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	Wednesday, March 11, 2015

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Have a safe day!

Wednesday, March 11

3 p.m.
LHC Physics Center Topic of the Week Seminar - WH11NE
Speaker: Anadi Canepa, TRIUMF
Topic: Search for Supersymmetry at ATLAS and Physics Potential of the HL-LHC

3:30 p.m.
Director's Coffee Break - WH2XO

THERE WILL BE NO FERMILAB COLLOQUIUM THIS WEEK

Thursday, March 12

1:30 p.m.
Neutrino Seminar - WH8XO
Speaker: Joseph Formaggio, MIT
Title: Neutrino Mass Measurements

2:30 p.m.
Theoretical Physics Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Peisi Huang, Argonne
Title: Higgs Trilinear Coupling as a Probe of Electroweak Phase Transition

3:30 p.m.
Director's Coffee Break - WH2XO

Visit the new labwide calendar to view additional events at Fermilab

Weather

Patchy fog
50°/27°

Extended forecast
Weather at Fermilab

Current Flag Status

Flags at full staff

Wilson Hall Cafe

Wednesday, March 11

- Breakfast: crustless quiche casserole
- Breakfast: ham, egg and cheese English muffin
- Western barbecue burger
- Moroccan vegetable stew
- Kielbasa and kraut
- Zesty turkey pastrami sandwich
- Greek chicken pasta
- Cuban black bean soup
- Texas-style chili
- Assorted calzones

Wilson Hall Cafe menu

Chez Leon

Wednesday, March 11
Lunch
- Chicken enchilada
- Refried beans
- Spanish rice
- Tres leches cake

Friday, March 13
Dinner
Closed

Chez Leon menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

Peter Shanahan is new NOvA co-spokesperson

Peter Shanahan

NOvA, Fermilab's flagship neutrino experiment, now has a new face at the helm.

Fermilab scientist Peter Shanahan assumed the role of NOvA co-spokesperson on Feb. 19 for a two-year term. He joins fellow spokesperson Mark Messier of Indiana University in leading the experiment.

NOvA successfully completed construction of the experiment's two detectors — one on the Fermilab site and a second detector 500 miles away in Ash River, Minnesota — in October 2014. The most powerful accelerator-based neutrino experiment ever built, NOvA is at a stage where scientists are now getting ready to analyze the data from the detectors.

More than 200 individuals from 39 institutions work on the experiment.

"I look forward to helping guide NOvA through this exciting and interesting time," Shanahan said. "We want to build on the excellent momentum we've achieved so far."

Shanahan joined NOvA in 2005. Over the last decade, he has worked on the detector design, data simulation and reconstruction software. He served as a NOvA project manager from 2009 to 2014, overseeing the production and commissioning of data acquisition software. He returned to offline work in 2012, coordinating activities on software used to reconstruct neutrino interactions from raw data from the detectors.

In September, the Department of Energy proclaimed that NOvA experiment construction, which started in 2009, was completed on schedule and under budget. Shanahan attributes NOvA's success to the strong cooperation of its scientists, engineers and technicians.

"We're here because of the work of so many people across the lab and from so many institutions around the world," Shanahan said.

Shanahan succeeds Harvard University's Gary Feldman, who served as co-spokesperson for 10 years and will continue as a NOvA collaborator.

"Our collaboration is grateful for the leadership and dedication Gary provided in his decade of service to NOvA," he said.

"Peter has served NOvA tirelessly over many years in several different capacities, but most notably as the very successful leader of our data acquisition group," Feldman said. "He has a deep understanding of the experiment and will work well with Mark in leading it into the analysis era."

—Leah Hesla

Photos of the Day

Fading into fog

The Feynman Computing Center fades into the fog. Photo: Lori Limberg, ESH&Q

Where is Wilson Hall? Tuesday morning's fog is the culprit behind the building's invisibility. Photo: Elliott McCrory, AD

In the News

Fifty years of neutrinos

From Sanford Underground Research Facility's Deep Thoughts, March 9, 2015

In 1965, Ray Davis began building an experiment deep in the Homestake mine with the hope of counting neutrinos, subatomic particles produced in fusion reactions inside stars. Using a 100,000-gallon tank full of perchloroethylene, or dry cleaning fluid, Davis predicted that when neutrinos interacted with the chlorine atoms, they would change into argon atoms, which he and his team would detect.

From the CMS Department

Preparing for the LHC restart

Kevin Burkett

Kevin Burkett, head of the CMS Department, wrote this column.

As we await the return of spring here in Chicago, the Large Hadron Collider is coming back to life at CERN. The LHC accelerator has been in a long shutdown, which began after the completion of Run 1 in February 2013. The shutdown has allowed machine experts to perform repairs, make improvements and thoroughly test the accelerator so that it can operate at a higher energy than before. During the shutdown, members of CMS, including scientists, engineers and technicians from Fermilab, have also been hard at work to improve the detector, fixing problems discovered in the first run (see this Photo of the Day from October) and installing new upgraded components to improve detector performance.

The second run of the LHC will start very soon, with the first beams expected later this month and the first proton-proton collisions coming roughly two months later. In this run the LHC is expected to collide protons at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV, significantly higher than the 7 and 8 TeV collisions we recorded in Run 1. This higher collision energy has both experimentalists and theorists excited with the potential for seeing signs of new physics. The more energetic collisions could produce particles that we could not previously observe, allowing us to continue our search for evidence of models such as supersymmetry or extra dimensions.

Run 2 is scheduled to last into 2018, delivering more than four times as much data as we had in Run 1. In addition to looking for evidence of new physics, with this large data sample we'll be able to make more precise measurements of the properties of known particles, especially the recently discovered Higgs boson.

As we prepare for the start of Run 2, we are still keeping an eye on the future. Many members of the Fermilab staff, collaborating with university colleagues at the LHC Physics Center, are working on the detector upgrades that will keep CMS running well throughout the LHC era. As we heard in the closeout of the recent DOE Institutional Review, "With this Fermilab will continue to play a leading role in the energy frontier for the next two decades."

Safety Update

ESH&Q weekly report, March 10

This week's safety report, compiled by the Fermilab ESH&Q Section, contains two incidents.

An employee cut his hand on a sharp protrusion on a piece of equipment. He received first-aid treatment.

An employee slipped in a parking lot during freezing rain. As he attempted to prevent himself from falling, he wrenched his back, left hip and knee. He received first-aid treatment. Salt was applied after the slip was reported.

See the full report.

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