Fermilab Today

	Friday, March 11, 2011

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Have a safe day!

Friday, March 11
2 p.m.
LHC Physics Center Topic of the Week Seminar - Sunrise (WH11SE)
Speaker: Harrison Prosper, Florida State University
Title: Bayesian Statistics
3 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
3:30 p.m.
Joint Experimental-Theoretical Physics Seminar - One West
Speakers: Christian Schwanenberger, University of Manchester, and Jonathan Lewis, Fermilab
Title: New Results from CDF and DZero for the Winter 2011 Conferences

Saturday, March 12
8 p.m.
Fermilab Art Series - Auditorium
Performer: Altan
Tickets: $30/$15

Monday, March 14
2 p.m.
LHC Physics Center Topic of the Week Seminar - WH11SE, Sunrise
Speaker: Harrison Prosper, Florida State University
Title: Bayesian Statistics
2:30 p.m.
Particle Astrophysics Seminar - One West
Speaker: Mariangela Lisanti, Princeton University
Title: The Dark Matter at the End of the Galaxy
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
All Experimenters' Meeting - Curia II
Special Topics: MI Gap-Clearing Kickers; MTA: First Beam to Experimental Area; NuMI Target Updates

Click here for NALCAL,
a weekly calendar with links to additional information.

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Weather

Sunny
48°/34°

Extended Forecast
Weather at Fermilab

Current Security Status

Secon Level 3

Wilson Hall Cafe

Friday, March 11

- Breakfast: Chorizo burrito
- New England clam chowder
- Carolina burger
- Tuna casserole
- Dijon meatballs over noodles
- Bistro chicken and provolone panini
- Assorted sliced pizza
- *Carved top round of beef

*carb-restricted alternative

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Friday, March 11
Dinner
- Pasta carbonara
- stuffed filet of sole with crabmeat
- Sautéed spinach with lemon and garlic
- Pecan rum cake

Wednesday, March 16
Lunch
- Bourbon glazed salmon
- Brown rice medley
- Steamed broccoli
- Cold lemon soufflé/butter cookies

Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

To our Japanese colleagues and friends

Early this morning an 8.9-magnitude earthquake and a subsequent tsunami hit Japan. Our thoughts are with our Japanese colleagues, friends and their families in the aftermath of these tragedies. Fermilab has very strong collaborations with Japanese scientists and institutions, particularly at the laboratory KEK and at universities throughout the country. We extend our deepest condolences and our support to all of them.

Feature

Fermilab exhibits at annual AAAS conference

In February, Fermilab joined nine other Department of Energy Office of Science laboratories in the exhibit hall at the 117thannual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Fermilab set up a booth on DOE Row, an aisle of the exhibit hall featuring Department of Energy laboratories and other science groups. At the booth, which attracted thousands with its colorful layout, scintillating plastic rulers and picture books, Fermilab staff answered questions and explained the science conducted at the laboratory.

Fermilab Office of Communication’s Kurt Riesselmann explains science done at the laboratory to meeting attendees. Behind him is Fermilab’s exhibit booth, which shows Fermilab science at each of the three frontiers: Energy, Intensity and Cosmic.

Fermilab Office of Communication staff member Leah Hesla demonstrates how Fermilab’s scintillating rulers shift ultra-violet light into visible light at the Fermilab booth. Fermilab staff members handed out more than 1,000 rulers.

Across the aisle from Fermilab’s booth, also in DOE Row, was the Accelerators for America booth, designed by Fermilab staff and contractors. Fermilab staff and other volunteers from universities and funding agencies explained accelerator applications and the benefits that accelerators have to society.

In this photo, University of Chicago researcher Joe Tuggle demonstrates how accelerators work using an accelerator bowl, a display created by Todd Johnson, Fermilab. Charged copper strips inside the bowl create electric fields that accelerate a ping pong ball coated with conductive paint. See this YouTube video to learn more.

Feature

Construction continues at accelerator test facility

This newly constructed tunnel provides space for an extended beamline at the new accelerator test facility.

Fermilab’s new accelerator test facilities at the New Muon Laboratory reached an important milestone last month with the completion of a tunnel extending from the previously existing building. The tunnel will allow room for the accelerator test facility to grow, giving physicists much-needed space to develop superconducting radio-frequency technology.

The new tunnel will host a 460-foot-long SRF test accelerator; the first of its kind in the United States. Project Manager Jerry Leibfritz said the expansion is key to continuing SRF research at Fermilab for next-generation accelerators on the Intensity Frontier, such as the proposed Project X.

Fermilab also plans to use the new test facilities to test SRF components from industry to validate and further their accelerator manufacturing capabilities.

