Wednesday, Aug. 29, 2012
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Wednesday, Aug. 29

3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over

THERE WILL BE NO FERMILAB COLLOQUIUM THIS WEEK

Thursday, Aug. 30

1 p.m.
Computing Techniques Seminar - Racetrack (WH7XO)
Speaker: Qiming Lu, Fermilab
Title: Multi-core Optimizations for Synergia2

2:30 p.m.
Theoretical Physics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Marco Zaro, Université Catholique de Louvain
Title: NLO Phenomenology with Madgraph

3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over

THERE WILL BE NO ACCELERATOR PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR TODAY

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Wilson Hall Cafe

Wednesday, Aug. 29

- Breakfast: breakfast casserole
- Old El Paso chicken lime
- Chicken cordon bleu sandwich
- Traditional turkey dinner
- Smart cuisine: beef bourguignon
- Turkey bacon Swiss panini
- Meat lovers' calzone
- Blackened chicken alfredo

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Friday, Aug. 31
Dinner
Closed

Wednesday, Sept. 5
Lunch
Unavailable

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From symmetry breaking

Pierre Auger Observatory tests particle knowledge beyond reach of LHC

The Pierre Auger Observatory uses 1600 of these tanks in their 3000 square kilometer particle detector array. Photo: Pierre Auger Observatory

Before accelerator physicists can declare the discovery of a Higgs boson or any other new addition to the particle zoo, they need to prove they understand the particles they're colliding.

Scientists at the Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory in Argentina recently tested the theory that governs the behavior of protons, the particles that collide in the Large Hadron Collider. They did it at energies much higher than manmade accelerators can reach.

Good news: The theory checks out.

On the subject of understanding protons, "Auger picks up where the LHC leaves off," said Fermilab physicist Eun-Joo Ahn. Ahn presented the result, which was published this month in Physical Review Letters, at a seminar on Aug. 24 at Fermilab.

At the LHC, scientists steer two beams of protons around a ring on a collision course. When two protons interact, the energy in the collision converts into mass, briefly popping into existence particles that weren't present before the proton crash. Those particles then decay.

In order for scientists to predict the outcome of these collisions, they need to understand quantum chromodynamics, or QCD, the theory of interactions between the quarks and gluons that make up a proton.

"QCD normalizes the data that will tell us if we expect to observe 10 or 10 million of a particle," said Fermilab physicist Brendan Casey, a member of the Muon g-2 experiment. "If we expect 10 Higgs bosons and see 10 million of a new particle instead, we know it's not the Higgs."

Read more

Kathryn Jepsen

University Profile

Louisiana Tech University

NAME:
Louisiana Tech University

HOME TOWN:
Ruston, La.

MASCOT:
Bulldog

SCHOOL COLORS:
Red and blue

COLLABORATING AT FERMILAB SINCE:
1998

WORLDWIDE PARTICLE PHYSICS COLLABORATIONS:
ATLAS (CERN), DZero

NUMBER OF SCIENTISTS AND STUDENTS INVOLVED:
Three faculty, two postdocs and seven graduate students

PARTICLE PHYSICS RESEARCH FOCUS:
Top quark pair cross section, (multi-)jet production, searches for extra spatial dimensions and quark compositeness, determinations of the strong coupling constant.

WHAT SETS PARTICLE PHYSICS AT LOUISIANA TECH APART?
The Louisiana Tech group has been a pioneer in grid computing and has contributed significant Monte Carlo production for the DZero experiment. We are making important contributions to jet physics at the Tevatron and at the LHC, enabling us to make comprehensive studies of the energy dependence of fundamental observables. Our group has made determinations of the strong coupling constant, which are the most precise such results from a hadron collider and which have the highest reach in momentum transfer. We play an important role in the development and maintenance of the ATLAS trigger.

FUNDING AGENCIES:
DOE

View all university profiles.

In the News

Lessons learned by leading OPERA man

From Physics World, Aug. 28, 2012

Antonio Ereditato is the former spokesperson of the OPERA neutrino experiment based in Italy. In this recorded interview Ereditato talks to Physics World journalist James Dacey about the events that surrounded one of last year's biggest science news stories – the neutrinos that for a while appeared to defy Einstein by travelling faster than the speed of light.

Read more
In the News

U.S. colliders jostle for funds

From Nature News, Aug. 28, 2012

When the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland seized the world record for the highest-energy collisions in 2010, it also sealed the fate of the leading US particle collider. The Tevatron, at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, was closed the following year to save money.

