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!