ROC helps staff longest-ever CMS cosmic run

Aron Soha, standing in Fermilab's Remote Operations Center, is joined by videolink with Fermilab's Kaori Maeshima and DESY's Andreas Meyer in CERN's CMS control room.

Crews taking shifts at Fermilab's Remote Operations Center helped scientists at CERN complete the longest-lasting cosmic run of the CMS detector to date.

Scientists staffing the ROC work in tandem with CMS crews thousands of miles away at CERN. Fermilab crews filled shifts from 8:30 a.m. to midnight from July 23 to Aug. 31, with the exception of a shift during a planned power outage, said Fermilab's Aron Soha, who is responsible for day-to-day functions at the ROC.

"Essentially we've taken shifts except when the lights were out," Soha said.

Even when the LHC is not running, cosmic rays that interact with the CMS detector can help scientists fine tune it, said Kaori Maeshima, U.S. CMS Remote Operations Coordinator.

CMS operators surpassed one goal by recording 320 million cosmic events with full magnetic field and met their goal of 80 percent running efficiency.

"We were trying to get ready to take collision data," Maeshima said. "We have to be in sync when the beam collides."

For example, misaligned data streams from subsystems could produce inaccurate results, so experts working at the ROC, DESY's remote operations center and at CERN use cosmic data to monitor detector timing.

CMS benefits from remote centers because shift takers can analyze data without worrying about minute-by-minute detector operations, said Andreas Meyer, CMS data quality monitoring coordinator and a staff physicist at DESY.

"At the moment at Fermilab and DESY, physicists can take more time to inspect the data and really make sure all aspects of the data are correct," Meyer said.

Fermilab and DESY physicists continue working to increase the usefulness of remote operations and improve central CMS data taking, even in early stages of the experiment. This includes developing monitoring tools, improving documentation and pioneering remote shift participation.

—Chris Knight

University of Arizona

From left: Fermilab collaborators Elliott Cheu, Erich Varnes, Joel Steinberg, Dan Tompkins, John Rutherfoord and Ken Johns.

Wilma and Wilbur Wildcat

NAME:
The University of Arizona

HOME TOWN: Tucson, AZ

MASCOT:
Wilma and Wilbur Wildcat

SCHOOL COLORS:
Cardinal red and navy blue

PARTICLE PHYSICS COLLABORATIONS:
DZero and ATLAS

EXPERIMENTS AT FERMILAB:
E-800, KTeV and DZero

SCIENTISTS AND STUDENTS AT FERMILAB:
Two faculty and one post doctorate are involved in Fermilab experiments. In the past, we had four faculty members, four post doctorate students, five graduate students and many undergraduates working on Fermilab experiments.

COLLABORATING AT FERMILAB SINCE:
1970s, when Mike Shupe and John Rutherfoord first came to the University of Arizona.

MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS:
Collaborators researched the direct CP violation in kaon decays and worked on the L2 cluster trigger for KTeV. We have participated in the precision measurement of the Omega minus magnetic moment and been the co-spokesperson for E-800. On the DZero experiment we helped with construction of the L1 muon trigger for Run II of DZero, the L1 Cal-Track trigger for run II, and the design of the global monitoring software. Collaborators also participated in the B0 → mu+ mu- search on DZero and in the measurement of the top quark mass. We helped in the production cross section and decay properties (W helicity) for Run II of DZero and co-led the muon upgrade for Run II of DZero. Group members also served as the algorithms and computing coordinator for DZero.

PARTICLE PHYSICS RESEARCH FOCUS:
CP violation and SUSY, top quark physics.

WHAT SETS PARTICLE PHYSICS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA APART?
The ability to make big contributions to the design, operation and analysis of an experiment with relatively few people.

FUNDING AGENCY:
Department of Energy

FAVORITE NATIONAL LABORATORY:
Fermilab

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Life in physics and the crucial sense of wonder

From Cern Courier, Sept. 30, 2009

As a grad student at Columbia around 1950, I had the rare opportunity of meeting Albert Einstein. We were instructed to sit on a bench that would intersect Einstein's path to lunch at his Princeton home. A fellow student and I sprang up when Einstein came by, accompanied by his assistant who asked if he would like to meet some students.

"Yah," the professor said and addressed my colleague, "Vot are you studying?"

"I'm doing a thesis on quantum theory."

"Ach!" said Einstein, "A vaste of time!" He turned to me: "And vot are you doing?"

I was more confident: "I'm studying experimentally the properties of pions."

"Pions, pions! Ach, vee don't understand de electron! Vy bother mit pions? Vell, good luck boys!"

So, in less than 30 seconds, the Great Physicist had demolished two of the brightest - and best-looking - young physics students. But we were on cloud nine. We had met the greatest scientist who ever lived!

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