I guess it is rare situation that a superstring theorist visits J-PARC. This new organization for experimental research in elementary particle physics, hadron physics, nuclear physics, and more and more, is completely beyond my imagination. I was invited to an international conference on strangeness and hyper nuclei “Hyp-X” which was held near J-PARC, and the organizers have a very good idea of having an excursion program for visiting experimental sites of J-PARC. Off course I attended at it, as it is obvious that this is a rare opportunity — once the machine starts to operate, anyone cannot see inside the machine, and some parts of J-PARC is still under construction, fortunately for me.
At a glance of the hugeness of the beam line, I was, literally, moved, and stunned.
I vividly remember my feeling when I saw the neutrino beam line at KEK, and the beam line at LHC ATLAS. I was so moved. And the feeling at J-PARC was exactly the same. In my everyday life, as I am a theoretical physicist, I don’t really imagine what kind of experimental monster machine is necessary to probe really the results of my theoretical calculations. Well, that is the theoretical physics. But, every time I see those monsters at collider sites, I feel that it is very important, in particular for theoretical physicists, to actually see, watch, the monstrous machines. These machines are truly one of the “best” machines which human kind has ever built — you never know it, you just feel it when you stand in front of the machines.
I have been working on superstring theory for more than 10 years. And to tell you frankly, it was rather recent that I start thinking about “real” physics. In my graduate days, my sense on energy scales was quite bad. 5 years after I got PhD, for the first time in my life, I wrote a paper which include the real energy scale “MeV”, although I have published many papers before then at “hep-th” archive, “hep” meaning high “energy” physics…. I am very proud of the paper in fact, as I felt that, at last, I could tell my friends that I am a “high energy” physicist. Well, of course, progress in superstring theory needs many many things which are unrelated to real physics, and one can say that most of the progress were born in such situations. However, it is indeed important that superstring theory now comes back to real physics describing QCD, hadron physics, and even nuclear physics.
I hope more superstring theorists may visit J-PARC.
