Upward and onward: Tevatron, NuMI reach records

The plot shows the record antiproton stash from April 19.

Just when Accelerator Division staff thought they couldn't do any better, the laboratory, with their help, gets a trio of records.

Fermilab is producing and storing more antiprotons and colliding them with protons faster than ever. The laboratory achieved three records within the last two weeks: for Tevatron delivered record luminosity, antiprotons stashed in the Recycler and most protons sent to the NuMI target.

The latest record was reached between April 13 and 20, when the Accelerator Division achieved 73.1 inverse picobarns of weekly integrated luminosity, a 25 percent increase from the same time last year.

Cons Gattuso, Fermilab's run coordinator, attributed the record to a handful of factors, including improved antiproton stacking rates and the abundant supply of antiprotons. The extra antiprotons were produced during an equipment failure that prevented them from being used then. Along with good stable running, each of the 10 stores the we put into the Tevatron survived to termination.

He also attributes the record to improved antiproton production.

"Integrated luminosity is a function of how fast we make antiprotons," Gattuso said. "We get more luminosity when we utilize more antiprotons per shot."

The record for the number of antiprotons stashed at one time ,498e¹⁰ was set on April 19. That record, Gattuso said, was possible because of the application of a new technique: partial mining.

Partial mining allows the operators more freedom to extract only the portion of the beam they need, leaving antiprotons behind in the Recycler, and reducing the risk of losing large stacks of antiprotons from the Accumulator.

"We normally mine all of the beam out into the recycler," Gattuso said. "But we had too many antiprotons and we needed to come up with a way to leave some beam behind."

The most accumulated protons on target, 7e²⁰, was reached by the NuMI experiment on Monday, April 6. The Accelerator Division also provided the NuMI experiment with the most beam in a single day on Tuesday, April 14.

"The experiment continues to work really well, and we continue to get a lot of beam from the Accelerator Complex," said NuMI/MINOS spokesperson Rob Plunkett.

-- Rhianna Wisniewski

Lecture Series on Intensity Frontier starts today

Students and postdocs are invited to attend a five-part academic lecture series on physics and experiments at the intensity frontier. Bill Marciano, Brookhaven National Laboratory, will give his lectures on muon physics today at 11 a.m. and Wednesday, April 29. Vincent Cirigliano, Los Alamos National Laboratory, will speak about kaon physics on May 11, 13 and 15. For details, see the Web site for this lecture series.

Extreme Beam lecture Tuesday, 4 p.m. in One West

The fourth lecture of the Extreme Beam lecture series will take place at 4 p.m. Tuesday in One West. Bill Marciano, from Brookhaven National Laboratory's High-Energy Physics Theory Group, will give a talk titled "The Muon g-2 and New Physics."

The lecture series, which will feature talks at Fermilab throughout 2009, will give in-depth information about the science and accelerator and detector technologies that will create a world-leading physics program at the Intensity Frontier.

Visit the Extreme Beam Web site for more information.

The latest from the LHC

Watch a video of the last repaired dipole magnet for Sector 3-4 going underground.

The 39th and final repaired dipole magnet was lowered into Sector 3-4 and installed on Thursday, April 16. This is the last of the LHC's easily recognizable 15-metre-long blue superconducting dipoles required for the 3-4 repair. Only two more Short Straight Sections (SSS) remain to be installed in 3-4.

Since the start of the repair work in Sector 3-4, the Vacuum Group has been cleaning the beam pipes to remove metallic debris and soot created by the short circuit last September. Firstly all 4800 m of the beam pipes in Sector 3-4 were surveyed cm by cm to document the damage before the cleaning work started. The cleaning process involves passing a brush through the pipe to clean the surface mechanically, followed by a vacuum to remove any debris both inside and outside the beam pipe.

Read more