Thursday, Aug. 1, 2013
spacer
Search
spacer
Calendar

Have a safe day!

Thursday, Aug. 1

2:30 p.m.
Theoretical Physics Seminar (NOTE LOCATION) - WH3NE
Speaker: Arsham Farzinnia, Tsinghua University
Title: Hadron Collider Production of Massive Color-Octet Vector Bosons at Next-to-Leading Order

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

Friday, Aug. 2

10:30 a.m.
Research Techniques Seminar (NOTE LOCATION) - One West
Speaker: Takaki Hatsui, RIKEN Spring-8 Center
Title: SOI Pixel Sensor Process: Lessons Learned from the Development of SOPHIAS, a Sensor for X-Ray Free-Electron Laser Experiments

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

THERE WILL BE NO JOINT EXPERIMENTAL-THEORETICAL PHYSICS SEMINAR THIS WEEK

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

Ongoing and upcoming conferences at Fermilab

Campaigns

Take Five

Weather
Weather Mostly sunny
80°/61°

Extended forecast
Weather at Fermilab

Current Security Status

Secon Level 3

Current Flag Status

Flags at full staff

Wilson Hall Cafe

Thursday, Aug. 1

- Breakfast: Canadian bacon, egg and cheese Texas toast
- Breakfast: Mexican omelet
- Steak soft tacos
- Smart cuisine: braised beef with vegetables
- Stuffed boneless pork chops
- Grilled-vegetable sandwich
- Sweet and sour chicken
- Beef barley soup
- Chef's choice soup
- Assorted pizza by the slice

Wilson Hall Cafe menu

Chez Leon

Friday, Aug. 2
Dinner
Closed

Wednesday, Aug. 7
Lunch
- Chicken vindaloo
- Plum tart with goat cheese and walnut-thyme streusel

Chez Leon menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

Archives

Fermilab Today

Director's Corner

Frontier Science Result

Physics in a Nutshell

Tip of the Week

User University Profiles

Related content

Info

Fermilab Today
is online at:
www.fnal.gov/today/

Send comments and suggestions to:
today@fnal.gov

Visit the Fermilab
home page

Unsubscribe from Fermilab Today

Feature

ASTA generates broad interest at users' meeting

Fermilab Accelerator Division's Jinhao Ruan, ASTA laser expert, presents results of the first beam from the ASTA photoinjector. Photo: Margie Bruce, APC

A crowd of researchers from government labs, academia and industry gathered in Wilson Hall for two days last week for the first-ever users' meeting for the Advanced Superconducting Test Accelerator, which produced its first electrons in late June. The primary goal of ASTA is to provide a home for accelerator R&D, specifically in the areas of superconducting radio-frequency technology, advanced beam dynamics and accelerator applications.

Eighty-four users attended the meeting, two-thirds of whom were from institutions outside of Fermilab. Vladimir Shiltsev, ASTA's interim program director and head of Fermilab's Accelerator Physics Center, said this number exceeded his expectations and that four new experimental proposals arose out of the meeting, on top of 24 that were already under consideration.

Representatives of each proposal were given 15 to 30 minutes to present their ideas for experiments. Users also took a tour of the facility and attended an hour-long talk by Eric Colby, an accelerator physicist currently working at the Department of Energy Office of High Energy Physics.

"We were really impressed by the breadth of the proposals, and people were interested in many aspects of the facility," Shiltsev said. "The users seemed really impressed at how big and modern the facility is. So it really showed the scale of investment that DOE already has put into ASTA."

ASTA will have a low-energy test beam and multiple high-energy test beams, in addition to an electron and proton storage ring called IOTA, all of which will allow for multiple experimental setups to operate in parallel.

Alex Murokh, chief technology officer of Radiabeam Technologies, had a two-fold interest in attending the meeting: Radiabeam is developing beamline instrumentation hardware for the facility, and he also has research projects in mind that could use the facility.

Colby's talk addressed a proposed Accelerator R&D Stewardship program within DOE that would direct funding toward connecting those who have particle accelerators and those who could use them. He stressed that the program is still yet to be approved, but that it would be important for the field of high-energy physics in an environment where multiple areas of basic research are competing for the same funds.

"ASTA can play a key role in some of the areas identified in the program, especially in discovery science," Colby said. "I think there are some very interesting application challenges out there, and there is interesting accelerator science that can be done to address them." He added that accelerator laboratories need to form relationships with users in industry in order to develop an effective stewardship program.

