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Thursday, June 5
11 a.m.
Intensity Frontier Seminar
- WH8XO
Speaker: Andre de Gouvea, Northwestern University
Title: Building for Discovery at the Intensity Frontier
THERE WILL BE NO THEORETICAL PHYSICS SEMINAR THIS WEEK
3 p.m.
LHC Physics Center Topic of the Week Seminar - WH11NE
Speaker: Jochen Ott, Hamburg University
Title: Practical Statistics
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Accelerator Physics and Technology Seminar (NOTE DATE) - One West
Speaker: Thomas Nicol, Fermilab
Title: Superconducting Cavity Cryomodule Designs for the Next Generation of CW Linacs: Challenges and Options
Speaker: Giorgio Apollinari, Fermilab
Title: High-Field Magnet Development toward Higher-Luminosity Performance of the LHC
Friday, June 6
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Joint Experimental-Theoretical Physics Seminar - One West
Speaker: Salvatore Rappoccio, SUNY, University at Buffalo
Title: Recent Searches for New Physics With Top Quarks at CMS
Click here for NALCAL,
a weekly calendar with links to additional information.
Ongoing and upcoming conferences at Fermilab |
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Thursday, June 5
- Breakfast: Canadian bacon, egg and cheese Texas toast
- Breakfast: Mexican omelet
- Steak soft tacos
- Smart cuisine: braised beef with vegetables
- Chicken parmesan
- Baked ham and Swiss ciabatta
- Sweet and sour chicken
- Beef barley soup
- Chef's choice soup
- Assorted pizza by the slice
Wilson Hall Cafe menu |
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Friday, June 6
Dinner
Closed
Wednesday, June 11
Lunch
- Charmoula-marinated swordfish steaks
- Lime cilantro rice and sauteed pea pods
- Pineapple flan
Chez Leon menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.
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DZero looks back, looks ahead during collaboration meeting
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All former and current DZero spokespersons will participate in next week's collaboration meeting. Photo: Miles Boone
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On June 9-10, current and former DZero collaborators will descend on Fermilab to celebrate the experiment that, along with CDF, discovered the top quark. DZero continues to investigate physics from 20 years' worth of Tevatron data.
In one sense it is a last hurrah, but in another, the gathering of so many DZero scientists is the perfect opportunity to begin laying the foundation of the experiment's legacy.
That includes the experiment's latest physics results, which researchers will present at the biannual International Conference of High Energy Physics in July in Valencia, Spain. DZero scientists will review their results for ICHEP, the world's largest conference in particle physics, at next week's meeting.
In a key talk, DZero physics coordinators will discuss how the collaboration will handle future analyses and publications.
Looking ahead, attendees will also update and amend the DZero constitution and its governance guidelines.
"We need governance that will work for the long term," said DZero co-spokesperson Dmitri Denisov.
The meeting will also be a reunion of sorts, looking back at the formation of the collaboration and its early work. All 10 former and current DZero spokespersons plan to participate in the meeting.
"We think it will be a nice reunion moment," Denisov said.
All are invited to attend the meeting and celebrate DZero's achievements on June 10 in Ramsey Auditorium.
"It's impressive to see that so many DZero physicists are still eager to get together both to scrutinize their latest results and review their milestone achievements," said DZero co-spokesperson Gregorio Bernardi.
The meeting agenda is online.
—Leah Hesla
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Sunset over Fermilab
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| Visitor Alan Amati took this photo of Wilson Hall and the surrounding scenery. Photo: Alan Amati
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John R. Buckley celebrates retirement after 35 years at lab
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John Buckley
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Accelerator Division Senior Technician John R. Buckley has diligently serviced Fermilab's beamlines, water systems, pumps and piping for 35 years. Now he enters retirement. His last working day at the lab is June 6.
Buckley started in what was then the Research Division and moved to the Accelerator Division when the latter acquired the responsibility for the fixed-target beamlines.
"At the time, I remember hearing how 'Buckley' would take care of this or 'Buckley' would take care of that. I wondered who this seemingly invisible person was that seemed to take care of these aging beamlines for us," said Patrick Hurh, head of the Mechanical Support Department. "Later, I found out who he was: a careful, hard-working, dedicated and caring technician."
Hurh also discovered that Buckley is an early riser.