The new facility was built with several cost-saving measures in mind.

“We used recycled equipment wherever we could,” Leibfritz said. “A lot of components for the new facility came from other parts of the laboratory where they were no longer needed.”

The construction work provided jobs for several local subcontractors working for Michigan-based contractor Barton Malow Incorporated. A total of 27,802 manhours have been completed on the project to date with an average of 10 tradespeople on site each day for the past year.

Two additional buildings under construction will house accelerator component test stands and a large cryogenic refrigerator to cool the niobium superconducting accelerator cavities. SRF accelerators operate at -456 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature where they can conduct electric current without electrical resistance.

Construction on the additional buildings is scheduled for completion later this year.

With the completion of the new accelerator test facility, Fermilab hopes to become a world leader in SRF technology. Physicists and engineers from one of the world’s top SRF accelerator laboratories, the German Electron Synchotron (DESY), collaborated with Fermilab on many aspects of the new facility.

Money for the expansion came from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Additional ARRA funds are going towards the equipment and infrastructure needed for the building’s operation.

- Cynthia Horwitz

Special Announcement

Celebrate traditional Irish music Saturday with Altan

Altan will perform traditional Irish music at Fermilab this Saturday.

Witness a piece of the Emerald Isle when traditional Irish band Altan takes to the Fermilab stage on Saturday. The group’s award-winning music ranges from hard-hitting reels and jigs to touching old Irish songs. To learn more about the group or their music, visit their website.

The show takes place at 8 p.m. on Saturday, March 12, in Fermilab’s Ramsey Auditorium. Tickets are $30 for adults and $15 for ages 18 and younger. Visit the Fermilab Arts Series website to learn more.

CMS Result

Searching for a fourth generation

This analysis searched for another generation of quarks even heavier than the top quark discovered at Fermilab in 1995.

There are many fascinating measurements that have been made at particle colliders over the years, but perhaps my favorite was done at the LEP accelerator at CERN. After varying the beam energy, physicists made a plot showing the production of Z bosons in comparison to theoretical curves for the existence of two, three and four neutrinos. The data essentially demonstrated that the number of different types of neutrinos into which the Z boson could decay is identically three.

Physicists already know at least three types of neutrinos exist and that each neutrino is associated with its own specific lepton and two quarks. Each grouping of these particles is called a generation, with generation one consisting of the electron neutrino, the electron and the up and down quarks. Generation two includes the muon neutrino, muon and charm and strange quarks. Generation three consists of the tau neutrino, tau and top and bottom quarks. The precise value of three neutrino types suggested that there are exactly three different generations.

However, if we dig a little deeper, we find that the data actually only demonstrated that there were three light neutrinos into which the Z boson could decay. Additional heavy neutrinos were possible. Given that we see such a huge range of masses in the various quarks (for instance the top quark is about 100,000 times heavier than the up quark) it is at least conceivable that there could be a fourth generation with a heavy neutrino.

Naturally, the only way to be sure is to look for heavier particles of the fourth generation. These hypothetical particles don’t (yet) have the quirky names of the known quarks and are simply called t’ and b’ as analogs of the top and bottom quarks. CMS physicists looked for a b’ quark. Following the patterns observed in the lighter generations, we think that the b’ quark will decay into a top quark and a W boson. The top quark decays in the ordinary way into a bottom quark and another W boson. Because b’ quarks and antimatter quarks are produced at the same time, this doubles the particle count. Physicists then looked for events containing two bottom quarks and four W bosons.

Using the 2010 dataset (which is only a tiny fraction of the data expected to be collected in 2011) the analysis showed no evidence for the existence of a fourth generation, but it demonstrated CMS’ ability to quickly search for very complicated experimental signatures.

-- Don Lincoln

These physicists performed this challenging analysis.

One strength of large modern collaborations is the intense review that each analysis undergoes before being submitted to a journal. This analysis was led by an excellent team of American and Taiwanese physicists. When the analyzers have done as complete a job as they know how, the analysis is then reviewed by an Analysis Review Committee. After ARC review, the analysis is further reviewed by some of the several thousand CMS collaborators and the physics coordination leadership. Only after the analysis passes all of this intense scrutiny is it sent to a journal for consideration. These physicists form the ARC for this analysis.

Milestones

Birthday

Mohamed Hassan, 2010 Bardeen Fellow, turns 30 today. Happy birthday!

Reminder

Daylight-saving time begins Sunday

It's time to spring forward! Daylight-saving time begins this weekend. Don't forget to set your clocks ahead one hour Saturday night before going to bed. The shift to daylight-saving time also serves as a reminder to install new batteries in warning devices such as smoke detectors and hazard warning radios.

Announcements