EU astroparticle road map.

Twelve European national research agencies are combining their efforts in astroparticle physics in the Astroparticle Eranet (ASPERA) network, which was started last year. A draft 10-year road map was published this past June, and in September ASPERA members met in Amsterdam to discuss the road map’s recommendations on coordinating their efforts.

The road map highlights three major projects: KM3NeT, a kilometer-sized neutrino telescope that will operate beneath the Mediterranean Sea and will be a Northern Hemisphere counterpart of the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in the Antarctic; LAGUNA (Large Apparatus Studying Grand Unification and Neutrino Astrophysics), a detector that will be built with one of three competing technologies (water Cherenkov imaging, liquid scintillator, or liquid-argon time-projection chambers) for proton decay and neutrino astronomy; and the Einstein Telescope, a next-generation gravitational-wave antenna. The road map also proposes funding design studies for the Cherenkov Telescope Array, an observatory for high-energy gamma rays, and the EURECA (European Underground Rare Event Calorimeter Array) dark-matter detector. Europe will have to double the €70 million ($98 million) it spends on astroparticle research if it wants to do everything outlined in the road map, says ASPERA chairman and University of Geneva physicist Maurice Bourquin, “and through listening to the community, ASPERA will eventually help to prioritize these projects.” The network’s members will contribute financially to projects of their choice.

The ASPERA member countries are Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK. Romania is expected to join the network shortly.