"When my daily schedule changed and I started showing up for work at an early hour, I discovered who pops the popcorn and makes the first pot of coffee!" Hurh said.
Buckley's attention to detail and his extensive experience working for the laboratory made him a valuable asset to the Mechanical Support Department.
"John exhibited a quiet, consistent work ethic that made him one of our most reliable employees," said MSD engineer Maurice Ball. "He was one of the remaining few employees at the lab who could recall valuable operations details about the external beamlines footprint when it seemed that all had been long forgotten."
Buckley says that when he retires, he'll spend more time with his family and devote his energy to "me time." His colleagues and supervisors says it is well deserved.
"We will miss all the goodies he would bring — pizza, donuts, popcorn — let alone his expertise with the beamline low-conductivity-water systems," said Bob Slazyk, Buckley's direct supervisor and head of the Fluids Operations Group. "John has worked long and hard for this day, and we wish him the best of luck."
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CERN's ALPHA experiment measures charge of antihydrogen
From Interactions.org, June 3, 2014
Geneva, 3 June 2014 — In a paper published in the journal Nature Communications today, the ALPHA experiment at CERN's Antiproton Decelerator (AD) reports a measurement of the electric charge of antihydrogen atoms, finding it to be compatible with zero to eight decimal places. Although this result comes as no surprise, since hydrogen atoms are electrically neutral, it is the first time that the charge of an antiatom has been measured to high precision.
Read more
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A new look at W+jets
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| This plot shows the dijet mass distribution in W/Z + 2 jets, overlaid, in the combined electron and muon data sets. The plot incorporates improved jet energy scale corrections for simulated quark and gluon jets and tunings of the multijet-background modeling. The bottom panel shows data with all fit background contributions subtracted, except those from diboson production.
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Three years ago, CDF saw an excess of events containing a W boson and two jets — a peak in the 140 GeV/c2 mass range with a statistical significance of 3.2 sigma. A peak indicates that a particle may exist at that particular mass.
However, the DZero and CMS experiments did not see the peak in their data. It was quite clear that more checks would be needed before claiming that a new particle was lurking around 140 GeV/c2.
Based on the Standard Model, our expectation is to see no peak near 140 GeV/c2. We expect four different event types to contribute to the background, and we understand three of them very well.
The fourth contribution, called the multijet background, consists of multiple jets produced in strong force interactions. For such a jet to be considered as part of the 140-GeV/c2 signal, it must be wrongly identified as an electron or a muon in the detector.
This background is not easy to understand. Scientists use data-driven models to identify it, but the models have a hard time making a good prediction for the dijet mass distribution.
After more than one year, additional studies of potential systematic effects have led to additional tunings of the data-driven modeling for the multijet-background contributions. CDF applied a subtle correction to the energy of jets mimicking an electron and contributing a fake background. At the same time, CDF incorporated specific jet energy scale corrections for simulated quark and gluon jets to model the simulation-driven backgrounds.
The analysis of the full CDF data set is similar to our earlier analysis, but we have introduced above-mentioned correction factors for quark and gluon jets and a new estimation of the multijet background. The new result is shown in the figure, and it is clear that there is no dijet peak at a mass near 140 GeV/c2.
The Standard Model wins again.
Learn more
—edited by Andy Beretvas
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| These CDF physicists contributed to this data analysis. Top row from left: Giorgio Bellettini (U Pisa, INFN), Matteo Cremonesi (Oxford), Giuseppe Latino (U Siena, INFN).
Second row: Vadim Rusu (Fermilab), Marco Trovato (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, INFN and Fermilab), Caterina Vernieri (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, INFN).
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More than math
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| MIT teaches physics students about another side of scientific life — communication. Photo courtesy of Janet Conrad, MIT |
Most undergraduate physics classes are heavy on the problem sets. But there's more to being a scientist than solving equations.
At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, physicist Janet Conrad teaches physics majors about another side of the job: communication.
"In most technical classes, there is one correct answer to a problem," says MIT graduating senior Arunima Balan.
Not so in Conrad's communications intensive class. There, students practice writing grants, debating policy and even researching and writing articles for the general public.
"It turns out you can't get away with not writing in a physics career," says MIT alumna Fangfei Shen, who has been a teaching assistant for the class since it first began in 2010.
Read more
—Kathryn Jepsen
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Sunny clouds
