CERN’s fix-it man

In 2004, when Robert Aymar was appointed to run CERN, he was seen as a troubleshooter brought in to get the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) up and running.

Born in 1936, Aymar studied at the École Polytechnique in Paris and then entered the Corps des Poudres, a former French government agency for basic and applied research. In 1959 he was transferred to the Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) in Saclay, where he focused on fundamental research in plasma physics and applications in controlled thermonuclear fusion. In 1977 Aymar was appointed director of the Tore Supra tokamak in Cadarache. “When I first pushed superfluid technology for the Tore Supra large magnets, I was called a fool,” he says. After the success of Tore Supra, the same technology was proposed for cooling the LHC magnets. In 1990 Aymar became director of fundamental research at the CEA’s natural sciences division. He was chairman of the 1993 external review committee that approved the technical specifications for the LHC. “In some ways that makes me the LHC’s godfather,” he says. In December 2001, while he was director of ITER, an international prototype energy fusion reactor, the CERN council appointed Aymar chair of a committee mandated to review and evaluate programs and management at CERN. From there, he took the lab’s reins.

By the time Aymar’s tenure as CERN director general draws to a close at the end of 2008, the LHC should have begun producing results—despite the revelation last month of a new slip in its start-up schedule (see also Physics Today, September 2007, page 32 ). This December CERN will announce Aymar’s successor. Many of Aymar’s colleagues at CERN suggest he is a leading candidate to head ITER again. But Aymar wouldn’t comment on that when he sat down this summer with Physics Today.

PT: Did you make any major changes when you first joined CERN? Why did you become director general?

AYMAR: A few years earlier, in 2001, was a crazy time at CERN. The cost [of the LHC] was much higher than expected, and the start date was unknown—it seemed like every month the delay increased by a month. I was asked to chair a committee to look at the problems at CERN. Following our deliberations, I proposed a series of recommendations to the CERN council, and the joke was that instead of putting it on paper, I should come here and make it happen. That’s why I came. I found the situation much worse than I expected. We had to regain the confidence of the member states or we would be in trouble. We also needed to try and change the attitude here, as there was too much a culture of individual perfection, and of inaction. First, the system has to work as one, not hundreds of smaller systems working without a common goal. Second, I tried to make sure that everyone is concerned with the common goals of the laboratory, not just the affairs of their own department.

The third change was to make everyone, as much as possible, cost conscious because we did not have the money to build [the LHC]. We had to borrow a huge amount [1.5 billion Swiss francs ($1.3 billion)]. We had to squeeze as much efficiency out of our budget as possible, which came as a huge shock to some, who were used to a lot of money at CERN.

PT: How long will it take to pay back the money borrowed for the LHC’s construction? And what is next for CERN?

AYMAR: This year we will start to pay back the loans, finishing in 2011. Currently all our budget is tied up with the LHC. … That is why in 2006 I made a plea to the different member states to increase their [combined] contributions by 240 million Swiss francs ($203 million) over four years. It is looking successful since the last council meeting, mostly because of the good will of the two host states, France and Switzerland, who are providing half of the total additional contributions. This money would allow CERN to prepare R&D for the new injection line and other cost-effective ways of improving the LHC’s performance and reliability over the coming years. Otherwise we’ve done nothing on the state of our buildings since we started LHC construction, and some of them are falling apart.

PT: Will more countries become member states of CERN?

AYMAR: Romania is preparing its case, and Israel is looking ahead. Russia is certainly active in asking itself what it should do, and my guess is that sometime in the future it will become a member.

PT: What will CERN’s involvement be with the International Linear Collider?

AYMAR: We have participated reasonably in the reference design of the ILC, but if construction is decided before 2016, I don’t think CERN will be able to participate, as Europe won’t have the money.

The decision will also depend on what results the LHC will provide. CERN is now developing a novel technology for a linear collider, CLIC [Compact Linear Collider, a proposed 3- to 5-TeV electron–positron collider generally considered to be further in the future than the ILC]. The cost would be similar for ILC and CLIC. I suspect that by 2010 we will have an answer as to which technologies and research direction are the most appropriate. The high-energy-physics community will probably only be able to afford one of these projects.

PT: There seems to be a push in particle physics for open-access publishing of scientific papers. Why do you think that is?

AYMAR: The number of journals that publish particle-physics papers is very small. This community of authors and publishers is small and as such all their papers can be made freely accessible for a few million euros.

Why is open access happening now? The price of subscriptions is increasing, the number of people buying journals is decreasing, and at some point [the journals] will disappear. And what we should make clear is what is important—independent peer review. Editors are necessary, publishers are necessary, but the idea that by editing a piece the journal gets the copyright is strange. Instead publishers should be paid for coordinating peer review, improving readability, and publishing papers with open access on the Web. We [at CERN] think this is the way scientific articles should be published.

PT: And what will you do next?

AYMAR: I don’t quite know. I may retire permanently this time.