Advances in Accelerator-Based High-Energy Physics

SPEAR was an enormous success and, as indicated earlier, possibly the most cost-effective, productive high-energy physics machine ever built. It demonstrated the power of electron–positron colliders: several additional machines were built abroad and in the United States. SLAC’s next step was PEP, an electron–positron collider employing two beams of a maximum of 18 GeV each. Construction of PEP was a collaboration between SLAC and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL). Ground was broken in June, 1977, and its operation started in 1980. Other than supporting its approval and construction wholeheartedly, I had very little to do with the project as such. It was carried out under the direction of Burt Richter and his “circular” accelerator physicists, led by John Rees. Because of the success of SPEAR, demand for experimental opportunities at PEP from other institutions was large and SLAC approved the construction of five independent detectors in separate interaction regions on it. A similar machine, called PETRA, was built at DESY in Germany.