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	Thursday, Nov. 3, 2011

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Have a safe day!

Thursday, Nov. 3
2:30 p.m.
Theoretical Physics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Joachim Brod, University of Cincinnati
Title: Standard Model Prediction of ԑ_K at NNLO
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Accelerator Physics and Technology Seminar - One West
Speaker: Alex Melnitchouk, University of Mississippi
Title: Silicon Detectors at DZero

Friday, Nov. 4
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Joint Experimental-Theoretical Physics Seminar - One West
Speaker: Ken Bloom, University of Nebraska, Lincoln
Title: In Search of the Standard Model at CMS

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a weekly calendar with links to additional information.

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Wilson Hall Cafe

Thursday, Nov. 3

- Breakfast: Apple sticks
- Minnesota wild rice w/ chicken
- Tuna melt on nine grain
- Smart cuisine: Italian meatloaf
- Chicken casserole
- Buffalo crispy chicken wrap
- Assorted sliced pizza
- Smart cuisine: Chicken pecan salad

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Friday, Nov. 4
Dinner
Closed

Wednesday, Nov. 9
Lunch
- Northern Italian lasagna
- Caesar salad
- Italian cream cake

Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

SeaQuest dives into a mysterious sea of particles

Scientists hope the SeaQuest detector will begin taking data in a couple of weeks. Photo: Reidar Hahn

Physicists at Fermilab will soon commission a new experiment that will slam protons into various targets to reveal the mysterious subnuclear interactions in the sea of particles within the proton. The SeaQuest experiment, conceived by a team of nuclear and particle physicists, aims to provide a new understanding of nucleon-nucleon interaction. With results from this experiment, they could possibly replace the current model of nuclear force with a new fundamental theory.

Physicists will examine the particles released from collisions of protons with liquid hydrogen and deuterium, as well as solid carbon and iron. New insights into the structure of the nucleon, which is an all-encompassing name for protons and neutrons, and the surrounding matter will answer questions about how the strong force interacts with the sea of quarks and gluons inside each nucleon. In particular, the scientists hope to learn more about the imbalance in the types of quarks discovered in a precursor experiment to SeaQuest: the decade-old NuSea experiment.

SeaQuest is housed in Fermilab’s NM4 building, located along the proton beamline in the fixed-target area. Engineering physicist Michael Geelhoed and his colleagues from the Accelerator Division are in the process of reestablishing the beamline that previously delivered protons to the KTeV experiment. A step down from the 800-GeV interactions studied by NuSea, SeaQuest will operate at a beam energy of 120 GeV. A lower energy level at a slower pace significantly increases the opportunity for scientists to see rarer processes.

—Brad Hooker

Special Announcement

Attention on-site prescription safety glasses customers

Due to scheduled construction in the WH ground floor Training Room, ES&H wishes to inform you that the on-site prescription safety glasses technician will not be here Wednesday, Nov. 9. We expect to resume service on Nov. 16.

From Quantum Diaries

Can neutrino experiments predict earthquakes?

The March earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Japan killed 20,352 people. Finding ways to reduce the death toll from such natural disasters has captured the interest of scientists in many fields.

There exists several ways to predict an earthquake such as the detection of radon gas emission or electromagnetic changes. However short-term predictions (hours todays) are, in general, unlikely.

At least for now.

Neutrino physics aims to answer some fundamental questions in physics, such as neutrino mass, and matter-antimatter asymmetry, but some think it could also answer fundamental questions about the Earth’s most volatile activities.

Using giant neutrino detectors physicists may be able to predict earthquakes and/or volcano eruptions by detecting geoneutrinos.

Geoneutrinos were first found by the Kamioka Liquid-scintillator Anti-Neutrino Detector (KamLAND) experiment in 2005 and recently by the Borexino Collaboration at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory of the Italian Institute of Nuclear Physics. Geoneutrinos are electron antineutrinos – the antimatter counterparts of electron neutrinos. Geoneutrinos are produced by the radioactive decay of uranium, thorium and potassium in Earth’s crust and mantle.

In the News

LHC to probe early universe in best detail yet

From New Scientist, Nov. 1, 2011

The Large Hadron Collider will spend four weeks probing the conditions of the early universe in better detail than ever before, as it takes a break from the hunt for the Higgs boson.

The LHC's main activity for 2011, colliding pairs of protons, came to an end as scheduled on 30 October. The experiment has now produced about 6 inverse femtobarns of collision data, about three times the total used in the last major analysis searching for the Higgs boson, thought to endow other particles with mass, which was reported in August.

As researchers start analysing the new data, the LHC is switching to colliding lead ions for four weeks, starting on 5 November. These collisions produce pockets of very dense and hot matter, recreating the conditions in the first moments after the big bang.

Lead ion collisions at the LHC last year showed hints of producing a quark-gluon plasma, an exotic state of matter in which quarks – normally bound in pairs or triplets – are able to wander freely. The phenomenon has been observed previously at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in Brookhaven, New York, but the LHC's higher-energy collisions allows higher temperatures to be obtained.

Result of the Week

Top quark telescope looks for something new

DZero physicists use the behavior of the single top quark like a telescope to look for new physics beyond the Standard Model.

Cranking up the energy of colliding particles isn’t the only way to search for new physics. The Standard Model predicts very specific behavior from each particle that we’ve observed and strictly defines the ways those particles interact. Precision tests of that behavior allow us to probe for physics beyond the Standard Model.

In that search, top quarks are particularly interesting to study because their high mass may imply they have a special role in new physics. The rare production of single top quarks, which happens about half as often as top quark pairs are made, presents a unique opportunity for studies that might help us see new physics.

At the Tevatron, there are two major ways of producing a single top quark. Scientists at DZero recently analyzed the rate of production in both of these channels independently. Certain models of new physics would affect one production channel more than the other, so determining the independent rates of the channels puts constraints on these new models while simultaneously testing the prediction of the Standard Model. In the end, this analysis has produced the most precise measurement of the larger single top quark production channel. The scientists also found a ratio of production rates that is consistent with the Standard Model.

Another recent analysis at DZero focuses on the way top quarks interact with W bosons. In nature, particle interactions can be different depending on the alignment of the intrinsic spins of the particles involved. We call such a preference handedness. The Standard Model predicts that W bosons only interact in a left-handed manner, which would lead to specific behavior in single top quark decay. DZero physicists tested whether single top quark decays were consistent with an exclusively left-handed W boson or if there were signs of either right-handed or more complicated couplings. Ultimately, they found that single top quark decays were consistent with the Standard Model and produced the most stringent constraints on anomalous couplings to date.

—Mike Cooke

These physicists, as part of the larger single top quark group at DZero, made major contributions to these analyses.

After nearly three years of authoring DZero’s Result of the Week articles, Don Lincoln (left) stepped down and Mike Cooke (right) took on the role.

Accelerator Update

Oct. 31 - Nov. 2

- Main Injector personnel conducted a Recycler closed orbit study
- Neutron Therapy Facility personnel treated patients
- FTBF experiment T-1015 completed its run
- Main Injector personnel conducted Muon g-2 studies

Read the Current Accelerator Update
Read the Early Bird Report
View the Tevatron Luminosity Charts

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