Fermilab Today

	Friday, March 28, 2014

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Calendar

Have a safe day!

Friday, March 28

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

4 p.m.
Joint Experimental-Theoretical Physics Seminar - One West
Speaker: Yuri Gershtein, Rutgers University
Title: Winter 2014 Physics Results from CMS

Monday, March 31

10 a.m.
P5 Virtual Town Hall Meeting - Curia II

2 p.m.
Particle Astrophysics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Erin Sheldon, Brookhaven National Laboratory
Title: Weak Gravitational Lensing of Galaxy Clusters

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

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

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

Ongoing and upcoming conferences at Fermilab

Campaigns

Take Five

Weather

Chance of drizzle
47°/30°

Extended forecast
Weather at Fermilab

Current Security Status

Secon Level 3

Current Flag Status

Flags at full staff

Wilson Hall Cafe

Friday, March 28

- Breakfast: cherry-stuffed French toast
- Breakfast: chorizo and egg burrito
- Beer-battered fish sandwich
- Smart cuisine: sweet and sour apricot chicken
- Poached salmon
- Turkey and cucumber salad wraps
- Big beef or chicken burrito
- Manhattan skyline clam chowder
- Texas-style chili
- Assorted pizza by the slice

Wilson Hall Cafe menu

Chez Leon

Friday, March 28
Dinner
Closed

Wednesday, April 2
Lunch
- Northern Italian lasagna
- Caesar salad
- Italian cream cake

Chez Leon menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

P5 virtual town hall meeting - Monday in Curia II

The P5 committee will hold its third virtual town hall meeting Monday, March 31, from 10-11:30 a.m. Central time. Scientists at Fermilab who wish to participate are invited to join the meeting from Curia II.

If you wish to speak from Curia II or plan to participate from off site, be sure to register.

Milestone

David Moore receives Mitsuyoshi Tanaka Dissertation Award

David Moore

Recently the American Physical Society awarded David Moore of Stanford University the 2013 Mitsuyoshi Tanaka Dissertation Award.

The award recognizes exceptional young scientists who have performed original doctoral thesis work of outstanding scientific quality and achievement in the area of experimental particle physics.

Moore's doctoral research was performed at the California Institute of Technology, where he worked on the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search under the supervision of Sunil Golwala, completing his Ph.D. in physics in 2012.

Wellness Feature of the Month

April wellness offerings and fitness classes

Free wellness offerings include Active For LIfe Multilab Challenge, Wednesday Walkers, and BuZheng Qigong and Tai Chi Easy classes. Register for the Weight Management Class or any of the following fitness classes: Yoga, Martial Arts, Strength Training, Zumba Toning or Zumba Fitness. Don't forget to attend the Spring Book Fair on April 8 and 9.

Wellness Offerings

Active for Life Multilab Challenge
Whether you are thinking about becoming physically active or have been active for years, this team-based, nine-week program encourages you to be more active and eat healthier. Join a team at activeforlife.org by April 14. Team captains needed. Contact Jeanne at jecker@fnal.gov for information. Watch Fermilab Today for contests, events and prizes.

Wednesday Walkers
Wednesdays beginning April 2.
Depart from the east side of Wilson Hall at noon. Time, distance and speed are up to you.

Weight Management Class
Thursdays, April 3-June 5, noon-1 p.m.
Wilson Hall Aquarium, 15th floor.
$50 for 10 weeks. Register today.
Earn Active for Life bonus points in April and May

BuZheng Qigong and Tai Chi Easy
Mondays and Fridays through May 30, noon-1 p.m.
Ramsey Auditorium

Wednesdays through May 28, 7-8 a.m.
Ramsey Auditorium

Fitness Classes

Yoga
Mondays, March 31-May 5, 11-11:45 a.m.
Ramsey Auditorium
$45/person. Register now.

Thursdays, April 3-May 8, noon-12:45 p.m.
Ramsey Auditorium
$45/person. Register now.

