is a member of the Marian Smoluchowski Kraków Research Consortium: "Matter-Energy-Future", which in the years 2012-2017 enjoyed the status of the Leading National Research Centre (KNOW) in physics. In 2017, the European Commission granted the Institute the HR Excellence in Research award. As a result of the categorization of the Ministry of Education and Science, the Institute has been classified into the A+ category (the highest scientific category in Poland) in the field of physical sciences.

SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS:

“Search for exotic decays of the Higgs boson into long-lived particles with jet pairs in the final state at CLIC”

M. Kucharczyk, M. Goncerz

Journal of High Energy Physics, 131, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP03(2023)131

LINKS:

http://www.ifj.edu.pl/

The website of the Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences.

http://press.ifj.edu.pl/

Press releases of the Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences.

IMAGES:

IFJ230518b_fot01s.jpg                                 

HR: http://press.ifj.edu.pl/news/2023/05/18/IFJ230518b_fot01.jpg

The search for exotic Higgs boson decays in future lepton colliders: 1) an electron and a positron from opposing beams collide; 2) the collision produces a high-energy Higgs boson; 3) the boson decays into two exotic particles moving away from the axis of the beams; 3) exotic particles decay into pairs of quark-antiquark, visible to detectors. (Source: IFJ PAN)

---

JOURNAL

Journal of High Energy Physics

DOI

10.1007/JHEP03(2023)131 

ARTICLE TITLE

Search for exotic decays of the Higgs boson into long-lived particles with jet pairs in the final state at CLIC

ARTICLE PUBLICATION DATE

17-Mar-2023

Demystifying vortex rings in nuclear fusion, supernovae

A mathematical model linking these vortices with more pedestrian types, like smoke rings, could help engineers control their behavior in power generation and more

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Images

Better understanding the formation of swirling, ring-shaped disturbances—known as vortex rings—could help nuclear fusion researchers compress fuel more efficiently, bringing it closer to becoming a viable energy source. 

The model developed by researchers at the University of Michigan could aid in the design of the fuel capsule, minimizing the energy lost while trying to ignite the reaction that makes stars shine. In addition, the model could help other engineers who must manage the mixing of fluids after a shock wave passes through, such as those designing supersonic jet engines, as well as physicists trying to understand supernovae.

"These vortex rings move outward from the collapsing star, populating the universe with the materials that will eventually become nebulae, planets and even new stars—and inward during fusion implosions, disrupting the stability of the burning fusion fuel and reducing the efficiency of the reaction," said Michael Wadas, a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering at U-M and corresponding author of the study.

"Our research, which elucidates how such vortex rings form, can help scientists understand some of the most extreme events in the universe and bring humanity one step closer to capturing the power of nuclear fusion as an energy source," he said.

Nuclear fusion pushes atoms together until they merge. This process releases several times more energy than breaking atoms apart, or fission, which powers today's nuclear plants. Researchers can create this reaction, merging forms of hydrogen into helium, but at present, much of the energy used in the process is wasted.

Part of the problem is that the fuel can't be neatly compressed. Instabilities cause the formation of jets that penetrate into the hotspot, and the fuel spurts out between them—Wadas compared it to trying to squish an orange with your hands, how juice would leak out between your fingers. 

Vortex rings that form at the leading edge of these jets, the researchers have shown, are mathematically similar to smoke rings, the eddies behind jellyfish and the plasma rings that fly off the surface of a supernova.

Perhaps the most famous approach to fusion is a spherical array of lasers all pointing toward a spherical capsule of fuel. This is how experiments are set up at the National Ignition Facility, which has repeatedly broken records for energy output in recent years. 

The energy from the lasers vaporizes the layer of material around the fuel—a nearly perfect, lab-grown shell of diamond in the latest record-setter in December 2022. When that shell vaporizes, it drives the fuel inward as the carbon atoms fly outward. This generates a shockwave, which pushes the fuel so hard that the hydrogen fuses.

While the spherical fuel pellets are some of the most perfectly round objects humans have ever made, each has a deliberate flaw: a fill tube, where the fuel enters. Like a straw stuck in that crushed orange, this is the most likely place for a vortex-ring-led jet to form when the compression starts, the researchers explained.

"Fusion experiments happen so fast that we really only have to delay the formation of the jet for a few nanoseconds," said Eric Johnsen, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at U-M, who supervised the study.

The study brought together the fluid mechanics expertise of Wadas and Johnsen as well as the nuclear and plasma physics knowledge in the lab of Carolyn Kuranz, an associate professor of nuclear engineering and radiological sciences.

"In high-energy-density physics, many studies point out these structures, but haven’t clearly identified them as vortex rings," said Wadas.

Knowing about the deep body of research into the structures seen in fusion experiments and astrophysical observations, Wadas and Johnsen were able to draw on and extend that existing knowledge rather than trying to describe them as completely new features.

Johnsen is particularly interested in the possibility that vortex rings could help drive the mixing between heavy elements and lighter elements when stars explode, as some mixing process must have occurred to produce the composition of planets like Earth.

The model can also help researchers understand the limits of the energy that a vortex ring can carry, and how much fluid can be pushed before the flow becomes turbulent and harder to model as a result. In ongoing work, the team is validating the vortex ring model with experiments. 

The research is funded by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Department of Energy, with computational resources provided by the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment through the National Science Foundation and the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility.

