Fermilab Today

	Friday, March 25, 2011

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Have a safe day!

Friday, March 25
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Joint Experimental-Theoretical Physics Seminar - Auditorium
Speakers: Jeff Berryhill, Fermilab
Title: Electroweak and Top Measurements from CMS

Monday, March 28
2:30 p.m.
Particle Astrophysics Seminar - One West
Speaker: Shunsaku Horiuchi, Ohio State University
Title: Peering Into Supernovae with Neutrinos and Gamma Rays
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
All Experimenters' Meeting - Curia II
Special Topics: Centrifugal Barrel Polishing of SC rf Cavities; COUPP-2L at SNOLAB; NuMI Target Updates; Soudan Mine Shaft Fire and Follow-On

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

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Secon Level 3

Wilson Hall Cafe

Friday, March 25

- Breakfast: Chorizo burrito
- Chunky vegetable soup with orzo
- Buffalo chicken wings
- Cajun breaded catfish
- *Teriyaki pork stir-fry
- Honey mustard ham and swiss panini
- Assorted sliced pizza
- *Carved turkey

*carb-restricted alternative

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Friday, March 25
Dinner
Guest Chef: William Wester
- Roasted butternut squash salad w/artisan goat cheese
- Pan-seared duck breast w/fig sauce
- Rice pilaf featuring Ojibwe wild rice
- Purple asparagus and French-style green beans w/toasted almonds
- Vegan chocolate cake wtih warm chocolate ganache and fresh berries

Wednesday, March 30
Lunch
- Vietnamese caramelized pork and rice
- Noodle salad
- Banana cake

Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

Recycler achieves new stashing record

The red arrow in the plot above points to a new record number of antiprotons, 608 x10¹⁰, stored in the Recycler as of March 22, 2011.

A group of employees from Fermilab’s Accelerator Division took advantage of unexpected downtime in the accelerator complex this week after a lightning strike damaged a magnet. Fermilab’s Main Injector and Recycler Department, led by Ioannis Kourbannis, used part of the two week shut down to test the Recycler’s storage capability.

Although the Tevatron was down, the Recycler, the storage ring that holds antiprotons, continued to accumulate the particles. When it became clear that it would take some time to fix the magnet, Cons Gattuso, run coordinator, decided to see whether the Recycler could hold a larger than usual number of antiprotons.

The transfers were stopped at the peak number of 608 x10¹⁰, which surpassed the previous record of 540 x10¹⁰ set on March 18, 2010.

Normally, explained Sasha Shemyakin, Recycler Department group leader, the group would stop transferring antiprotons at about 500 x10¹⁰ out of fear that the beam would become unstable or the beam’s lifetime would degrade.

“We were delighted to see that the lifetime stabilized at the level of 650 hours, which is good for normal operation,” Shemyakin said. “After making several measurements to determine the lifetime in various conditions and to test the procedure of preparing the antiprotons for extraction, we are pretty confident that the Recycler can effectively handle 600 x10¹⁰ antiprotons.”

The new record was made possible through the optimization of the Recycler’s performance and improvements in electron cooling. The improvements allowed the Recycler to lose less beam, and Shemyakin said, gave them the idea that boosting the number of antiprotons might be possible.

“The efforts of the entire Accelerator Division to increase the antiproton production led to this record,” Shemyakin said.

-- Rhianna Wisniewski

Special Announcement

Dramatic reading of “Copenhagen” - April 8

Wheaton Drama to give dramatic reading of “Copenhagen” - April 8

At 8 p.m. on Friday, April 8, in One West, Wheaton Drama will perform a reading of “Copenhagen,” a play about physics and physicists, quantum mechanics and atomic weapons. The play, written by Michael Frayn, tells the story of Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg who met in 1941 when Heisenberg was in Nazi Germany and Bohr (who was Jewish) was in Nazi-occupied Denmark. Was Heisenberg trying to build an atom bomb for Hitler? Why did he visit Bohr?

Wheaton Drama is a volunteer community theater group that has provided live theater for the Chicago suburbs since 1941. Tickets are limited (One West has only 160 seats) and are only $7. Order tickets through the Box Office or by calling (630)840-2787.

In the News

Hultgren tours, touts Fermilab

From The Beacon News, March 24, 2011

Congressman Randy Hultgren saw up close how Fermilab scientists and engineers are developing and testing superconducting radio-frequency cavities for the next generation of particle accelerators.

On Wednesday, Hultgren toured the lab’s Industrial Center Building where components of new accelerator technology considered crucial to the future of particle physics are assembled.

Hultgren, a Winfield Township Republican representing the 14th Congressional District, said he has always considered Fermilab a “jewel” in the realm of new scientific discovery and the creation of jobs.

But he also said in these challenging economic times it will require nothing less than a fight to protect and increase federal funding to keep Fermilab strong.

CMS Result

A search for even heavier light

A photon, a particle of light, has no mass. A Z boson has most of the same properties as a photon, but it is very massive. Even heavier photon-like particles could exist, but a new result from CMS sets the lower limit of their mass to at least 12.5 times heavier than Z bosons.

You may have heard that when matter and antimatter collide, they annihilate into pure energy. That is, when a negatively charged electron encounters its positively charged twin, the positron, the two form a new particle with no charge and twice the energy. The reverse is true as well: a particle of pure energy can decay into an electron and a positron, or a muon and an antimuon, or any other pair of opposites. The lightest particle of pure energy is the photon - light itself - but heavier variants have been discovered in colliders. The heaviest is the Z boson. There are many reasons to believe that more are waiting to be found.

CMS recently presented results on a search for a new particle, dubbed Z’ (pronounced Z prime), which would decay into an electron and a positron or a muon and an antimuon. If any such particle exists, it would have to be more than twelve and a half times heavier than the Z boson.

Though CMS physicists were searching for a deceptively simple signal - two oppositely charged particles - this result is an impressive demonstration of the precision of the CMS detector. When a super-heavy Z’ decays, its mass becomes the energy of motion of the two charged particles, making them the fastest electrons and muons ever produced in a laboratory. As these electrons and muons zip through the detectors, it is difficult to get a precise measurement of their energy. But despite the difficulties, the CMS detector performed beautifully, yielding the most definitive test to date.

There are as many ways to interpret this result as there are theories that predict new particles of pure energy. Some are related to the unification of all the forces in the Standard Model, others are inspired by superstrings. Still others are related to warped extra dimensions. As the size of the LHC dataset and collision energy increase, so will sensitivity to even heavier light. The next result could be a discovery - we are in uncharted territory.

-- Jim Pivarski

These early-career physicists contributed to the search for Z’, which required input from physicists from across the globe.

Small misalignments of the muon detectors can result in large mismeasurements of muon energy. This group of U.S. physicists helped to ensure that the positions of the muon detectors were precisely known.

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