Fermilab

Physics at Fermilab
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Fermilab's mission is the goal of high-energy physics: to learn what the universe is made of and how it works. Fermilab builds and operates the facilities that high-energy physicists need to do forefront research, and develops new accelerator technology for the experiments of the future.

Fermilab is the largest U.S. laboratory for research in high-energy physics and is second only to CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, in the world. About 2,500 scientific users, scientists from universities and laboratories throughout the U.S. and around the world, use Fermilab for their research.

The primary instruments for high-energy physics are accelerators, especially colliders, in which counter-rotating beams of particles are brought into collision. The highest-energy collider in the U.S. is the Fermilab Tevatron. Because of the nature of their experiments, high-energy physicists must do their research in collaboration with large laboratories like Fermilab. Since it is an essential part of the academic research enterprise, Fermilab is operated by Universities Research Association, a consortium of 90 research universities.

• Accelerators – High-energy instruments to reveal a new world

• Collider Experiments – Discovery at the energy frontier

• Neutrino physics – Do these ghost-like particles have mass?

• Technology – Innovative tools to study matter, space and time

• Computing – Managing and analyzing vast amounts of data

• Theory – Powerful ideas point to new particles, new forces, hidden dimensions

• Astrophysics – From the smallest to the largest scales

• Discoveries at Fermilab – Unlocking nature's deepest secrets