Study: Saturation of vortex rings ejected from shock-accelerated interfaces. (DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.194001)

JOURNAL

Physical Review Letters

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevLett.130.194001 

Europe’s CERN takes first steps toward building giant particle accelerator

Nuclear research organization says goal of Future Circular Collider is to ‘push the energy and intensity frontiers’ of particle smashers ‘in the search for new physics’

By AGNÈS PEDRERO

22 April 2023, 

A radio frequency particle accelerator is displayed in an exhibition during a press tour at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) on the Future Circular Collider (FCC) feasibility study, in Geneva, on April 19, 2023. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP)

GENEVA (AFP) — Europe’s CERN laboratory has taken its first steps toward building a huge new particle accelerator that would eclipse its Large Hadron Collider — and hopes to see light at the end of the tunnel.

The Future Circular Collider (FCC) particle smasher would be more than triple the length of the LHC, already the world’s largest and most powerful particle collider, constructed in the hope of revealing secrets about how the universe works.

The FCC would form a new circular tunnel under France and Switzerland, 91 kilometers (56.5 miles) long and about five meters (16 feet) in diameter.

“The goal of the FCC is to push the energy and intensity frontiers of particle colliders, with the aim of reaching collision energies of 100 tera electron volts, in the search for new physics,” CERN says.

The tunnel would pass under the Geneva region and its namesake lake in Switzerland, and loop around to the south near the picturesque French town of Annecy.
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Eight technical and scientific sites would be built on the surface, with seven in France and one in Geneva, CERN engineer Antoine Mayoux told reporters this week.

CERN Radio-frequency head Eric Montesinos gestures next to a map of the actual Large Hadron Collider (LHC) during a press trip at the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN on the Future Circular Collider (FCC) feasibility study, in Geneva, on April 19, 2023. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP)

After carrying out a theoretical analysis, “we are now embarking for the first time on field activities” to study potential environmental issues, he said, with seismic and geotechnical studies to follow.
Mysteries of the universe

Once the feasibility studies are completed, CERN’s member states — 22 European countries plus Israel — will decide in the next five to six years on whether to build the FCC.

The FCC would accelerate electrons and positrons until 2060, and then hadrons until 2090, as it seeks answers to many remaining questions of fundamental physics, with about 95 percent of the mass and energy of the universe still a mystery.

CERN’s Large Hadron Collider — a 27-kilometer (17-mile) ring running about a hundred meters below ground — has already begun chipping away at the unknown.

Among other things, it was used to prove the existence of the Higgs Boson — dubbed the God particle — which broadened the understanding of how particles acquire mass, and earned two scientists who had theorized its existence the 2013 Nobel physics prize.

A simulated data projection of a Higgs boson collision. (Photo credit: CC BY Wikipedia)

But the LHC, which began operating in 2010, is expected to have run its course by around 2040.

“The problem with accelerators is that at some point, no matter how much data you accumulate, you hit a wall of systematic errors,” CERN physicist Patrick Janot said.

“Around 2040-2045, we will have taken away all the substance of the precision possible with the LHC,” he said.

“It will be time to move on to something much more powerful, much brighter, to better see the contours of the physics that we are trying to study.”
Opening doors to the future

Some researchers fear that this huge project will gobble up funds that could be used for other, less abstract physics research.

But others insist that pushing fundamental physics forward is vital for advances in applied physics as well.

“The benefits of our research are extremely important,” said Malika Meddahi, CERN’s deputy director for accelerators and technology, citing as examples medical imaging and the fight against tumors.

Janot agreed: “The day the electron gun was invented, it was the beginning of accelerators; we didn’t know it was going to give rise to television. The day general relativity was discovered, we didn’t know it was going to be used to run GPS.”

A projection on fundamental particles is seen during a press trip at the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN on the Future Circular Collider (FCC) feasibility study, in Geneva, on April 19, 2023. (Fabrice Coffrini/AFP)

Harry Cliff, a particle physicist at Britain’s University of Cambridge, acknowledged that the FCC was an “expensive bit of kit.”

But he noted that it would be built by “a large international collaboration of nations working together over a very long period of time.”

“Particle physics isn’t about discovering new particles — it’s about understanding the fundamental ingredients of nature and the laws that govern them.”

Competition from China

More than 600 institutes and universities around the world use CERN’s facilities, and are responsible for funding and carrying out the experiments they take part in.

However, CERN has some competition: China announced in 2015 that it intended to start work within a decade on building the world’s largest particle accelerator.

Michael Benedikt, who is heading up the FCC feasibility studies, told AFP that CERN had more than 60 years of experience in developing long-lasting research infrastructure.

And political stability in Europe helped to “minimize the development risk for such long-term projects,” he said.

Meddahi also highlighted Europe’s leading position in the field, but warned that “China displays the same ambition.”

“Let’s be vigilant and be sure that we are not on the verge of a change in this hierarchy,” she said.

 

Strongly intriguing details of collisions at extreme energies

Peer-Reviewed Publication

THE HENRYK NIEWODNICZANSKI INSTITUTE OF NUCLEAR PHYSICS POLISH ACADEMY OF SCIENCES

 

IMAGE: CHILDREN'S INTELLIGENCE MAY APPEAR TO BE STATISTICALLY RELATED TO THEIR WEIGHT BECAUSE THE RELATIONSHIP IS SENSITIVE TO AGE FLUCTUATIONS WITHIN THE STUDY GROUP. A SIMILAR PHENOMENON OCCURS IN THE CASE OF THE CORRELATION VARIABLE SIGMA AND THE CENTRALITY OF HEAVY ION COLLISIONS IN THE LHC ACCELERATOR. view more 

CREDIT: SOURCE: IFJ PAN

Cracow, 14 September 2023

 

 

Strongly intriguing details of collisions at extreme energies

 

 

The initial phases of the heavy-ion collisions occurring at the maximum energies available at the CERN Large Hadron Collider continue to remain an enigma of modern nuclear physics. New theoretical tools improved by physicists from the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Cracow will help to unlock this mystery.