Now, physicists at another US physics facility, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, are trying to avoid a similar end. On 13 August, researchers at the ALICE heavy-ion experiment at the LHC at CERN, Europe's particle-physics lab near Geneva, announced that they had created the hottest-ever man-made plasma of quarks and gluons. This eclipsed the record temperature achieved at RHIC two years earlier by 38 percent, and raised uncomfortable questions about RHIC's future.

Read more
Director's Corner

This week's HEPAP meeting

Fermilab Director
Pier Oddone

During the last two days, I attended the meeting of the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel in Washington, DC. This was the first HEPAP meeting after the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment was reconfigured to comply with DOE's financial guidelines. The discovery by the Daya Bay reactor experiment of a large theta-13 parameter in neutrino mixing, just a few days before the previous HEPAP meeting in March, has opened the gate for important future advances in neutrino physics and removed the major risk for LBNE.

The afternoon of the first day was devoted entirely to the topic of LBNE. Stephen Parke began the discussion with a talk on the physics of neutrinos, and Deputy Director Young-Kee Kim followed with a comprehensive report on the effort she led to reconfigure LBNE into a phased program. She was followed by Milind Diwan, co-spokesperson for LBNE, who described the enormous progress that the collaboration has achieved in the last few years. The collaboration now comprises some 59 institutions and more than 340 collaborators, including both national and international participants.

The members of HEPAP asked many questions and made generally supportive comments on the reconfigured experiment. The proposed configuration for the first phase of LBNE that fits DOE financial guidelines includes a 10-kiloton liquid-argon detector on the surface at Homestake. Such a detector would be adequate for neutrino physics using the Fermilab beam, but would miss potentially important physics in two areas: the study of neutrinos from supernovae collapses and proton decay. Both of these studies require a detector underground at sufficient depth to reduce backgrounds. The second phase of the experiment would place a detector underground at Homestake. Many of the HEPAP members conveyed the desirability to place the far detector underground from the beginning. They urged that the laboratory, the collaboration and the DOE work together to gather the additional resources that would make it possible to place the detector underground in the first phase. LBNE's CD-1 review is planned for the fall, and we will seek the additional resources between CD-1 and CD-2.

The afternoon session concluded with remarks by Bill Brinkman, director of the Office of Science, who stated that he would like to see the experiment done and would try to move it forward. He also warned us that we should be conscious of the difficulties of constructing a large project like LBNE in view of the priorities set by the administration, which are primarily driven by climate change.

This was also the first meeting of HEPAP after the discovery of the Higgs-like particle at the LHC. We heard talks by scientists from ATLAS and CMS, who provided us with the latest available results, which are enormously impressive. Beyond the discovery of the Higgs-like particle, there is tremendous excitement in understanding the various decay properties and measuring the spin of the observed particle.

Rocky Kolb presented an important report from a committee convened to investigate the opportunities for DOE to contribute to the study of dark energy. One opportunity it identified is a spectroscopic probe that would significantly improve the study of dark energy and that could be accommodated in the time between the start of the Dark Energy Survey, which is close to taking data, and the completion of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope in the early 2020s. In the U.S. there are at least two projects contending to build a spectroscopic probe. DOE will write a mission need without selecting an experiment at this time, and will proceed to analyze the possibilities and organizational arrangements.

The meeting presentations are available on the HEPAP website.

Safety Update

ES&H weekly report, Aug. 28

This week's safety report, compiled by the Fermilab ES&H section, contains six incidents.

An employee suffered a sprained foot while moving a bottle of deionized water. He received first-aid treatment. Medical treatment and lost time make this case a DART.

An employee aggravated a pre-existing back injury while moving a cart. Additional medical treatment and lost days will accrue against the first report of injury.

An employee suffered a minor avulsion on his finger while moving a relay rack. He received first-aid treatment.

Several fiberglass slivers came off in an employee's hand while he was holding a fiberglass pole. He received first-aid treatment.

An employee suffered a minor puncture wound while using a scribe tool. She received first-aid treatment.

An employee suffered a minor laceration when his hand struck the edge of a folder. He received first-aid treatment.

Find the full report here.
Announcements

Today's New Announcements

Walk 2 Run - begins Sept. 6

Main Control Room phone outage - today

Understanding Fee Disclosure Statements - today

Scottish country dancing in Ramsey Auditorium - through Aug. 31

International Folk Dancing in Ramsey Auditorium - through August

Free Weight Management class - begins Sept. 6

Fermilab Arts & Lecture Series: Epigenetics - Sept. 7

Fermilab Arts & Lecture Series: Broadway's Next H!T Musical - Sept. 22

Word 2010 classes scheduled

Excel 2010 classes scheduled

Access 2010 classes scheduled

Additional professional development courses

Bowlers wanted for 2012/2013 season

Outdoor soccer - Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6 p.m.

Fermilab employee discounts

Atrium work updates