[en] Twenty years ago at CERN, a new form of interaction, the neutral current, was discovered. However for the preceding ten years physicists already had been searching for variants of this interaction, so a symposium held on February 3-5 by the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica, California reviewed a total of thirty years of neutral current research. The meeting began with an overview of the development of the understanding of weak interactions from the 1930s to 1950s. Laurie Brown (Northwestern) led this discussion, which was followed by a tribute to the milestone accomplishments of the late Ben Lee and J.J. Sakurai (UCLA). In the Weak Neutral Currents (WNC) discovery, neutrinos were seen to interact with target particles but still continued on their way as neutrinos. This was the first time that the weak interaction had revealed a disdain for electric charge - previously all weak interactions had been seen to permute the electric charges of the participating particles. It opened the door to new synthesis and un understanding. The discovery had followed a decade of careful search, in which one major target had been Flavor Changing Weak Neutral Currents (FCWNC) - in which neutral current interactions would be accompanied by transitions of the strange quark. David Cline (UCLA) looked at the initial unsuccessful attempts to detect WNC at Brookhaven and CERN in the 1960s and the early search for FCWNC

[en] Physicists' attention is increasingly turning to the possibilities of 'particen factories' to explore the high intensity frontier and complement the traditional push for high energy. A workshop held at the Chateau de Blois, France, from June 21 to July 1 looked at requirements and physics prospects for factories to manufacture B mesons (containing the fifth 'beauty' quark)

[en] OAK -270 Physics Potential and Development of Muon Colliders and Neutrino Factories

[en] We describe the liquid-xenon dark-matter detector program of the UCLA-Torino team. A two-phase detector, ZEPLIN II, for the Boulby Mine is a good match for the current search for WIMP dark matter

[en] The development of new supernova neutrino detectors relies on the expected hard energy spectrum of the ν_μ and ν_τ emitted in the supernova. We show that SN1987A was sensitive to the large mixing angle (LMA) and 'just so' solution to the solar neutrino problem. We review the previous analysis of the SN1987A data and propose a new analysis. The results of this analysis strongly disfavor the LMA solution, provided the ν_μ and ν_τ are hard as predicted

[en] We describe the signals from a neutrino factory beam in an ICARUS/NOE-like detector. We discuss the detection of (a) ν_e→ν_μ and (b) ν_e→ν_τ and the backgrounds. Wrong-sign leptons from various deep inelastic neutrino processes will not be serious for (a) but may limit the detection of (b) depending on the oscillation amplitude

[en] The increasing interest in the possibility of positive-negative muon colliders was reflected in the second workshop on the Physics Potential and Development of Muon Colliders, held in Sausalito, California, from 16-19 November, with some 60 attendees. It began with an overview of the particle physics goals, detector constraints, the muon collider and mu cooling, and source issues. The major issue confronting muon development is the possible luminosity achievable. Two collider energies were considered: 200 + 200 GeV and 2 + 2 TeV. The major particle physics goals are the detection of the higgs boson(s) for the lower energy collider, together with WW scattering and supersymmetric particle discovery. At the first such workshop, held in Napa, California, in 1992, it was estimated that a luminosity of some 10"3"0 and 3 x 10"3"2 cm "-"2 s"-"1 for the low and high energy collider might be achieved (papers from this meeting were published in the October issue of NIM). This was considered a somewhat conservative estimate at the time. At the Sausalito workshop the goal was to see if a luminosity of 10"3"2 to 10"3"4 for the two colliders might be achievable and usable by a detector. There were five working groups - physics, 200 + 200 GeV collider, 2 + 2 TeV collider, detector design and backgrounds, and muon cooling and production methods. Considerable progress was made in all these areas at the workshop.

[en] An experiment was designed and data were taken to demonstrate that a tightly focused laser on vacuum can accelerate an electron beam in free space. The experiment was proof-of-principle and showed a clear effect for the laser beam off and on. The size of the effect was about 20% and was consistent over 30 laser and beam shots.

[en] We discuss the search for dark matter. We first review the data from LUX that excludes the low-mass WIMP region and slightly lowers the XENON100 limits. We provide a brief review of the problems with the claimed low-mass signals. We discuss the current expectations for SUSY-WIMP dark matter and show why very massive detectors like Darwin may be required. We discuss some theoretical predictions from the meeting. There was compelling evidence from events observed in the Galactic Center by Fermi-LAT of WIMP dark matter at the UCLA meeting. We recount the Richard Arnowitt Lectures at UCLA dark matter symposiums and his role in the development of the strategy to detect SUGRA dark matter. (invited comment)

[en] 6D cooling could be important for many areas of Advanced Accelerator Research. In the case of muons it is crucial for neutrino factories and muon colliders. We give an overview of several concepts for such ring coolers, including the results of simulations and possible testing at the MICE cooling experiment at RAL. We review the solenoid, FFAG and high-pressure gas ring coolers and report on the current research and development for these systems. We also review their possible applications to neutrino factories and muon colliders