 

 

The phenomena occurring during nuclear collisions are so fast and involve particles so small that they cannot be observed directly. Guessing the course of these sorts of processes resembles the work of a detective. Just as he is unable to observe the crime being committed and has to reconstruct an image of it based on witness statements, physicists try to reconstruct the course of nuclear phenomena on the basis of “accounts” given by the secondary particles born in collisions and recorded by detectors. Sherlock Holmes’s task, however, was much easier – he could talk freely to his witnesses, whereas physicists can only observe the particles’ behaviour. In order to reconstruct the actual course of the “crime” (the collisions of atomic nuclei), they have to create a suitable language for describing events (mathematical tools) and use it to recount what took place (with the help of a theoretical model of the phenomenon), and then compare whether the “testimony” thus obtained agrees with what the recorded particles appear to “say”.

 

Particularly difficult processes to study include phenomena occurring in the early stages of heavy-ion collisions in the LHC accelerator, when a quark-gluon plasma may be formed. This is a state of matter in which quarks and gluons behave like free particles (in the world around us, quarks and gluons are always bound by the strong interactions and remain inside hadrons, i.e. protons or neutrons). The quark-gluon plasma ends extremely quickly because it cools as it expands. Quarks and gluons are then trapped again in hadrons, creating secondary particles that are registered in detectors. It can be concluded whether a quark-gluon plasma was created by analyzing the so-called forward-backward correlations between particles produced in collisions.

 

“Forward-backward correlations measure the relationship between the number of particles produced forward and backward when beams of heavy ions collide. Although these correlations concern particles very far apart, they carry information about the early stage of the collision. This is because the correlations between the particles emitted forward and backward could only have formed before the particles moved away from each other, i.e. at the beginning of the collision!” says Dr. Iwona Sputowska of the Institute of Nuclear Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences (IFJ PAN) in Cracow, a physicist who is a member of the ALICE scientific collaboration at the LHC.

 

The problem with correlations, however, is that, used incompetently, they can lead to false conclusions. Suppose, for example, we conduct a study of children's intelligence in all the forms of a primary school. A correlation might then be found whereby the more intelligent a child is, the more they... weigh. However, we know that in reality intelligence and weight are correlated to another variable: the age of the child. So if we narrow down our study to children of the same age, the correlation between their intelligence and weight drops dramatically. The correlation between intelligence and weight is therefore sensitive to age fluctuations in the group of children – there are a lot of children of different ages in the whole school, but within the same form the age differences are small.

 

We encounter an analogous challenge when examining correlations in heavy ion collisions. The relationship between the number of particles produced forward and backward is sensitive to fluctuations in the way the two atomic nuclei collided with each other, such as whether they collided centrally or just brushed against each other. To deal with this problem, the concept of strongly intensive variables was introduced. These quantities are defined so that they depend neither on how the two ions collided with each other nor on how much the geometry of the collision fluctuated in the group of studied events.

 

A strongly intensive correlation variable is sigma. It was intended to provide information about the way in which the average source produces secondary particles. However, while analyzing data collected in the collisions of lead-lead and xenon-xenon nuclei as part of the ALICE experiment, Dr. Sputowska noticed that none of the most popular models used to describe these phenomena corresponds to the behavior of the sigma variable.

 

“There could only be one conclusion. Since our models do not correctly describe the experimental data for the highest-energy collisions available at the LHC, it means that we are incorrectly modelling how the average source produces secondary particles,” says Dr. Sputowska.

 

Unexpectedly, collision models proposed over 45 years ago by theoreticians from Cracow turned out to be helpful in understanding the behavior of sigma. They treated collisions of heavy atomic nuclei as multiple collisions of single nucleons of one nucleus with single nucleons of the other nucleus (in the wounded nucleon model) or as collisions not of protons and neutrons, but of quarks (in the wounded quark model). In these models, it is assumed that single, independent sources are responsible for the production of secondary particles, which are either nucleons or quarks, respectively.

 

Previous models have assumed that the average source generates secondary particles with the same forward and backward probabilities. Sigma, by definition, should then be equal to one. It turns out that its actual dependance on the geometry of collision can be reproduced if one allows for the possibility that the average source emits particles forward with a slightly different probability than backward. In the wounded nucleon model, an extra term then appears in the sigma formula, depending on the collision geometry, and sigma ceases to be a strongly intensive variable.

 

However, this situation gives rise to an intriguing contradiction, for sigma loses its status as a strongly intensive variable and yet correctly describes experimental data that do not depend on changes in collision geometry. Why? The solution to the problem turned out to be in the fact that in the wounded source model sigma always gives the values of the forward-backward correlation for the average number of wounded nucleons/quarks, i.e. for the average collision geometry in a given collision group. This situation can be compared to measuring the correlation between intelligence and weight of children in a group where the average age of the child is fixed.

 

“A detailed understanding of the nature of sigma allowed us to determine the fragmentation function, linking the number of particles produced by nucleons in the model with the number of particles measured in the detectors. For the first time, for the highest collision energies at the LHC, we have been able to construct tools that allow us to reliably falsify this highly intriguing sigma behaviour,” Dr. Sputowska concludes.

 

Dr Sputowska's achievement is presented in a paper published in the journal Physical Review C. The research was funded by the National Science Centre.

