Monday, Sept. 16, 2013
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Have a safe day!

Monday, Sept. 16

2:30 p.m.
Particle Astrophysics Seminar - WH6W
Speaker: Ritoban Basu-Thakur, University of Illinois
Title: CDMSlits: A Search for Light Wimps

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

4 p.m.
All Experimenters' Meeting - Curia II

Tuesday, Sept. 17

11 a.m.
Academic Lecture Series - Curia II
Speaker: Prateek Agrawal, Fermilab
Title: (g-2) in QED and Beyond

2:30 p.m.
Theoretical Physics Seminar (NOTE DATE) - Curia II
Speaker: Leo Stodolsky, MPI Munich
Title: Realistic Possibility of Observing Cascade Mixing

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

4 p.m.
Accelerator Physics and Technology Seminar - One West
Speaker: Grigory Kazakevich, Fermilab
Title: Application of Magnetrons for Intensity Frontier Superconducting Linac

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Wilson Hall Cafe

Monday, Sept. 16

- Breakfast: blueberry pancakes
- Breakfast: sausage, egg and cheese croissant
- Sloppy joe
- Smart cuisine: pasta primavera
- Pecan-crusted chicken breast
- Oven-roasted vegetable wrap
- Shrimp and crab scampi
- Vegetarian potato leek soup
- Texas-style chili

Wilson Hall Cafe menu

Chez Leon

Wednesday, Sept. 18
Lunch
- Southern-style barbecue ribs
- Black-eyed pea salad
- Honey cornbread muffins
- Peach cobbler

Friday, Sept. 20
Dinner
Closed

Saturday, Sept. 21
- Vol-au-vents with mushroom duxelle
- Brandy-braised pork tenderloin
- Cauliflower gratin
- Green bean amandine
- Apple walnut cake with spiced cream

Chez Leon menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

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Feature

First beam circulates in the Recycler

Fermilab's reconfigured accelerator complex now allows operators to send proton beam from the Booster into the Recycler for slip stacking and then transfer the beam from the Recycler into the Main Injector for final acceleration and production of neutrinos for the MINERvA, MINOS and NOvA experiments. Image: Fermilab

On Friday, Fermilab took another significant step toward a fully operational accelerator complex: first beam through the revamped Recycler storage ring since the accelerator complex shut down in April 2012.

Now that beam has circulated through the Recycler, the Accelerator Division will begin making adjustments, great and small, to the Recycler and learn how the proton beam responds.

"Having beam means we can start to parameterize the machine, get going," said Dave Capista, deputy head of the Main Injector Department.

The Recycler is one of four primary stages in Fermilab's updated accelerator complex. It will play a major role in increasing the beam output of another accelerator stage, the Main Injector, which saw beam for the first time just over a month ago.

Accelerator operators and experts will now begin commissioning the Recycler and preparing it for a process called slip stacking, in which bunches of beam are squeezed together. This is a crucial step in increasing the number of protons that the Fermilab accelerator complex can deliver in the future to various experiments.

In its previous life as part of the Tevatron program, the Recycler was used to store antiprotons. Slip stacking occurred in the Main Injector, which also had to accelerate the beam.

Now in its new role, the Recycler will be responsible for slip stacking. This will allow operators to accelerate beam in the Main Injector more frequently, significantly cutting down the amount of time it takes for the Main Injector to deliver a beam pulse. The goal is a pulse of protons every 1.3 seconds, compared to 2.2 seconds before the shutdown.

With more rapidly delivered protons, the Main Injector will ultimately be able to deliver 700-kilowatt beam, roughly double its previous power.

"The Recycler is the key to getting to 700 kilowatts," said Ioanis Kourbanis, head of the Main Injector Department. "The Main Injector can't do it on its own."

The commissioning process will take several months.

"Some people say, 'Once the shutdown is done, we can go to 700 kilowatts.' It's not that trivial," Kourbanis said. The Accelerator Division will go through every Recycler system one by one — the radio-frequency power system, beam instrumentation, magnets — commissioning each and troubleshooting along the way.

"For all practical purposes, it's a new machine," Capista said. "We have to treat it as you would a new machine."

The accelerator team looks forward to the moment when beam can zip through the Recycler, hop over to the Main Injector and accelerate through it without a hitch.

"When we get slip stacking in the Recycler, well, that's big," Kourbanis said. "That means, '700, here we come.'"