If the initial users' meeting is any indication, ASTA is already contributing to solving that challenge. Shiltsev pointed to a group from the University of Maryland who came with their own proposals and found other groups with projects to which they could contribute as an example of the new collaborations that were formed there.

"We were very pleased to see junior researchers and younger students," he said. "I think it shows just how relevant the facility is. The audience looked young and energetic, and it was a great sight for us."

Laura Dattaro

Special Announcement

Batavia Road entrance closed through Aug. 2

Because of weather delays, the closure of the Batavia Road entrance will be extended through Friday, Aug. 2, to accommodate repairs to the Canadian National Railroad track crossing and to allow for repaving on Batavia Road between Eola and the railroad tracks. The entrance will reopen on Saturday, Aug. 3, at 6:30 a.m. Vehicles entering or exiting the site should use the Pine Street entrance during this time.

In the News

Super telescope captures sensational image of Andromeda galaxy

From CNET, July 31, 2013

Astronomers have captured a sensational high-resolution image of the Andromeda galaxy located 2.5 million light years (14,696,563,432,959,020,000 miles) from Earth. No illustration, no mock-up—it's the real deal, and it's breathtaking.

Read more

In the News

What is the lifetime of a photon?

From Physics World, July 24, 2013

The photon—the quantum of light or other electromagnetic radiation—is normally considered to have zero mass. But some theories allow photons to have a small rest mass and one consequence of that would be that photons could then decay into lighter elementary particles. So if such a decay were possible, what are the limits on the lifetime of a photon? That is the question asked by a physicist in Germany, who has calculated the lower limit for the lifetime of the photon to be three years in the photon's frame of reference. This translates to about one billion billion (1018) years in our frame of reference.

Read more

Frontier Science Result: DZero

A window to new physics from top quark studies?

Precision measurements of top quark behavior could lead to a glimpse of new physics.

The first sign of new physics may not be the direct observation of a new particle, but a glimpse of something new through its effect on known particles. Certain models of new physics would alter the behavior of top quark pair production from what the Standard Model predicts, which opens a window to look for new physics through precision studies of top quarks. Calculations based on the Standard Model predict a slight preference for the top quark to be produced in the direction of the proton beam, while the antitop quark will rather follow the antiproton beam at the Tevatron. Certain models of new physics would dramatically enhance these behaviors. Previous studies by CDF and DZero indicated deviations between the Standard Model predictions and the data, but no definitive evidence for new physics has yet been observed. Two new results from DZero take another look through this window to new physics.

A top quark nearly always decays into a W boson and a bottom quark. The new analyses from DZero focus on top quark pair events where one or two W bosons decay into leptons, including either an electron or a muon in addition to a neutrino. In events with one charged lepton, the analyzers build a special discriminant out of a number of variables that characterize the event to separate top quark pair events from background while simultaneously measuring the top quark direction preference. In events with two charged leptons, two measurements are considered to extract the top quark behavior: the angle from the proton beam to each lepton, adjusted for their charge sign, and the angle between the positive and negatively charged leptons with respect to the proton beam.

After examining the data, the analyzers find that these new measurements of top quark direction preference are consistent with the Standard Model prediction. While this peek through the top quark window does not show us new physics, the precision measurement of top quark behavior is still being performed at the Tevatron and may yet give us a glimpse of something new.

Mike Cooke

These physicists made major contributions to this analysis.
Analyses that involve electrons, like the result above, rely on the crucial efforts of the electron identification group, who optimize and characterize the performance of algorithms that find electrons based on activity in the DZero detector.
Photo of the Day

AD Mechanical Support Department picnic

The Accelerator Division's Mechanical Support Department held their annual picnic last week. Photo: Mike McGee, AD
Announcements

Today's New Announcements

Weight Management Support Group meeting today

International folk dancing continues in Ramsey Auditorium Thursday evenings for summer

Batavia Road entrance closed through Aug. 2

Asphalt work on Batavia Rd. from Eola to east gate through Aug. 1 or 2

C2ST presents The Physics of Baseball - Aug. 2

Fermilab Heartland Blood Drive - Aug. 12 and 13

UChicago Tuition Remission program deadline - Aug. 22

URA Visiting Scholars program deadline - Aug. 26

Same-sex couples now eligible for immigration benefits

Outdoor soccer at the Village

Chicago Fire discount tickets

Fermilab discount at Don's Auto Ade Inc.

Bristol Renaissance Faire discount