 

 

The Henryk Niewodniczański Institute of Nuclear Physics (IFJ PAN) is currently one of the largest research institutes of the Polish Academy of Sciences. A wide range of research carried out at IFJ PAN covers basic and applied studies, from particle physics and astrophysics, through hadron physics, high-, medium-, and low-energy nuclear physics, condensed matter physics (including materials engineering), to various applications of nuclear physics in interdisciplinary research, covering medical physics, dosimetry, radiation and environmental biology, environmental protection, and other related disciplines. The average yearly publication output of IFJ PAN includes over 600 scientific papers in high-impact international journals. Each year the Institute hosts about 20 international and national scientific conferences. One of the most important facilities of the Institute is the Cyclotron Centre Bronowice (CCB), which is an infrastructure unique in Central Europe, serving as a clinical and research centre in the field of medical and nuclear physics. In addition, IFJ PAN runs four accredited research and measurement laboratories. IFJ PAN is a member of the Marian Smoluchowski Kraków Research Consortium: "Matter-Energy-Future", which in the years 2012-2017 enjoyed the status of the Leading National Research Centre (KNOW) in physics. In 2017, the European Commission granted the Institute the HR Excellence in Research award. As a result of the categorization of the Ministry of Education and Science, the Institute has been classified into the A+ category (the highest scientific category in Poland) in the field of physical sciences.

SCIENTIFIC PUBLICATIONS:

 “Forward-backward correlations with the Σ quantity in the wounded-constituent framework at energies available at the CERN Large Hadron Collider”

I. A. Sputowska

Physical Review C 108, 1, 014903,  2023

DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevC.108.014903

 

 

LINKS:

 

http://www.ifj.edu.pl/

The website of the Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences.

 

http://press.ifj.edu.pl/

Press releases of the Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences.

 

IMAGES:

 

IFJ230914b_fot01s.jpg

HR: http://press.ifj.edu.pl/news/2023/09/14/IFJ230914b_fot01.jpg

Children's intelligence may appear to be statistically related to their weight because the relationship is sensitive to age fluctuations within the study group. A similar phenomenon occurs in the case of the correlation variable sigma and the centrality of heavy ion collisions in the LHC accelerator. (Source: IFJ PAN)

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JOURNAL

Physical Review C

DOI

10.1103/PhysRevC.108.014903 

ARTICLE TITLE

Forward-backward correlations with the Σ quantity in the wounded-constituent framework at energies available at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

A Month After Emergency Declaration, Trump's Promises Largely Unfulfilled
PROMISE MADE PROMISE NOT KEPT 

NPR April 13, 2020

President Trmp speaks during a news conference about the coronavirus

 pandemic in the Rose Garden of the White House on March 13, 2020.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

One month ago today, President Trump declared a national emergency.

In a Rose Garden address, flanked by leaders from giant retailers and medical testing companies, he promised a mobilization of public and private resources to attack the coronavirus.

"We've been working very hard on this. We've made tremendous progress," Trump said. "When you compare what we've done to other areas of the world, it's pretty incredible."

But few of those promises have come to pass.

NPR's Investigations Team dug into each of the claims made from the podium that day. And rather than a sweeping national campaign of screening, drive-through sample collection and lab testing, it found a smattering of small pilot projects and aborted efforts.

In some cases, no action was taken at all.


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Target did not partner with the federal government, for example.

And a lauded Google project turned out to not to be led by Google at all, and then once launched was limited to a smattering of counties in California.

The remarks in the Rose Garden highlighted the Trump administration's strategic approach: a preference for public-private partnerships. But as the White House defined what those private companies were going to do, in many cases it promised more than they could pull off.

"What became clear in the days and weeks or even in some cases the hours following that event was that they had significantly over-promised what the private sector was ready to do," said Jeremy Konyndyk, senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development.

The White House declined to comment on this story.

Drive-Through Testing Largely Nonexistent At Retail Partners

During the Rose Garden address, the president introduced a series of leaders from major retailers to suggest there would be cooperation between the federal government and private sector companies for drive-through testing.

"We've been in discussions with pharmacies and retailers to make drive-through tests available in the critical locations identified by public health professionals," President Trump said.

NPR contacted the retailers who were there and found that discussions have not led to any wide-scale implementation of drive-through tests.


In the month since the announcement, Walmart has opened two testing sites — one in the Chicago area and another in Bentonville, Ark. Walgreens has opened two in Chicago; CVS has opened four sites.

Brian Cornell, board chairman and CEO of Target Corp., speaks during the March 13 news conference with President Trump at the White House. Target has so far not opened any COVID-19 testing sites.Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Target has not opened any. In fact, the company said it had no formal partnership with the federal government, and suggested they were waiting for the government to take the lead.

"At this time, federal, state and local officials continue to lead the planning for additional testing sites," a Target spokesperson said. "We stand committed to offering our parking lot locations and supporting their efforts when they are ready to activate."

Home Testing Promised, But Not Implemented

The president also welcomed Bruce Greenstein, an executive vice president of the LHC Group, to the microphone.

Greenstein's organization primarily provides in-home health care, and he pledged that it would be helping with testing "for Americans that can't get to a test site or live in rural areas far away from a retail establishment."

NPR called more than 20 LHC sites in 12 states, and none of them are doing in-home testing one month following the Rose Garden address. Employees at the LHC sites said they lacked both testing kits and the training to administer kits.

In response to NPR's reporting, Greenstein said that their primary focus so far has been getting proper personal protective equipment, or PPE, for their nurses, and working with hospitals on transitioning recovered COVID patients home. He says they'll start working with one New Orleans hospital "as soon as next week" to provide in-home testing, and to expand the service later.

LHC Group Executive Vice President Bruce Greenstein bumps elbows with President Trump during the March 13 news conference.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

No Screening Website To Facilitate Drive-Through Testing

During the March 13 Rose Garden address, the president also promised that Google was working to develop a website to determine whether a COVID-19 test would be warranted, and if so, to direct individuals to nearby testing.

