Tevatron sets new initial luminosity record

The above plot shows the initial luminosities of all Tevatron stores since Oct. 1, the start of FY2010. The two recent record stores are visible on the far right side of the plot.

The Tevatron set a new initial-luminosity record Thursday and added another week to its most consistent run in history.

At 2:05 p.m. on Thursday, March 18, store number 7685 reached 376 µb-1/s, smashing the record set on March 10 of 354.4. The unit of measurement µb -1/s is roughly equivalent to 70,000 proton-antiproton collisions per second. The new record is equivalent to a little more than 26 million collisions per second.

Ron Moore, Tevatron Department head, attributed the records to the good beam intensities and the reduction of episodes of beam growth during shot set up.

The Tevatron also celebrated last week its fourth consecutive week running at more than 60 inverse picobarns.

"That is a consistency we've never had before," Moore said. "This is how I'd like to run all the time."

LHC sets new record - accelerates beam to 3.5 TeV

From CERN Press Office, March 19, 2010

At just after 5:20 this morning, two 3.5 TeV proton beams successfully circulated in the Large Hadron Collider for the first time. This is the highest energy yet achieved in a particle accelerator, and an important step on the way to the start of the LHC research programme. The first attempt to collide beams at 7 TeV (3.5 TeV per beam) will follow on a date to be announced in the near future.

"Getting the beams to 3.5 TeV is testimony to the soundness of the LHC's overall design, and the improvements we've made since the breakdown in September 2008," explained CERN's Director for Accelerators and Technology, Steve Myers. "And it's a great credit to the patience and dedication of the LHC team."

The current LHC run began on 20 November 2009, with the first circulating beam at 0.45 TeV. Milestones were quick to follow, with twin circulating beams established by 23 November and a world record beam energy of 1.18 TeV being set on 30 November. By the time the LHC switched off for 2009 on 16 December, another record had been set with collisions recorded at 2.36 TeV and significant quantities of data recorded. Over the 2009 part of the run, each of the LHC's four major experiments, ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb recorded over a million particle collisions, which were distributed smoothly for analysis around the world on the LHC computing grid. The first physics papers were soon to follow.

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Employee Advisory Group meetings begin this week

Fermilab's Employee Advisory Group, organized to address workplace issues at the laboratory, will begin meeting this week. Fermilab Director Pier Oddone notified members of their selection to the committee last week.

Budget shortfall could derail plans for underground lab

From Science, (subscription required)
March 19, 2010

A tight budget and unanticipated safety problems are threatening to kill plans to convert an abandoned gold mine in South Dakota into a $750 million deep underground science and engineering laboratory (DUSEL).

Since 2007, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has been supporting a team of scientists and engineers developing plans to convert the Homestake mine near the town of Lead into an enormous lab for experiments in fields including particle and nuclear physics and geology and microbiology. Although NSF has not yet agreed to build DUSEL-scientists are hoping for final approval as early as spring 2011 and the start of construction in 2013-NSF is spending $36 million this year on the effort. But its 2011 budget, released last month, requests only $19 million to continue design work, half of what scientists and NSF program staff say is needed to keep the project on track.

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