Strait joins LBNE as project manager

Jim Strait

On Jan. 25 Fermilab physicist Jim Strait began a new job as project manager for the laboratory's Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment. Gina Rameika, who led the LBNE project initiation phase to establish Department of Energy mission need, or CD-0, will become LBNE's project scientist.

"The Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment will be a flagship of Fermilab physics at the Intensity Frontier," said Associate Director for Research Greg Bock. "Gina successfully led the extraordinary effort to reach CD-0. Now we are fortunate to have Jim Strait's experienced leadership as we begin the next tremendous push to reach CD-1."

Strait, who began his Fermilab career in 1985, led the US project to design and build advanced magnets and other accelerator components for CERN's Large Hadron Collider. He served as head of the Particle Physics Division from 2004 until 2008. Now he returns to Fermilab after spending a year and a half working with CERN physicists on LHC commissioning. He will guide the LBNE project through the various stages of the DOE Critical Decision review process.

"I am eager to get to work with the LBNE team on the formidable technical challenges ahead," Strait said. "It's a tough experiment, but neutrinos may hold the key to our very existence."

Gina Rameika

Rameika will focus on working with the LBNE Science Collaboration to evaluate how various design and cost-cutting decisions would affect the scientific reach of the experiment.

"Having achieved CD-0, the amount of work before us has increased significantly," Rameika said. "Jim and I, together with the project engineer, will make sure that all the bases are covered."

-- Judith Jackson

US flexes its developing SRF muscles

US researchers recently proved their ability to process and test world-class superconducting radiofrequency, SRF, cavities.

In preparing two dressed, high-gradient nine-cell ILC-type cavities for use in the S1-global effort, a prototype at KEK of the International Linear Collider main linac, researchers had to climb multiple technical hurdles.

SRF cavities enable accelerators to increase particle beam energy levels while minimizing the use of electrical power by all but eliminating electrical resistance. Future experiments into the origins of the universe and nature of matter, including the proposed ILC and Project X, both of which Fermilab would like to host, will require advanced SRF technology.

The shipped cavities show the US is well on its way to meeting those technology needs.

The processing and assembly of the cavities depended heavily on the contribution of scientists and engineers across the globe, including at Argonne National Laboratory, Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Cornell University, INFN and DESY.

Initial testing of the cavities involved dipping them in liquid helium and supplying a low-power RF source. Cavities that reached the needed accelerating field got sealed into a helium vessel and outfitted, or dressed, with auxiliary components necessary for high-power operation in an accelerator. These components include input couplers to feed RF power into the cavity and tuners to adjust the cavity's resonant frequency.

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--Tona Kunz

Physicists' dreams and worries in era of the big collider

From New York Times, Jan. 25, 2010

A few dozen scientists got together in Los Angeles for the weekend recently to talk about their craziest hopes and dreams for the universe.

At least that was the idea.

"I want to set out the questions for the next nine decades," Maria Spiropulu said on the eve of the conference, called the Physics of the Universe Summit. She was hoping that the meeting, organized with the help of Joseph D. Lykken of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Gordon Kane of the University of Michigan, would replicate the success of a speech by the mathematician David Hilbert, who in 1900 laid out an agenda of 23 math questions to be solved in the 20th century.

Dr. Spiropulu is a professor at the California Institute of Technology and a senior scientist at CERN, outside Geneva. Next month, CERN's Large Hadron Collider, the most powerful particle accelerator ever built, will begin colliding protons and generating sparks of primordial fire in an effort to recreate conditions that ruled the universe in the first trillionth of a second of time.

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Speculating about the universe as a quantum fluid

From Ars Technica, Jan. 25, 2010

he first thing that struck me about Hitoshi Murayama was that he certainly did not fit the stereotype of a Japanese presenter-he's relaxed, eloquent, and clearly very, very excited about his work. He is the head of a new research center in Japan called the Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe-a purview that allows him to study just about anything. But he's chosen to study everything; Murayama wants to know why there is, in fact, a universe. Because the Physics@FOM audience comes from a range of backgrounds, Murayama's talk was light on details and strong on providing a flavor of the problem and inspiring the audience. And inspired I was, as he took us on a whirlwind tour of the known Universe, including dark matter and inflation. He wrapped up by going completely off the map with some of the ideas that he has had floating around for some time now.

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