Annual report / Jülich Center for Hadron Physics / Institut für Kernphysik / COSY: 2013

During the past year the Institute for Nuclear Physics (IKP) has faced a couple strategicwatersheds. Foremost of these is the upcoming retirement of Rudolf Maier, the head of theaccelerator institute (IKP-4), in early 2014. It is obvious that the accelerator group needsstrong scientific leadership given the tasks and commitments of IKP-4 — in particular in the context of building HESR at FAIR and of conceiving a possible future storage-ring project. Fortunately, the process of interviewing and subsequently hiring a successor to lead IKP-4 in the future is proceeding on track. Moreover, we have decided to phase out the hadron physics program at COSY. On the one hand this is motivated by the upcoming physics opportunities at HESR/PANDA, and on the other side by serious budgetary restrictions imposed on us. Consequently, we have readjusted our priorities as presented in the application for Programme-oriented Funding (PoF-3). Here about 70% of our resources (HESR; PANDA and PAX) are connected with FAIR, which according to a decision by the Helmholtz senate will not be evaluated. The remaining 30% are largely foreseen for the JEDI-project, which aims at a search for charged-particle electric-dipole moments in storage rings with unprecedented sensitivity. A smaller part will be used for research and development of accelerator components and advanced detector technologies. The corresponding PoF-applications for Matter and the Universe (MU) and Matterand Technology (MT), have been submitted and will be evaluated in the first quarter of 2014. In order to strengthen the cooperation between IKP and the physics department of the RWTH Aachen University in the field of basic research, a new section of the Jülich-Aachen Research Alliance (JARA) was founded last year and inaugurated in January 2013. Named JARA-FAME (Forces and Matter Experiments), its aim is to investigate the fate of antimatter (i) by searching for it with the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS) on the International Space Station (ISS) and (ii) by investigating possible reasons for its disappearance, e.g., via the search for EDMs within JEDI. The technological highlight of 2013 was the installation and commissioning of the highenergy electron cooler in the COSY ring (see cover page). After delivery in December 2012 by the Budker Institute (Novosibirsk, Russia), it has been set up together with our Russian colleagues. In the meantime it has been tested at lower values of high voltage to prove that it works. As the next step we will study the device in detail with COSY beams and carefully increase the electron beam energy up to the maximum value of 2 MV duringthe upcoming year. Physics highlights of the past year comprise: [...