 | Thursday, November 2, 2006 |
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Thursday, November 2
Friday, November 3 Click here for NALCAL, a weekly calendar with links to additional information. |
 Partly Cloudy 39º/20º
Extended Forecast |
Secon Level 3 |
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Thursday, November 2 -Southwestern Chicken Tortilla -Philly Style Cheese Steak -Chimichangas -Chicken Marsala -Smoked Turkey Melt -Assorted Slice Pizza -South West Chicken Salad with Roasted Corn Salsa |
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Thursday, November 2 Dinner Steamed Mussels w/White Wine, Garlic & Thyme Spicy Spare Ribs Sautéed Greens Spaghetti Squash Lemon Napoleons
Wednesday, November 8
Chez Leon Menu |
| Fermilab Today is online at: http://www.fnal.gov/today/ Send comments and suggestions to today@fnal.gov Fermilab Today archive Fermilab Today PDF Version Fermilab Result of the Week archive Fermilab Safety Tip of the Week archive Fermilab Today classifieds Subscribe/Unsubscribe to |
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The leaning tower of B mesons |
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Since the original discovery of the bottom quark at Fermilab in 1977, scientists have been carefully studying how the bottom quark behaves. After living for about one trillionth of a second, a bottom quark has a 98 percent chance to decay to a charm quark (b --> c) and a 2 percent chance to decay to the much lighter up quark (b --> u). The b --> u decays have been under intense experimental scrutiny over the last few years. Now the CDF experiment has made significant new contributions to our understanding of these decays by observing four new decay modes. The chance for a particle containing a bottom quark to decay in one of these newly-observed ways is about 1 in 200,000, which is why seeing these decays is such a challenge.
One of the newly found decay modes is the Bs meson (bottom quark bound with strange quark) decaying to a kaon (up and strange quark) and a pion (up and down quark), or in the concise language of particle physics, simply Bs --> K π. This newly found mode receives a special interest as a probe into the origin of CP violation, the asymmetry between matter and antimatter. According to the Standard Model of particle physics, all possible CP asymmetries are determined by the value of a single parameter in the theory, and are therefore all connected. The recent finding of a large discrepancy between the CP asymmetries of neutral and charged B mesons has generated debate on whether this can be accommodated by the standard theory, perhaps instead revealing the presence of New Physics. The CP asymmetry of the Bs --> K π mode is expected to be large and tightly related to the neutral B meson asymmetry, and its measurement is therefore a very good way to answer the question. The jury is still out on whether the Standard Model can explain all CP violation, but the observation of these modes is an important step towards finding an answer. | ||
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Contributing to this analysis were, from left: Simone Donati, Diego Tonelli, Guido Volpi (student), Michael Morello (student), Giovanni Punzi. Volpi is from the University of Siena, the others are from the University of Pisa. Notice the asymmetric object lurking in the background.
| Result of the Week Archive
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The Daily Herald, November 2, 2006: A deal bringing hope to Fermilab Millions of dollars, millions of possibilities Declaring it would ensure Fermilab's future as the world's leading high-energy physics laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy officials Wednesday awarded a newly formed corporation a $1.6 billion contract to manage the Batavia lab. The five-year contract with Fermi Research Alliance LLC gives the University of Chicago a more prominent role in directing Fermi's research and programs. The University of Chicago is a 50 percent partner in the alliance; a consortium of 90 other universities comprise the other 50 percent.
"The future of this laboratory is the future of high-energy physics for us," said Raymond Orbach, the Department of Energy's undersecretary for science. "This contract will help us realize that future."
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| Bring on the data! | ||
This week's column is written by Computing Division Head Vicky White.
Bring on the data! We are ready for increased Tevatron luminosity and for the data to come from the LHC. To make sure we really are ready for the LHC and the data to be gathered by the CMS experiment, we are participating in "challenges" using mock data between Fermilab and CERN, which are distributed to "Tier-1" and "Tier-2" centers worldwide. One of several "fat" network pipes connecting Fermilab to the Starlight optical switching facility in Chicago reached a record peak transfer rate of 8 Gigabits/second last week. Fittingly, last week we hosted an LHCnet working group and a network research meeting, and representatives of CISCO visited. As if that was not enough, we also hosted Interlab - a meeting of about 60 people from DOE labs who got together to share information about Web tools. In the lobby of the Feynman Computing Center, we installed an illuminated sign proclaiming FCC as the "Home of Scientific Linux." (Thanks to Fred Ullrich for the great photo used for the sign.) Scientific Linux is now used throughout high-energy physics and beyond. If you like statistics about networks, data and computing then look at our "metrics" page. Statistics of course don't really tell you about all the hard work and care that go into making things work for Fermilab's scientific program. That's something you only see when you interact with the people who do the work. All around me, every day, I see and appreciate how dedicated the people of the Computing Division are to making our systems and services work well and to supporting and contributing to the scientific program. |
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October 30 - November 1 - Vacuum leak in the Tevatron results in no luminosity.
Read the Current Accelerator Update |
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Employee Art Show
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