Search NASA⌕ Search

Engineering topics

Chen, Thomas Y.

Publications and source records attributed to Chen, Thomas Y..

Agile collaboration: Citizen science as a transdisciplinary approach to heliophysics

Citizen science connects scientists with the public to enable discovery, engaging broad audiences across the world. There are many attributes that make citizen science an asset to the field of heliophysics, including agile collaboration. Agility is the extent to which a person, group of people, technology, or project can work efficiently, pivot, and adapt to adversity. Citizen scientists are agile; they are adaptable and responsive. Citizen science projects and their underlying technology platforms are also agile in the software development sense, by utilizing beta testing and short timeframes to pivot in response to community needs. As they capture scientifically valuable data, citizen scientists can bring expertise from other fields to scientific teams. The impact of citizen science projects and communities means citizen scientists are a bridge between scientists and the public, facilitating the exchange of information. These attributes of citizen scientists form the framework of agile collaboration. In this paper, we contextualize agile collaboration primarily for aurora chasers, a group of citizen scientists actively engaged in projects and independent data gathering. Nevertheless, these insights scale across other domains and projects. Citizen science is an emerging yet proven way of enhancing the current research landscape. To tackle the next-generation’s biggest research problems, agile collaboration with citizen scientists will become necessary.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

How open data and interdisciplinary collaboration improve our understanding of space weather: A risk and resiliency perspective

Space weather refers to conditions around a star, like our Sun, and its interplanetary space that may affect space- and ground-based assets as well as human life. Space weather can manifest as many different phenomena, often simultaneously, and can create complex and sometimes dangerous conditions. The study of space weather is inherently trans-disciplinary, including subfields of solar, magnetospheric, ionospheric, and atmospheric research communities, but benefiting from collaborations with policymakers, industry, astrophysics, software engineering, and many more. Effective communication is required between scientists, the end-user community, and government organizations to ensure that we are prepared for any adverse space weather effects. With the rapid growth of the field in recent years, the upcoming Solar Cycle 25 maximum, and the evolution of research-ready technologies, we believe that space weather deserves a reexamination in terms of a “risk and resiliency” framework. By utilizing open data science, cross-disciplinary collaborations, information systems, and citizen science, we can forge stronger partnerships between science and industry and improve our readiness as a society to mitigate space weather impacts. The objective of this manuscript is to raise awareness of these concepts as we approach a solar maximum that coincides with an increasingly technology-dependent society, and introduce a unique way of approaching space weather through the lens of a risk and resiliency framework that can be used to further assess areas of improvement in the field.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Snowmass Early Career

The Snowmass 2021 strategic planning process provided an essential opportunity for the United States high energy physics and astroparticle (HEPA) community to come together and discuss upcoming physics goals and experiments. As this forward-looking perspective on the field often reaches far enough into the future to surpass the timescale of a single career, consideration of the next generation of physicists is crucial. The 2021 Snowmass Early Career (SEC) organization aimed to unite this group, with the purpose of both educating the newest generation of physicists while informing the senior generation of their interests and opinions. SEC is the latest in a series of the previously dubbed "Snowmass Young" organizations, from 2013 and 2001. This iteration has expanded on these efforts to significantly increase involvement and broaden the representation of the early career community in the process. Early career physicists are the future of the field. They will design, build, and operate next-generation experiments, and put in the work to usher in new discoveries. They are also disproportionately involved in work to improve the climate within HEPA. This document summarizes the work of SEC in consolidating a huge variety of physics perspectives and community opinions towards a bright, strategic future.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Dark Matter Complementarity (Snowmass 2021 Cross Frontier Report: Extended Version)

The fundamental nature of Dark Matter is a central theme of the Snowmass 2021 process, extending across all frontiers. In the last decade, advances in detector technology, analysis techniques and theoretical modeling have enabled a new generation of experiments and searches while broadening the types of candidates we can pursue. Over the next decade, there is great potential for discoveries that would transform our understanding of dark matter. In the following, we outline a road map for discovery developed in collaboration among the frontiers. A strong portfolio of experiments that delves deep, searches wide, and harnesses the complementarity between techniques is key to tackling this complicated problem, requiring expertise, results, and planning from all Frontiers of the Snowmass 2021 process.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Report of the Topical Group on Physics Beyond the Standard Model at Energy Frontier for Snowmass 2021

