Conference Summary

495 The study of particle physics with low energy neutrons has a long history starting in the middle of the past century. During most of the time only a rather small number of researchers worked in this field, at least as compared to any of the high energy particle physics collaborations. For instance, in the mid-eighties, when I joined Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) for several years, I found there only one ILL scientist, the late Walter Mampe, serving the whole community both from Europe and from overseas which came to work at ILL. Today, we see a large number of powerful young groups who have entered the field on each side of the Atlantic and of the Pacific, and I am honoured to give the summary to this conference. So let me run through the topics of this conference to give, at the end, a tabular summary of the basic scientific questions pursued by our community. The conference started with a session on what is considered by many particle physicists to be the flagship of the field, namely the search for an electric dipole moment (EDM) of the neutron. This topic is closely linked to the question of why so much matter has survived the Big Bang, and to the question of the origin of time reversal violation. Progress in neutron EDM will mainly come from increases in ultracold neutron (UCN) source strength. As we have heard, there are many projects on new powerful UCN sources, both on very small and very large installations, and it is not clear yet who will win this race. Anyway, when significant progress in statistics will be achieved, as we all expect to take place in the near future, then, as history shows, progress in systematics will follow shortly behind. The recent discovery of a new false-effect linked to Bloch-Siegert shifts in non-uniform fields is a good example for this rule. We then learned about new ideas on neutron-antineutron oscillations. Recently I was asked what I think of having a new neutron oscillation project. This made me think of a dear colleague, who, many years ago, said in a summary talk to the first of this series of conferences: do not bother with free neutron decay any more, the best people have worked on it, and no one will do better. My advice to younger colleagues: Do not listen too much to what your forerunners …