The president said there were 1,700 Google engineers working on it, and the vice president said that guidance on the website would be available in two days.

"Google is helping to develop a website," the president said. "It's going to be very quickly done, unlike websites of the past, to determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location."

Dr. Deborah Birx, the coronavirus response coordinator at the White House, said that the website would screen patients, tell them where to receive drive-through testing, and provide testing results.

No such screening and testing website was ever developed by Google.

A pilot program was developed by Verily, a sister company to Google owned by the same parent company: Alphabet. Verily's program, called Project Baseline, was created to support California community-based COVID-19 testing from screening to testing to delivery of test results.

Verily has rolled out six testing sites primarily in coordination with the California state government — not the federal government — and is currently only available to residents of five counties in California.

During the March 13 news conference, Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, outlined a website that would screen patients, tell them where to receive testing, and provide results. No such screening service came to exist.Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
"We work in partnership with local public health agencies, the California Governor's office, and the California Department of Public Health," a spokesperson for Verily said, adding that their COVID-19 testing program was "federally supported."

There were not 1,700 engineers ever engaged in the project, as the president had claimed, according to Verily.

"As we initially ramped this program, we had nearly 1,000 volunteers from across Alphabet supporting a variety of functions," a Verily spokesperson told NPR.

Verily is in discussions with other health care organizations to support this kind of testing project outside of California, but there has been no announcement of future plans to do so.

A Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson pointed out that Apple had released a screening tool in collaboration with the CDC and the White House. That screening tool does not have the functions outlined in the March 13 Rose Garden address.

The President's Federal Agency Promises

In declaring the national emergency last month, the president also proposed several policy changes that were solely within the realm of the federal government to execute. On these, the administration largely followed through.

President Trump promised to waive interest on student loans held by government agencies, for instance. That policy was implemented by the secretary of education on March 20.

And the president made good on pledges to waive regulations and laws to give medical providers flexibility to respond to the healthcare crisis.

But there were exceptions. The president said he would waive license requirements so that doctors could practice in states with the greatest needs, for example. But medical licensing is a state issue, and the president does not have the authority to waive it.


"There's no statutory authority for the federal government to take over the delivery of health care services" says Dale Van Demark, a partner advising health industries at the law firm McDermott Will & Emery. Added Iris Hentze, policy specialist at The National Conference of State Legislatures: "These occupational licenses are really more or less completely controlled and regulated by states." What the federal government was able to do is to waive in-state requirements for healthcare providers that serve people enrolled in Medicare, Medicaid and CHIP, so they can get reimbursed for the out-of-state care they provided.

The promises weren't limited to matters of health care. The president announced that his administration would "purchase, at a very good price, large quantities of crude oil for storage in the U.S. Strategic Reserve."

"We're going to fill it right up to the top," he said, "saving the American taxpayer billions and billions of dollars."

The Trump administration has not done so. The president made the promise without first securing the funds from Congress, and t=he Department of Energy puts the responsibility on Congress' shoulders.

"Despite strong efforts from the Administration, Congress would not provide funding for the purchase of oil for SPR in the Stimulus bill," a Department of Energy spokesperson said. "The Department continues to work with Congress to deliver on the President's directive to provide relief to the American energy industry during this tumultuous time."

A Failure In Public-Private Partnerships

Later in that March 13 press conference, when asked whether he took responsibility for the apparent lag in coronavirus testing in the United States, the president responded, "I don't take responsibility at all."

He also suggested that laboratory capacity for testing would soon greatly expand. And he singled out two companies:

"I want to thank Roche, a great company, for their incredible work. I'd also like to thank Thermo Fisher," he said.

Roche Diagnostics Corporation President and CEO Matthew Sause speaks at the March 13 news conference. Roche and Thermo Fisher Scientific said they distributed millions of tests to labs, but that didn't increase testing because the U.S. lags behind in sample collection kits.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Trump noted that the FDA was approving their processes, and then made a prediction: "It'll go very quickly," he said. "It's going very quickly — which will bring, additionally, 1.4 million tests on board next week and 5 million within a month. I doubt we'll need anywhere near that."

Roche and Thermo Fisher Scientific said they were able to get millions of tests distributed on schedule to labs in the United States, one of the rare bright spots in the coronavirus crisis. These tests are what are used at labs to check whether samples contain the coronavirus.

But those tests were not the primary reason for inadequate testing. The United States lags behind in sample collection kits — the swabs and tubes that frontline medical workers send to labs.

And those labs themselves struggled with processing capacity.

In the days before the March 13 Rose Garden address, leaders of diagnostic testing labs like LabCorp and Quest went to the White House with three core requests. And during the Rose Garden address, the CEOs of those two organizations stood with the president as the coronavirus task force pledged to wield government resources for their partnership.

More than a month later, the diagnostic testing labs — and the group that represents them in Washington, the American Clinical Laboratory Association — still have those three requests: government funds to build new testing facilities, national standards to prioritize who gets tested, and government support for the supply chain.

President Trump leaves the Rose Garden after the March 13 news conference about the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Few of the promises made at the conference have been fulfilled.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Konyndyk said it was an indication that the public-private partnerships the president touted on March 13 were a one-way street.

"What you want to have is a constructive partnership between the federal government and the private sector. Instead, what we see, I think, is a game of 'not it,'" said Konyndyk, who served in the Obama administration at USAID, leading the government response to international disasters.

Although the federal government needs the help of the private sector, the federal government has only limited power over those companies. So to make things work, there needs to be close cooperation and advanced negotiation before announcing what companies will do, and that didn't happen, Konyndyk said.

Private companies did part of what was promised in the Rose Garden address — there is more testing today than a month ago.