Martial Arts
Mondays and Wednesdays, March 31-May 7, 5-6 p.m.
Fitness Center Gym
$60/person. Register now.

Strength Training by Bod Squad
Tuesdays and Thursdays, April 17-June 12 (no class May 22), 5-6 p.m.
Fitness Center Exercise Room
$82/person. Register by April 10.

Zumba Toning
Tuesdays, April 29-June 17, 11:45 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Fitness Center Exercise Room
$50/person. Register by April 22.

Zumba Fitness
Thursdays, May 1-June 19, 11:45 a.m.-12:30 p.m.
Fitness Center Exercise Room
$50/person. Register by April 24.

Book Fair
Tuesday, April 8, 10 a.m.-3 p.m.
Wednesday, April 9, 8 a.m.-3 p.m.
Wilson Hall atrium
Cash, check or charge.

For more information, contact Jeanne Ecker in the Wellness Office at x2548 or at jecker@fnal.gov.

In the News

Dwarf planet stretches Solar System's edge

From Nature, March 26, 2014

Editor's note: The investigators involved in this study used the Dark Energy Camera to determine the orbit of the newly discovered dwarf planet described in this article.

The Solar System just got a lot more far-flung. Astronomers have discovered a probable dwarf planet that orbits the Sun far beyond Pluto, in the most distant trajectory known.

Together with Sedna, a similar extreme object discovered a decade ago, the find is reshaping ideas about how the Solar System came to be. "It goes to show that there's something we don't know about our Solar System, and it's something important," says co-discoverer Chad Trujillo, an astronomer at Gemini Observatory in Hilo, Hawaii. "We're starting to get a taste of what's out beyond what we consider the edge."

Frontier Science Result: CMS

Through a glass uncertainly

Top quarks or the particles involved in their creation can be indirectly studied through symmetries — or lack thereof.

Experimental physicists spend their lives thinking about uncertainty. Although the subject of their experiments may be heady stuff like the Higgs field, dark matter and gravity waves from the beginning of time, they spend most of their time wondering, "How can I be sure my instrument isn't lying to me?" Combating potential sources of error is easily 90 percent of the work on a typical analysis.

There are many techniques for dealing with uncertainties, and one of them is to exploit symmetries. Imagine that you have a picture of a butterfly on a piece of thin paper and you want to know if the left wing is exactly like the right wing. Measuring each of its spots with a ruler and compass is error-prone, but folding the paper and holding it over a light reveals all of the differences quickly and accurately. If a spot on the right wing is slightly larger than the corresponding spot on the left, it won't line up exactly.

One of the last big discoveries of the Tevatron was a forward-backward asymmetry in pairs of top and antitop quarks. When protons and antiprotons collided to produce top-antitop pairs, the top quarks flew out of the collision in the direction of the original proton more often than in the direction of the antiproton (and vice-versa). Just like folding butterfly wings, this result is robust against uncertainties in the total collision rate because such an error would cancel in the forward-backward comparison. For three years now, physicists have been trying to explain this asymmetry.

It is natural to ask if the LHC sees the same asymmetry. Unfortunately, the experiment can't be exactly repeated because the LHC collides protons and protons — no antiprotons. However, there's another potential asymmetry that could reveal the underlying cause. Protons are made of two energetic up quarks, an energetic down quark and a froth of low-energy quark-antiquark pairs. Antiprotons are the opposite. When the Tevatron saw an excess of backward-moving antitop quarks, it might have been because the antiproton's antiquarks were, on average, more energetic than the proton's antiquarks. At the LHC, this asymmetry would show up in top-antitop pair trajectory angles relative to the beamline: parallel to the line of colliding protons or perpendicular to it.

In a recent experiment, CMS scientists studied exactly that. They measured this top-antitop ratio, but found no asymmetry. Clearly, something else is going on here. Like a rear-view and a side-view mirror, these two views together give us a more complete picture of the mystery.

—Jim Pivarski