Friday, Jan. 17, 2014
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Friday, Jan. 17

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

4 p.m.
Joint Experimental-Theoretical Physics Seminar - One West
Speaker: Ben Freemire, Illinois Institute of Technology
Title: High-Pressure Gas-Filled RF Cavities for Use in Muon Accelerators

8 p.m.
Fermilab Lecture Series - Auditorium
Speaker: Pete Beckman, Argonne National Laboratory
Title: Super Smart Supercomputers
Tickets: $7

Monday, Jan. 20

Holiday - Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Tuesday, Jan. 21

3 p.m.
LHC Physics Center Topic of the Week Seminar - WH11NE
Speaker: Felix Yu, Fermilab
Title: Fully Exploring Exotic Production of the 126 GeV Higgs

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

4 p.m.
Accelerator Physics and Technology Seminar - One West
Speaker: Alexander Valishev, Fermilab
Title: Beam-Beam Effects in the High-Luminosity LHC Upgrade

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Wilson Hall Cafe

Friday, Jan. 17

- Breakfast: blueberry-stuffed french toast
- Breakfast: chorizo and egg burrito
- Roast beef Manhattan
- Smart cuisine: white-fish florentine
- Kielbasa and kraut
- Baked-ham and Swiss ciabatta
- Seafood paella
- Clam chowder
- Texas-style chili
- Assorted pizza by the slice

Wilson Hall Cafe menu
Chez Leon

Friday, Jan. 17
Dinner
- Zucchini fritters with yogurt dill sauce
- Filet mignon with cabernet sauce
- Peppery baked onions with sage and gruyere
- Smashed potatoes
- Espresso crème brûlée

Wednesday, Jan. 22
Lunch
- Chicken marsala with fettuccini
- Caesar salad
- Italian cream cake

Chez Leon menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

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Feature

Fermilab breaks ground on coil fabrication for Jefferson Lab collaboration

The Magnet Systems Department recently successfully completed a prototype torus magnet coil for the Jefferson Lab CLAS12 upgrade. They devised a relatively inexpensive system, seen here, for winding the 2,500-pound coil. While the price of a standard coil-winding table that can hold a 4,000-pound fixture is $190,000, the Fermilab team built an adequate system for less than $10,000. One layer of coil, sitting at the winding fixture with a 12-foot-diameter cable spool installed above the fixture, and the second spool on the tensioner, is almost completely wound. Photo: Douglas Howard, TD

There is perhaps no greater challenge, mentally, than taking on a project that has been attempted previously but not successfully completed.

This is the position a team of Fermilab engineers and physicists found themselves in more than a year ago, when Jefferson Lab, based in Virginia, came to Fermilab for help on a project: fabricating magnet coils for an upgrade to its CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer (CLAS) experiment.

It turned out to be a good move. In late November, a Magnet Systems Department fabrication team in the Technical Division successfully wound a full-size coil, called a practice coil, of the type to be installed in the new torus magnet for the upgrade of Jefferson Lab's CLAS detector. Jefferson Lab's upgraded facilities will provide scientists with unprecedented precision and reach for studies of atomic nuclei.

Jefferson Lab had initially hired a contractor to design and fabricate the new magnets for the CLAS12 upgrade, but it was not able to effectively build the large, superconductive coils to the required specifications. When the project then came to Fermilab, the fabrication team was unsure whether it would be able to do what others had not, especially as it would have to work under a now very tight schedule and restricted budget.

"Now we can say we can definitely do this job," said Fermilab engineer Sasha Makarov. "It seems like Jefferson Lab is very satisfied with our achievement."

Getting to this point was not easy. Because the components of the coil, which is 2,500 pounds, 14 feet long and 7 feet wide, are themselves so big and heavy, the team could not use standard equipment for the project. So they designed and built several brand-new pieces of equipment that had to be tested and verified for use with the coils.

"We pretty much started from scratch," Makarov said. "You have to design not just tooling, which is normal, but also create new, unique machines that allow you to build these coils. We wanted solutions that would be quick and cheap but still work well."

One of the steps involves removing gas from inside the coil and replacing it with an epoxy. The epoxied coil sits in a potting mold. Typically gas is removed using a standard vacuum oven. Just one problem: The giant coil wouldn't fit in that oven. So the team instead made a vacuum-tight potting mold with its own vacuum pump and heating system. No oven was needed: The team installed the system in a custom-built, heat-insulating box. Using this technique, they successfully outgassed the coil and impregnated it with the epoxy.

The practice coil made it through the entire fabrication process, setting the stage for Fermilab to complete its contribution later this year. When all is said and done, the team will have wound eight identical coils: six for the detector's torus superconducting magnet and two to spare. They hope to have all eight coils built, wound and transported to Jefferson Lab by September.

"Knowing others had fallen short, we were not absolutely confident we could do it, especially without the possibility of using our standard equipment," Makarov said. "Now we can say we did it, and this is a very good feeling."

Sarah Witman

Photos of the Day

Frosty the cyclotron

An even coast of frost covers the cyclotron near the Fermilab Village like white paint. Photo: Steve Krave, TD
This is a friendlier message than the usual "wash me." Photo: Steve Krave, TD
In the News

BOSS measures the universe to one-percent accuracy

From Berkeley Lab News Center, Jan. 8, 2014

Today the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) Collaboration announced that BOSS has measured the scale of the universe to an accuracy of one percent. This and future measures at this precision are the key to determining the nature of dark energy.