But by over-promising what private sector companies would do — and in some cases, without adequate consultation about what they could do — the White House left other pledges that day unfulfilled.

Where Do Humans Fit in the Universe? This Physicist Wants to Change Your Perspective

In Waves in an Impossible Sea, Matt Strassler explains how human life is intimately connected to the larger cosmos.

By Isaac Schultz
Published Yesterday

An artist’s concept of a particle collision.

Illustration: Jurik Peter (Shutterstock)

Pondering the scale of the cosmos can feel as if you’re peering over the edge of the brink; it can be daunting enough to make you want to flee to the comforts of working, commuting, and other quotidian endeavors. But in Waves in an Impossible Sea: How Everyday Life Emerges From the Cosmic Ocean, theoretical physicist and science communicator Matt Strassler doesn’t flinch in the face of the universe.

Published this week, Strassler’s book expands on the ideas he’s explored for years on his blog, Of Particular Significance. Readers are given a window into how the fundamental laws that govern the universe shape our daily experiences, and how even the most exotic phenomena are not as alien to our day-to-day as they may seem.

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What Should Fans Take Away From Imaginary?

Strassler recently spoke with Gizmodo about the book’s origins and goals. Below is our conversation, lightly edited for clarity.

Isaac Schultz, Gizmodo: There’s this interesting dichotomy between the physics that’s happening here on Earth, what I call “looking down,” and the physics that’s astronomical observation—“looking up,” so to speak. And I was wondering if you have thought about the same thing, and how you see that relationship.

Matt Strassler: One of the first things I try to do in the book is to break that dichotomy down. Because we do have this tendency to think about the universe writ large, this big place that we live in. And then there’s kind of this tiny stuff going on inside of us or inside of the materials around us, and we don’t really connect them. But of course, they are profoundly connected. And, you know, the universe—we used to call it outer space, and we think of it as mostly a vacuum. It’s emptiness. But the stuff that’s inside of us is also mostly empty. It’s the same emptiness. And so there is no distinction between the outer-ness and the inner-ness. It’s the same stuff doing many of the same things. We’re not disconnected from that larger universe. We’re actually, in some sense, made from it. And so, that is a message which I wanted to be able to convey that I hope will change people’s perspective on how they think about what it is to be alive in this universe. That we don’t just live in it, but we grow from it in a very meaningful sense: not just in a spiritual one, but in a very explicit physics sense.


Gizmodo: Yeah. Whenever I’m slightly stressed out, I remind myself that I am just dying particles.

Strassler: We are much more than that. But even when we say we are particles, we are missing something. In English, by a particle we mean a little localized thing, like a dust particle, that’s not connected to everything else. But when we understand that what we call particles are actually little ripples, little waves in the fields of the universe, and the fields of the universe extend everywhere. Across the entire universe. That’s a very different way of understanding what we’re made from. We’re not made from these little localized things that move around in a universe. We’re made from ripples of a universe, and that is a very different picture.

Gizmodo: The crux of the book is this relationship between our modern understanding of physics and human life, human existence as we experience it. When you were writing the book, did you have a specific reader in mind? Who do you hope will, you know, stumble across this title and pick it up?

Strassler: There are certainly some readers who read a lot of particle physics books already, and I hope that for them, what I’m providing is a way of looking at something they already know. And in particular a way of understanding what the Higgs field is all about. For those readers, it’s something they will not have seen before. But I also had in mind that there are a lot of friends of mine, family members, who don’t read the books about particle physics precisely because they’re rather difficult to understand and often seem irrelevant to their lives. The goal of this book was to strip away, as much as possible, the things that don’t matter to our ordinary daily existence and focus on the things that do. And try to tell a story, which certainly doesn’t explain all of particle physics by any means, but walks a path that takes the reader through all of the things that they would need to know to start from scratch and come out the end with a sense for how the universe works and how we fit in it.


I hope that I’ve provided a path for a reader who is curious but willing to take the time that it requires to understand subjects that are that aren’t hard just because “physics is hard.” They’re hard because the universe is hard. It’s hard for me. I can’t make it any easier than it is for me.

Gizmodo: That’s going to be the headline. “Physicist Confesses: ‘It’s Hard For Me, Too.’”


Strassler: Okay. I’m happy with that.

Gizmodo: How did this book emerge from the work that you’ve been doing for years?


Strassler: I was a full-time academic scientist for a good two decades. I had always been interested in doing public outreach. But I had never had really that much time being a full-time scientist. There was a certain moment in my career where it wasn’t clear what I wanted to do next. And I started a blog at that point. That was just before the expected and then actual discovery of what is known as the particle called the Higgs boson.



Image: Basic Books

The story of the Higgs particle is really a story of a field known as the Higgs field, which is much more important to us than the Higgs particle is. The Higgs field affects our lives in all sorts of ways. But to understand what the Higgs field is and how it does what it does, which is typically what people ask me, requires some understanding of both Einstein’s relativity and quantum physics. There wasn’t any way to write the book without starting with those things. Even though explaining the Higgs field was the original motivation, I discovered that really this is a book about what we know today based on the last 125 years of scientific research in physics: what is the big picture? How does it all fit together? And once you see that—once you understand what particles actually are and how they emerge from relativity on the one hand and quantum physics on the other—then it’s not so hard to explain what the Higgs field is. But you have to spend two-thirds of the book to get to that point.


Gizmodo: When you say to someone that you’re going to open with relativity and quantum physics, it’s a great way to end the conversation.