This is the Snowmass2021 Energy Frontier (EF) Beyond the Standard Model (BSM) report. It combines the EF topical group reports of EF08 (Model-specific explorations), EF09 (More general explorations), and EF10 (Dark Matter at Colliders). The report includes a general introduction to BSM motivations and the comparative prospects for proposed future experiments for a broad range of potential BSM models and signatures, including compositeness, SUSY, leptoquarks, more general new bosons and fermions, long-lived particles, dark matter, charged-lepton flavor violation, and anomaly detection.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Snowmass 2021 Computational Frontier CompF03 Topical Group Report: Machine Learning

The rapidly-developing intersection of machine learning (ML) with high-energy physics (HEP) presents both opportunities and challenges to our community. Far beyond applications of standard ML tools to HEP problems, genuinely new and potentially revolutionary approaches are being developed by a generation of talent literate in both fields. There is an urgent need to support the needs of the interdisciplinary community driving these developments, including funding dedicated research at the intersection of the two fields, investing in high-performance computing at universities and tailoring allocation policies to support this work, developing of community tools and standards, and providing education and career paths for young researchers attracted by the intellectual vitality of machine learning for high energy physics.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Report of the Topical Group on Particle Dark Matter for Snowmass 2021

This report summarizes the findings of the CF1 Topical Subgroup to Snowmass 2021, which was focused on particle dark matter. One of the most important scientific goals of the next decade is to reveal the nature of dark matter (DM). To accomplish this goal, we must delve deep, to cover high priority targets including weakly-interacting massive particles (WIMPs), and search wide, to explore as much motivated DM parameter space as possible. A diverse, continuous portfolio of experiments at large, medium, and small scales that includes both direct and indirect detection techniques maximizes the probability of discovering particle DM. Detailed calibrations and modeling of signal and background processes are required to make a convincing discovery. In the event that a candidate particle is found through different means, for example at a particle collider, the program described in this report is also essential to show that it is consistent with the actual cosmological DM. The US has a leading role in both direct and indirect detection dark matter experiments -- to maintain this leading role, it is imperative to continue funding major experiments and support a robust R&D program.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Snowmass Theory Frontier: Astrophysics and Cosmology

We summarize progress made in theoretical astrophysics and cosmology over the past decade and areas of interest for the coming decade. This Report is prepared as the TF09 "Astrophysics and Cosmology" topical group summary for the Theory Frontier as part of the Snowmass 2021 process.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Interpretable Uncertainty Quantification in AI for HEP

Estimating uncertainty is at the core of performing scientific measurements in HEP: a measurement is not useful without an estimate of its uncertainty. The goal of uncertainty quantification (UQ) is inextricably linked to the question, "how do we physically and statistically interpret these uncertainties?" The answer to this question depends not only on the computational task we aim to undertake, but also on the methods we use for that task. For artificial intelligence (AI) applications in HEP, there are several areas where interpretable methods for UQ are essential, including inference, simulation, and control/decision-making. There exist some methods for each of these areas, but they have not yet been demonstrated to be as trustworthy as more traditional approaches currently employed in physics (e.g., non-AI frequentist and Bayesian methods). Shedding light on the questions above requires additional understanding of the interplay of AI systems and uncertainty quantification. We briefly discuss the existing methods in each area and relate them to tasks across HEP. We then discuss recommendations for avenues to pursue to develop the necessary techniques for reliable widespread usage of AI with UQ over the next decade.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

High-energy and ultra-high-energy neutrinos: A Snowmass white paper

Astrophysical neutrinos are excellent probes of astroparticle physics and high-energy physics. With energies far beyond solar, supernovae, atmospheric, and accelerator neutrinos, high-energy and ultra-high-energy neutrinos probe fundamental physics from the TeV scale to the EeV scale and beyond. They are sensitive to physics both within and beyond the Standard Model through their production mechanisms and in their propagation over cosmological distances. They carry unique information about their extreme non-thermal sources by giving insight into regions that are opaque to electromagnetic radiation. Here in this white paper describes the opportunities astrophysical neutrino observations offer for astrophysics and high-energy physics, today and in coming years.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Data Science and Machine Learning in Education

The growing role of data science (DS) and machine learning (ML) in high-energy physics (HEP) is well established and pertinent given the complex detectors, large data, sets and sophisticated analyses at the heart of HEP research. Moreover, exploiting symmetries inherent in physics data have inspired physics-informed ML as a vibrant sub-field of computer science research. HEP researchers benefit greatly from materials widely available materials for use in education, training and workforce development. They are also contributing to these materials and providing software to DS/ML-related fields. Increasingly, physics departments are offering courses at the intersection of DS, ML and physics, often using curricula developed by HEP researchers and involving open software and data used in HEP. In this white paper, we explore synergies between HEP research and DS/ML education, discuss opportunities and challenges at this intersection, and propose community activities that will be mutually beneficial.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