"One-percent accuracy in the scale of the universe is the most precise such measurement ever made," says BOSS's principal investigator, David Schlegel, a member of the Physics Division of the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). "Twenty years ago astronomers were arguing about estimates that differed by up to fifty percent. Five years ago, we'd refined that uncertainty to five percent; a year ago it was two percent. One-percent accuracy will be the standard for a long time to come."

Read more

In the News

We choose to go to the muon

From Chemistry World, Jan. 8, 2014

The periodic table seems constantly on the verge of expansion. There are of course new superheavy elements being added, literally atom by atom, to its nether reaches by the accelerator-driven synthesis of new nuclei. There's also talk of systematic organisation of new pseudo-atomic building blocks, whether these are polyatomic 'superatoms'1 or nanoparticles assigned a particular 'valence' via DNA-based linkers.2 But one could be forgiven for assuming that the main body of the table that adorns all chemistry lecture theatres will remain largely unchanged, give or take a few arguments over where to put hydrogen.

Read more

Frontier Science Result: CMS

Digging deeper in the data

Failure to find quick discoveries in CMS data has led researchers to dig a little deeper, hoping to find the big breakthrough.

Before the LHC began operations, scientists were making many confident predictions that new physical phenomena would be everywhere, just waiting for the intrepid physicist to find it. And I'm not talking about the discovery of the Higgs boson, which, no matter how amazing an accomplishment, was predicted half a century ago. I'm talking about a discovery that reveals something new about the nature of the universe.

We now know that the energy level at which the LHC ran from 2010–2012 wasn't enough for the hoped-for proliferation of discoveries, but that doesn't mean a discovery isn't to be had. Rather it means that any discovery will require some cleverness to uncover. Further, to ensure that a discovery isn't missed, it means that in any attempt to find something new, scientists should search broadly and be open-minded to new possibilities.

Today's CMS result satisfies both of those criteria. Physicists looked at events in which six jets were present and, following an algorithm, split the jets into two groups of three. This analysis had two main thrusts. The first was simply to look for objects decaying into three jets, without any preconceived ideas. This was a nice and general search to see if anything unexpected turned up.

The second thrust is a little more intricate, as it was a search for an unusual form of supersymmetry. Models that incorporate supersymmetry predict that in addition to the familiar particles of the Standard Model, there is an entire cast of supersymmetric particles with properties that parallel the properties of the familiar particles.

In supersymmetric models, there is an important quantity called R parity. This is just a number that identifies a particle as being a supersymmetric particle (with R parity = -1) or a Standard Model particle (with R parity = +1). In most models, R parity is "conserved," which means that whenever a supersymmetric particle is created and subsequently decays, one of its decay products must also have an R parity of -1. Eventually the decay chain leads to the lightest supersymmetric particle (which, incidentally, is a candidate for dark matter).

However, there is a class of supersymmetric theories in which R parity is not conserved. In these theories, the decay products of the supersymmetric particle can only be the familiar particles of the Standard Model. One such possibility occurs when a supersymmetric gluon, called a gluino, decays. If R parity is not conserved, the decay products of a gluino could be three jets.

CMS scientists saw no evidence that there was an excess of three-jet production. This was a general observation that ruled out an undiscovered particle that decayed into three jets. This same measurement could be interpreted more precisely for models of gluino production in which R parity was violated. This study resulted in stringent limits being set on this kind of gluino production. Thus for both general investigation and the one on gluinos, the measurement was a very successful addition to CMS's long list of important accomplishments.

Don Lincoln

These US CMS scientists contributed to this analysis.
After seven years, Joel Butler has stepped down as US CMS program operations manager. Patricia McBride has taken over for Joel. The US CMS community is grateful for Joel's many years of service and wishes the best of luck to Patricia in her challenging new role.
Death

In memoriam: George Zielbauer

Fermilab retiree George Zielbauer passed away on Jan. 12 at the age of 74.

A visitation will be held today from 4-7 p.m. with a service to follow at 7 p.m. at Friedrich-Jones Funeral Home and Cremation Services, 44 S. Mill St., Naperville, Ill. 60540. There will also be a graveside service on Saturday, Jan. 18, at 10:30 a.m. at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.

View Zielbauer's obituary. For more information, please call Friedrich-Jones Funeral Home at 630-355-0213.

Announcements

Today's New Announcements

Power Writing Workshops - Jan. 21, 30

DreamWeaver CS6: levels 1 and 2 - Feb. 3-4

Interpersonal Communication Skills - Feb. 26

Supersmart Super Computers - Pete Beckman, Argonne - today

Fermilab PAC meeting - Jan. 22-24

Dirty Dozen Brass Band - Fermilab Arts Series - Jan. 25

Chicago Brass Quintet - Fermilab Gallery Chamber Series - Jan. 26

Earned Value Management course offered Jan. 28, 29

C2ST talk: The Nature of Nano 2 - Jan. 30

ICFA Neutrino Panel town meeting - Jan. 30-31

Free introductory yoga classes - Feb. 3, 6

2014 standard mileage reimbursement rate

Wanted: Are you an AJAS fellow?

Abri Credit Union member appreciation

Free weekly Tai Chi Easy, Integral Tai Chi/Qigong classes

Scottish country dancing meets Tuesday evenings at Kuhn Barn

International folk dancing meets Thursday evenings at Kuhn Barn

10 percent employee discount at North Aurora Dental Associates

Classifieds
Find new classified ads on Fermilab Today.