Strassler: There is that risk, right? But that’s part of why I really opened with the questions about those subjects that are not even obviously about them. They are questions about daily life. And the fact is that these subjects, which seem remote and very esoteric... they’re not. They’re deeply ingrained in ordinary human experience. And that was really what I wanted to convey in this book, that these rather strange-sounding subjects that originate with Einstein and are made often in the media and by scientists to seem, “gee whiz”—and they are—they’re more than that. They are the foundations of our daily experiences. And so I wanted to bring that sense of how important these things are to us, to all of us.


Gizmodo: I think that, scientists on the one hand and science communicators on the other, struggle with this issue of, well, it’s not going to be possible to convey all the nuance in, say, a 400-word article. It’s just not going to happen. It’s more about writing the least-wrong thing than the most-right thing. You wrote a book that grapples with complex science. How were you checking to make sure that this would actually grok to the average reader?

Strassler: It helps that I have had the blog for 10 years. I also have some humility about how well I have achieved this goal. That’s partly because I know these are difficult subjects. They’re not difficult in the sense of that you have to know mathematics to grapple with them, but they’re difficult in the sense that they are just strange and difficult for scientists to wrap their heads around. I know that whatever methods I have used in the book, they’re going to work for some people on some pages and for other people on other pages. And so one of the things that I’m doing with my website is, I’m creating a whole wing of the website whose goal is to add additional information. For example, the figures, some will be animated on the website to give greater clarity. The goal is to really explain the science, and I’m not done with that part.

Gizmodo: It’s been over ten years since the Higgs discovery. How do you go about writing this book, thinking about a post-Higgs world and trying to address the next big question?

Strassler: In a sense, the discovery of the Higgs boson and the lack of any immediate discoveries thereafter over the ensuing 10 years—leaving aside gravitational waves, which were discovered in 2015—has put our understanding of the universe into a very interesting place. It’s like having a short story which is complete but has all sorts of loose ends, which fits into a larger narrative which we don’t understand. And so it’s kind of a perfect moment to describe what we know and what we don’t. And really break it into those two parts.

There was a way in which, 10 years after the Higgs discovery, and also with the discovery of gravitational waves, things came out more or less the way we thought they would. There were no huge surprises that completely changed the way we think about things. So it’s a good moment to take stock and to look at what we have learned from Einstein’s relativity, on the one hand, and from quantum physics and all of its realization in particle physics on the other, and see how it all fits together and try to really describe that as a package.

To use a cliche, it’s really more like the end of the beginning here. We have achieved something that is really remarkable in the past 125 years. But we’re clearly also in some ways still at the beginning of our understanding of how the universe really works.


Gizmodo: One question that I was left with was basically, where is this next breakthrough going to come from? Do you have any particular preference for the variety of wonderful experiments going on right now in particle physics, in plans for gravitational wave observatories, all that jazz? What are you most excited about on the physical horizon?

Strassler: All the way up to the discovery of the Higgs boson, there has been a path. But there’s always been something where it’s clear that there are things we need to know that in some way feed into the deepest questions about how the universe works. And for the first time in 150 years, that is no longer true.

We do not now have a clear path. We have many possible paths, and we don’t really know which one is the best one. And this is part of why there is so much controversy about particle physics right now. It’s because there are definitely things that we know give us a decent chance of finding something new. But we don’t have the kind of confidence that we would have had 30 years ago or 60 years ago, that the next wave of experiments definitely will answer one or more of the questions that we have.

So when you ask me what is my preferred direction, I would prefer that the Large Hadron Collider, which has 10 more years to run, discover something. Because that would make it a lot easier to know what to do next. And the machine will run for 10 more years, producing 10 times as much data. So we do have that opportunity. But, I would like a clue from nature before answering that question.

Gizmodo: You mention that the LHC is keeps on ticking and you know, the high-luminosity LHC is on the horizon. Do you anticipate that kind of juicing the the collider will yield results?

Strassler: I’m not a person to express optimism or pessimism about what nature may deliver to us. I mean, I don’t think I have the insights into nature to guess. But what I can say is that there is an enormous amount still to do, even with the data that we have. It is certainly possible that there is something to discover in the existing LHC data, in addition to the opportunities that having 10 times that data will offer. So, I think people are sometimes too quick to imagine that, “oh well, the LHC looked. It’s not there. We’re done.” No, no, no, no. The LHC produces an enormous pile of data, and every analysis you do has to cut through that data in a particular way.



I wouldn’t say optimistic or pessimistic, but I would say I’m cognizant of the fact that there is still a tremendous amount left to do at the LHC, and we should definitely not be writing it off at all at this point. What we can probably say with some certainty is that the most popular ideas for what might be found at the Large Hadron Collider are mostly ruled out or unlikely at this point, but there are plenty of things, plenty of examples in history where the thing that was really interesting was something that no theoretical physicist had imagined. And we may just need to be really imaginative about how we analyze the data at the LHC.

Pakistan: River Ravi project draws ire from environmental activists

The Pakistani government wants to spend billion of dollars on the Ravi River Urban Development Project. But the plan has left opponents counting the cost to the environment in nearby Lahore.


Farmers protest the Ravi River Urban Development Project at Sheikhupura, Punjab


Pakistan's Ravi River Urban Development Project (RRUDP) is envisioned by the current ruling government, Pakistan Tekreef-i-Insaf, as an innovative and efficient solution to the country's exponentially growing population in one its major urban center's ⁠— Lahore. However, the project has been met with criticism from environmentalists and activists as well as being involved in a legal tussle between the provincial Punjab Judiciary and the country's apex judiciary, the Supreme Court.

The Ravi River is a 720-kilometer transboundary river crossing northwestern India and eastern Pakistan.

