Tevatron sets new
luminosity records

The Tevatron set records for peak and integrated luminosity.

On Monday morning at 6:01 a.m., the Tevatron entered a new era of performance. The collider produced more particle collisions per second than ever before. It achieved a record peak luminosity of 3.15 E32 cm^-2sec^-1, breaking the barrier of 3E32 for the first time. A few days earlier, the Tevatron produced a peak luminosity of 2.85E32, the second-best store.

The record came on the heels of a week that had seven stores with peak luminosities between 2.36 and 2.85E32. Combined, last week's stores yielded the largest number of proton-antiproton collisions ever produced in a single week. The total integrated luminosity for the week reached 46.5 inverse picobarns.

"This was just a great week," said AD's Dan Johnson as he presented the numbers at the All Experimenter's meeting on Monday afternoon. "It was a week you'd like to see: stacking and stashing. All accelerators performed well and it all came together. Lots of people contributed to this success, making plans, tuning the machines, performing studies and maintenance, making repairs and keeping all the systems operational."

For the past couple of months, the Antiproton Source set stacking records, producing record numbers of antiprotons and transferring stashes of them to the Recycler storage ring. But the rest of the accelerator complex did not yet perform at its best. Last week, everything came together. With no major equipment failures, plenty of antiprotons and quick turnaround times between Tevatron stores, the accelerator complex racked up more collisions than ever before.

Steve Holmes, associate director for accelerators, and Joanna Livengood, manager of the DOE Fermi Site Office, congratulated the Accelerator Division and everybody who contributed to this success.

--Kurt Riesselmann

Congressional fellow learns about Fermilab site, programs

Steve Traver (right), congressional fellow for Steve Pearch (R-NM), learns about the Main Control Room from AD Operations employee Brian Schupbach and department head Roger Dixon. During his visit to the laboratory Friday, March 14, Traver met with Director Pier Oddone, AD department members, US CMS's Erik Gottschalk, CMS Communicator Elizabeth Clements and Neutron Therapy's Thomas Knox. He toured the Linac, Remote Operations Center, 15th floor and the Neutron Therapy Facility.

Science group boils down need for breakthroughs

From Chicago Tribune,
March 17, 2008

For people raised on the Web and instant gratification, where gadgets go from must-have to old stuff in half a year, Robert Rosner has some news: The interval from a science breakthrough to commercial viability is measured in decades, not months.

Computers were around for 30 years before they became useful to business, and solid-state electronics consumer products didn't catch on until a generation after the transistor was discovered, said Rosner, director of Argonne National Laboratory.

"When a basic discovery is made, no one has any idea what it will lead to," said Rosner. And this disconnect is behind the financial crisis now afflicting Argonne and its sister institution, Fermilab.

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