Astroparticle Physics 2022

The DESY management has been working in crisis mode ever since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. After the strains of the pandemic, the Russian war on Ukraine is now calling into question much of what we have hitherto taken for granted and posing enormous challenges. Our main concern remains the suffering people in Ukraine and the families who have fled the war with its dire human consequences. This war now also affects research at DESY. Our current problems include the general uncontrolled price development on the energy market and in the construction sector, the enormous inflation trend and the shaky supply chains worldwide. All of these pose unprecedented challenges for the research centre that we have not known before on this scale in Europe and beyond. In our current deliberations, we assume that we will have another three very difficult years ahead of us and will therefore have to implement massive cost-saving measures. These will include cuts in the operation of our major research infrastructures, if we do not receive financial relief, and painful personnel decisions. The DESY Directorate sees a particularly sensitive area here in the next generation of scientists and engineers, whom we must not abandon under any circumstances. However, we do not give up hope that the German government will also focus more strongly on saving the nation’s future innovation potential. The current signals from politics to set up a rescue package also for science make us cautiously optimistic. In a high-tech nation like Germany, research and innovation are the decisive – if not the only – levers to lead us out of the crisis and secure our long-term sovereignty in key technologies. Against the background of the most acute problems in energy supply, we must not forget that the main threat to our survival on this planet is man-made climate change, which we have to counter with new energy concepts. Nor must we lose sight of the constant threat of viral or bacterial pandemics. At DESY, we are all working at full speed to play our part in solving these complex challenges. This is also reflected in our strategy loop, which we are currently working on intensively – in addition to daily crisis management. We have identified three pillars for the future development of DESY: • The cross-divisional DESY Transformation Project (DTP), which is to prepare the future strategy of our “solution ecosystem” and which requires profound conceptual changes in how we organise research and innovation in the future • The National Analytics Centre (NAC) with the facilities PETRA IV, FLASH2020+ and the Plasma Accelerator as well as an integrated data management structure as the core research infrastructures of DESY • Increased focus in particle physics on medium-sized darkmatter projects on the DESY campus and exploration of new opportunities in astroparticle physics offered by the Science Data Management Centre (SDMC) of the Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) and by the German Center for Astrophysics (DZA) Sustainable concepts play a central role in all our planning. The Directorate has a clear vision for DESY’s path to energy-saving and climate-friendly operation. In 2022, we published our first sustainability report, which will appear at regular intervals in the future. block in the transformation process of DESY have been designing over the past few months. major impact of the facility will not only be due to its design as an interdisciplinary “discovery and engine” that includes AI-assisted operations, a access model and comprehensive involvement of the user community. Although these will increase the construction and operational costs of the facility, the socio-economic impact will outweigh this investment many times over. In view of the competing Chinese Energy Photon Source (HEPS) project in Beijing, for which is already at an advanced stage, we must any valuable time now in implementing the project. noted with great pleasure the positive decision of German Federal Ministry of Education and Research realise the German Center for Astrophysics which was prominently promoted by the European Agency (ESA) and DESY. On the DESY side, Christian Stegmann, Director in charge of Astroparticle Physics, and Willner, Delegate of the Directorate for Innovation, were instrumental in the application. This development new piece of the puzzle in our 2022/2023 strategy loop, which fits perfectly into DESY’s aspiration to build an international beacon in astroparticle physics at its Zeuthen site. It is gratifying to see that our on-site axion search experiment ALPS II is developing very well. We are currently working on implementing the campus projects BabyIAXO and LUXE also for axion research. Under the given circumstances, this is a major challenge that we hope to master. We live in difficult times and so does our research centre. My special thanks therefore go to the DESY staff and all our national and international users and partners for their reliable support at all times. I hope this annual report will show you that, despite the current challenges that occupy us on a daily basis, we are keeping DESY on course for a bright future development! Forewords and news | 5 In September 2022, we presented the PETRA IV project – the upgrade of our synchrotron radiation source PETRA III to a 3D X-ray microscope – to a broader public at a major event with representatives from science, politics and industry. I was very pleased that the project was also supported by Stefan Hell from the Max Planck Institutes in Göttingen and Heidelberg, a Nobel Laureate and one of the world’s most renowned representatives of new microscopy concepts. On the evening of the event, he gave an impressive lecture in Hamburg’s City Hall, demonstrating the innovative power that new types of high-performance microscopes can unleash. Under the leadership of Harald Reichert and Riccardo Bartolini, the preparation of the PETRA IV project continues to make great progress. The technical design is essentially complete, and the team is currently working on the application for inclusion of the project in the German national roadmap for research infrastructures. PETRA IV will be a key building block in the transformation process of DESY that we have been designing over the past few months. The major impact of the facility will not only be due to its technical design as an interdisciplinary “discovery and solution engine” that includes AI-assisted operations, a new access model and comprehensive involvement of the broad user community. Although these will increase the construction and operational costs of the facility, the expected socio-economic impact will outweigh this investment many times over. In view of the competing Chinese High Energy Photon Source (HEPS) project in Beijing, for instance, which is already at an advanced stage, we must not lose any valuable time now in implementing the PETRA IV project. We have noted with great pleasure the positive decision of the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) to realise the German Center for Astrophysics (DZA), which was prominently promoted by the European Space Agency (ESA) and DESY. On the DESY side, Christian Stegmann, Director in charge of Astroparticle Physics, and Arik Willner, Delegate of the Directorate for Innovation, were instrumental in the application. This development is a new piece of the puzzle in our 2022/2023 strategy loop, which fits perfectly into DESY’s aspiration to build an international beacon in astroparticle physics at its Zeuthen site. We live in difficult times and so does our research centre. My special thanks therefore go to the DESY staff and all our national and international users and partners for their reliable support at all times. I hope this annual report will show you that, despite the current challenges that occupy us on a daily basis, we are keeping DESY on course for a bright future development!