Chasing a power supply in Siberia

Abstract

Arthur Liberman’s Letter to the Editor on Cold War particle-physics collaborations (Physics Today, October 2020, page 12) reminded me of a visit I made in 1969 to Akademgorodok, a small research town near Novosibirsk, Siberia. At that time our Northeastern University research group had theoretically postulated, and done an initial experiment on, ρ–ω interference in the leptonic decay mode.11. R. G. Parsons, R. Weinstein, Phys. Rev. Lett. 20, 1314 (1968). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.20.1314 There were several interesting features to be experimentally or theoretically studied, and a flurry of work followed. We sought to do definitive experiments at the well-suited colliding-beams accelerator in Gersh Budker’s research facilities in Akademgorodok.During discussions with the facility’s director, Veniamin Siderov, concerning the proposed experiments, we compared the structure of the Novosibirsk research group with that of the Northeastern group. The numbers that emerged gave significant insight to the hurdles faced by physics researchers in the Soviet Union.Northeastern’s high-energy research group consisted of five PhDs and seven support technicians. When I requested that Siderov provide comparable information about his facility, he replied that he had 2000 technicians. I assumed that he had misunderstood my question, but he actually did have that many technicians working for him. To help me understand the staggering difference, he described the procedure he would follow when he needed, for example, a power supply.In the US one would simply go out and buy a power supply, but such devices were not available on the Soviet market, and Siderov had no access to hard currencies. He would have to set up a production line in a subgroup of his 2000 technicians, and they would produce perhaps 100 power supplies. He would then act as a vendor of the devices—for several years if need be—to support his technicians and make purchases of his own from other similar manufacturing centers. The amount of organization, energy, and manpower required to obtain a power supply was staggering.I had come prepared to discuss the details of the proposed experiment, but Budker was already expert in the details of ρ–ω interference. Instead he wanted to discuss the proposed experimental setup—in particular, the number of photomultiplier tubes and power supplies. He agreed to make the accelerator available for the proposed experiment on one condition—that after completion of the measurements, the equipment would be left at his lab.I carried that proposition back to my supporting agency, which had previously supplied support for Soviet experiments in the US. However, the arrangement was not approved; it amounted to the US paying for Soviet beam time while Soviet researchers got US beam time for free.ReferenceSection:ChooseTop of pageReference <<1. R. G. Parsons, R. Weinstein, Phys. Rev. Lett. 20, 1314 (1968). https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.20.1314, Google ScholarCrossref© 2021 American Institute of Physics.