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             | Centre Interuniversitaire de Physique Subatomique |
             |   Interuniversity Centre for Subatomic Physics    |
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                             Intents and Purposes


The Centre is a consortium of Montreal physicists involved in subatomic and high
energy physics.  Its membership comes from McGill University, Universite de
Montreal and Universite du Quebec a Montreal.  With its present 26 members, both
in experimental and theoretical physics, the Centre constitutes the largest
regroupment of scientists of the field in Eastern Canada, indeed second only in 
the country to the Canadian research Center TRIUMF in Vancouver. 


Subatomic physics is at the leading edge of fundamental research.  It addresses
essentially the structure of matter and of its interactions.  All the known
particles of matter can be described as combinations of very few building
blocks, the quarks and the leptons, representing 2 families of 6 particles. 
Four types of forces have been identified in nature:  gravitational,
electromagnetic, strong and weak.  Illustrating examples could be planetary
systems, light emission from atoms, existence of nuclei or slow nuclear
disintegrations, respectively.  Two of the great scientific achievements of the
past two decades have been the discovery of the missing 6th quark "top", and the
unification of the electromagnetic and weak interactions as manifestations of a
single electro-weak process.  Further promising unification efforts are
currently being done to include the strong interaction and later on the 
gravitation.


This bold program is carried out experimentally in a few large international
collaborations.  Our experimental groups are involved in the foremost projects
at research centers in the USA and Europe.  They contribute significantly to all
steps of the projects, from detector construction to interpretation and
understanding of the results.  The theoretical approach is also very strong and
fully complementary. It can moreover be shown that very high energy density
phenomena, astrophysics or cosmology are ultimately but other aspects of our
research axes and therefore also investigated.  The scales and complexity of the
field, but also the many scientific and technical ramifications represent the
unique characteristics of our Centre and of its dynamics as a research entity. 


Our Centre teams endeavor to use the Centre to strengthen our research efforts,
to create an even more stimulating environment for extended collaborations and 
research, to improve recruitment and formation of young researchers and graduate
students, and to coordinate all our common activities.  This is being achieved
through seminar series, conference and visitor programs, computer network
unification, sharing of laboratories and equipments, extensive exchanges of
experience and know-how, and development of applications.  The "McGill Centre
for High Energy Physics" has an almost 20-year long tradition and was severely
re-structured in 1995.  At that time, the "Groupe de Physique des Particules de
l'Universite de Montreal" was officially created and already in the middle of
1996 both groups decided to join forces and initiate our Interuniversity Centre
with also collaborating members from UQAM and further prospects for the future.