The RRUDP is envisioned as a 41,308-hectare (102,074-acre) planned city, which would make it Pakistan's second planned city after the country's capital, Islamabad. The project boasts rehabilitation of the Ravi River into a perennial freshwater body and is expected to be the largest riverfront of the world when finished.
An idea dating back 75 years

The idea of an urban development on the Ravi riverfront was first conceived in 1947 and in 2013, the Government of Punjab began considering the project but it was not inaugurated until August 2020 by the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan. While construction began in December 2020, not much progress has been made since as the project has been embroiled in legal cases

Watch video 03:07Pakistan: Child activist goes on a climate education mission

The provincial judiciary and Supreme Court have been at odds when it comes to judgments regarding RRUDP.

On January 25 of this year, the Lahore High Court (LHC) scrapped the ambitious RRUDP, declaring several provisions of the Ravi Urban Development Authority (RUDA) Act 2020 unconstitutional.

In an uncharacteristically quick-fire response, just six days later the Supreme Court suspended the LHC's initial order to halt the RRUDP until RUDA rectified and amended their legal lacunas. The RRUDP has, in-effect, been given the green-light for implementation, which has garnered a range of criticism from environmentalists, human rights activists and the farming community that reside along the Ravi River.
Pakistan's Land Acquisition Act pushes boundaries

In Pakistan the government can purchase and acquire land from residents for public interest projects. However, the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 is seen by many as antiquated and against article 9 of the Constitution (Security of person. No person shall be deprived of life or liberty save in accordance with law).

This point was raised by the LHC in the hearing regarding RRUDP and advised that the government should elaborate further on farming and agricultural land in the Act to protect vulnerable farmers, the country's food security and ecological health.

Speaking to DW, environmental lawyer Rafay Alam, who was one of the petitioners on behalf of the farmers against RRUDP, commented: "This project is ​​an unashamedly green-washed land grab. There needs to be a limit and regulation to the government's acquisition of agricultural land otherwise where does it end?"

A farmer couple sowing and tilling the land for potato crop

In rebuttal, the CEO of RUDA, Imran Amin maintains that the RRUDP project is well within the purview of the constitution as it is the government's duty to provide amenities and housing to its population, and if it was not for the Land Acquisition Act, the government would not be able to proceed with planned urbanization and development.

Is RRUDP going to endanger Ravi's agriculture?

In 2021, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) launched a fact-finding report on RRUDP and one of the primary concerns was the impact the project may have on Punjab's ecology, food security and farmers' livelihoods.

According to the report, almost 77% of the site area is agricultural land while the remainder comprises of a delicate ecosystem of community and flora. The HRCP fears that the agricultural land of over 76,000 acres could be affected under the 30-year project.

The HRCP'S Chairperson, Hina Jilani, told DW: "Such so-called development projects are favoring concrete over agricultural land which is problematic as the land around Ravi is supplying much of Lahore's fruits and vegetables and especially the farmers themselves, who live and feed off this land, this project is impinging on their social and economic rights."

Watch video 03:10 Offsetting polluted air in Karachi

Mazhar Abbas, a spokesperson for the Ravi Farmers' Movement, who have been protesting the RRUDP's actions, told DW that there are several reasons farmers who are skeptical about the project.

"Farming is all these people know, they don't want to give up their lands because it is their livelihood and community," said Abbas. Further, he shared that even if farmers were amenable to giving up their land, under the Land Acquisition Act, farmers receive very little settlement rates per acre (€1,008) which gives them less security.

However, RUDA CEO Imran Amin maintains that the RRUDP is a means to conserve the Ravi river and increase agricultural efficiency. "There is a misconception that we want to remove all farmers and agriculture from the area. In our plan we have given a 40% allotment to forest cover and agriculture. Right now, the Ravi river is acidic and we are not producing crops, fruits and vegetables we could be. As this project helps improve the river and ecology that we are committed to, we will also improve farmer livelihoods and produce."

Conflicting urbanization strategies

At the center of the RRUDP debate between opponents and proponents is conflicting strategies to tackle urban sprawl. According to Alam, the RRUDP represents a "a fixed housing template" that favors the more affluent and adds distances and vehicular use in the city, further exacerbating Lahore's smog crisis.

However, Amin argues that Lahore and many of Pakistan's urban areas are in trouble because cities have not been planned and views the RRUDP as an antidote to Pakistan's rampant "housing society boom" and urbanization problem.

"RRUDP is not a housing society, we are making a planned city that is anticipating the population rise taking into consideration economic factors, pollution air index, forest cover, etc. We are planning for all segments of society and low cost housing is a compulsion in the plan."

Amin shared that in the initial plan, they are making a labor colony of 3000 apartments that will increase on need basis. This housing model, Amin hopes, will lead to a less informal sprawl and bad living conditions for the labor class.
Feasibility studies controversy

Another criticism hurled at the RRUDP is that the feasibility study is not robust, as per the LHC's ruling. In 2014, the Lahore Development Authority hired Singapore based urban development firm Meinhardt Group to run a feasibility study. This study also formed a significant part of the Environmental Protection Authority's Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).

However, eyebrows have been raised regarding the efficacy of the study as Meindhart Group was allegedly blacklisted by the Lahore Development Authority (LDA) in early 2022. The group has publicly denied this and is pursuing arbitration/defamation cases against the LDA.

Also, Amin, now CEO of RUDA, served as Director Operations at Meinhardt Pakistan from 2012-2020 which petitions against RRUDP, and this has been deemed as a "conflict of interest."

Amin shared with DW, that the conflict of interest claims are baseless as he was not involved with RUDA at the time Meinhardt was consulted. "When anyone goes to a job interview, having experience and knowledge with the project is an asset. Since I was already experienced with the Ravi project, I had an added advantage and relevant experience. How is that a conflict of interest?" said Amin.

Edited by: John Silk