Monday, May 2, 2011
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Monday, May 2
2 p.m.
Research Techniques Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Shashank Priya, Virginia Tech
Title: High Performance Textured Relaxor-PT/PZT Piezoelectric Materials
THERE WILL BE NO PARTICLE ASTROPHYSICS SEMINAR THIS WEEK
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
All Experimenters' Meeting - Curia II
Special Topics: Science Being Done on the Wilson Cluster; First Light in T-1007 Prototype Optical Cavity for Holometer/Axions

Tuesday, May 3
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
THERE WILL BE NO ACCELERATOR PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR TODAY

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Wilson Hall Cafe
Monday, May 2
- Croissant sandwich
- Spicy beef & rice soup
- Corned beef reuben
- *Roast pork loin
- *Lasagna
- Chicken Oriental wrap pineapple
- Assorted slice pizza
- *Pacific rim rice bowl

*Heart healthy option

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Wednesday, May 4
Lunch

Guest chef: Veronica Almeraz
- Chile relleno, chorizo quesadilla & steak tostada
- Southwest corn & bean salad
- Mango flan

Friday, May 6
Closed

Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

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Feature

First beam to MuCool Test Area

The MuCool Test Area hall viewed from the downstream end of the magnet looking toward the beamline. The beam absorber and collimators are visible in the foreground and the beamline in the background. Photo: Yagmur Torun, Accelerator Research Center.

A decade ago, a muon collider was considered nearly impossible. Now, scientists at Fermilab’s MuCool Test Area are a step closer to testing some critical components for such an accelerator.

In February, the MTA, located near the southern end of Fermilab’s linear accelerator, received its first beam of particles. The new beamline will allow scientists to test equipment for muon cooling, a critical part of development for future muon colliders.

“The beam entered the center of the hall last week,” said MTA coordinator Yagmur Torun. “We’re making great progress.”

The new beamline from the linac to the MTA was made possible by the External Beamlines Department.

“We’re very happy to see the new beam reach the MTA,” said External Beamlines Department Head Craig Moore. “This achievement was years in the making, and the team worked hard to develop and install the shielding and safety components necessary for the new beam.”

The path to building a muon collider is a difficult one. Muons, the electron’s heavy cousins, are unstable and decay in two millionths of a second.

Scientists can create large numbers of muons by steering a proton beam into a target of dense liquid. Once the muons are created, magnets send them in the right direction. At this stage, the muons are still too diffuse to create useful collisions.

At the MTA, scientists are exploring methods to cool muons and corral them into dense beams for high-luminosity collisions. One proposed method, known as ionization cooling, would focus muons into a laser-like beam by forcing them through a series of magnets and absorbers filled with liquid hydrogen. The hydrogen slows the muons and absorbs their energy, while the magnetic fields narrow the beam. This process has to take place quickly, before the muons decay into electrons and neutrinos.

This ionization cooling method is necessary for the success of a future muon collider, said Alan Bross, co-spokesperson for the Muon Collider collaboration. With the new beam to the MTA, experimenters can soon put this method to the test. Bross expects to see crucial results from MuCool in the next four months.

For more information on research and design for a muon collider, check out this article in symmetry magazine.

— Cynthia Horwitz

Milestone

Tevatron sets new initial luminosity record

The Tevatron broke Fermilab's initial luminosity record on Thursday, April 28, when store number 8700 achieved an average initial luminosity of 405.25 µb-1/s.

Then on Friday, April 29, an even higher average initial luminosity value of 416.61 µb-1/s was achieved by store number 8701.

These stores broke our previous record of 402.4 µb-1/s, which was set about a year ago, on April 16, 2010.

The unit of measurement µb-1/s is roughly equivalent to 70,000 proton-antiproton collisions per second.

Special Announcement

Bicycle seminar - Noon May 3

Members of the Fermilab community are invited to attend a Brown Bag Seminar on bicycle commuting, hosted by the Fermilab Traffic Safety Subcommittee.

The seminar, titled "Bicycle Safety, Road Sharing and Greenhouse Gas Reduction," will be presented by Officer Emil Jensen, Batavia Police Department, and Eric Mieland, Fermilab ES&H, and will take place from noon to 12:45 p.m. on Tuesday, May 3, in Wilson Hall Curia II.

In the News

Final Endeavour flight stalled again

From redOrbit, May 2, 2011

Call it the long good-bye, or perhaps the space shuttles just do not want to see it all end either, but the final flight of Endeavour, which was highly anticipated late last week has been rescheduled for Sunday May 8 at the earliest. Commander Mark Kelly and his crew have flown back to Houston to resume training, AP reports.

The fleet of US space shuttles are showing their age with all sorts of technical issues almost expected to crop up in the last minutes before a flight. Flights have been scrubbed due to highly technical problems such as fuel leaks, engine shutdowns, burst hoses and sticking valves.

Read more

ES&H Tip of the Week:
Safety

Questions key for customers and suppliers

Asking questions can improve cusomer and supplier satisfaction.

In your work you may act as a customer, a supplier or both. A customer is a person who receives goods or services from another. A supplier is a person who furnishes or provides something. Asking questions is key regardless of the role you have undertaken.

If you are the customer, to get what you need, you need to supply the necessary information for the other person to do the job the way you want it done. And then you need to ask them to explain what you want back to you to make sure they understood. In most cases, when a job isn’t done right, it’s because the supplier didn’t have enough information to do the job right the first time.

If you are the supplier, and you don’t understand what needs to be done, you need to ask questions of your customer.

We’ve all heard this before, but it’s true: “When in doubt, ask!”

— Edited by Tom Gehrke

Accelerator Update

April 27-29

- Three stores provided ~43.25 hours of luminosity
- Tevatron RF station 4 repaired in between stores
- Operators tuned on the I-Source output
- Store 8700 set a new record with a luminosity of 405.25E30
- Operators monitored the conditioning for a New Muon Lab coupler cavity

Read the Current Accelerator Update
Read the Early Bird Report
View the Tevatron Luminosity Charts

In the News

A conformal approach to cavity coating

From ILC Newsline, April 28, 2011

Argonne scientists give metals a healthy superconducting coat, one atomic layer at a time.

A necklace of cheap metal with gold-flaked paint may look like solid gold finery, but eventually, the paint will peel, revealing a worthless trinket beneath.

But an accelerator cavity of inexpensive metal with a nice niobium coat, though less expensive than a solid niobium structure, could actually hold more value for a particle collider.

Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory in the US are developing a method that uses atomic superconducting layers to evenly cover, like the perfect coat of paint, the insides of cavities. Since electric current flows only through the cavity wall’s innermost hundred nanometres, thin niobium-compound films could provide an alternative to pricier, solid niobium cavities.

Read more

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