Fermilab will host a labwide celebration to mark the official startup of its accelerator complex this fall.

Laura Dattaro

The Accelerator Division has been busy upgrading the Recycler to get it ready for higher-power beams. On Friday, protons circulated through the Recycler for the first time since the 2012 shutdown. Photo: Marty Murphy, AD
From symmetry

The hunt for microscopic black holes

Finding micro black holes at the LHC would alert scientists to the existence of extra dimensions, which might explain why gravity seems so weak. Photo: Claudia Marcelloni, CERN

The energy required for a black hole like the one at the center of our galaxy to form — the amount contained in a dying, super-massive star collapsing in on itself — is many times higher than what we can achieve in our earthly laboratories.

However, if certain theories are correct about the nature of gravity, there may be a way for physicists to create a very different type of black hole — one so small and fleeting that its presence could only be inferred from its effect on subatomic particles in a particle detector. And this process may be within reach of the Large Hadron Collider.

Read more

Kelly Izlar

In the News

Strength of gravity shifts – and this time it's serious

From New Scientist, Sept. 11, 2013

Did gravity, the force that pins us to Earth's surface and holds stars together, just shift? Maybe, just maybe. The latest measurement of G, the so-called constant that puts a figure on the gravitational attraction between two objects, has come up higher than the current official value.

Read more

Tip of the Week:
Ecology and Environment

Fermilab prairie seed harvests take place in fall

Volunteers sort prairie seeds collected during the 2012 harvest. Photo: Fermilab Roads and Grounds Department

Next month Fermilab will host the first of two public prairie seed harvests as we have done for over 30 years, almost since the birth of the prairie reconstruction project in 1975. FESS Roads and Grounds has hosted the annual event, and for the last five years, Fermilab Natural Areas has co-hosted.

Volunteers from many surrounding communities come to the lab for the four-hour event, and many have faithfully attended every harvest for decades. During the event, participants learn which plant species are needed and how to identify them in the field. Armed with scissors, gloves and paper bags, they set off to locate plants and collect the seed heads. When they return to the staging area, they add their bounty to that collected by other volunteers, then go out again after more.

Why do we do this? Fermilab and Fermilab Natural Areas are committed to conservation of the natural landscape at the lab. In over 150 years of settlement by Europeans, much of the pre-settlement ecology has been converted to industry, residential development or agriculture. One means of conserving a functioning ecosystem is to manage the land in a way that approximates pre-settlement conditions. We can use what we know of that time to create an ecosystem that functions in approximately the same way, providing habitat for native wildlife, preserving biological diversity and providing natural experiences for Fermilab employees and visitors.

During the harvest, several truckloads of seeds may be collected depending on the number of volunteers, which has been as high as 100 or more. The seeds are sorted by species and stored in a Village building formerly used as a greenhouse and which now serves as a seed processing facility. The seeds are cleaned, dried and in some cases treated with nitrogen-fixing bacteria to ready them for planting. Various seed mixtures are customized for planting in a variety of different ecosystems — optimized for wet or dry prairies, wetlands or forests. Planting typically takes place over the winter.

This year the first harvest will take place on Saturday, Oct. 5, from 10 a.m. until 2 p.m. Hot dog lunches are provided! For further information, call Roads and Grounds at 630-840-3303 or Fermilab Natural Areas at 630-840-4458, or look for poster announcements near all the elevators in Wilson Hall.

Rod Walton

Photos of the Day

Fermilab in infrared

In these photos, taken with an infrared-modded camera, visible light shows as blue and infrared light shows as white. Photos: Steve Krave, TD
Announcements

Today's New Announcements

Lunch & Learn: Oh, My Aching Back! - today

NALWO Annual Potluck Luncheon - today

"Got Debt? Let's Manage It!" free webinar - Sept. 18

Artist Reception for VIEWS exhibit - Sept. 20

Second City: Happily Ever Laughter at Fermilab Arts Series - Sept. 21

Nominate a colleague for the Director's Award by Sept. 25

Power Writing Workshop offered Oct. 24

Access 2010 classes scheduled

MS Excel and Word classes offered this fall

Interpersonal Communication Skills class scheduled for Dec. 4

Writing for Results: Email and More class offered Dec. 11

Accelerate to a Healthy Lifestyle

Abri Credit Union special offers

International folk dancing meets Thursday evenings in Auditorium

Outdoor soccer at the Village

Chicago Blackhawks preseason discounts