Thursday, Oct. 11, 2012
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Have a safe day!

Thursday, Oct. 11

3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr XO

THERE WILL BE NO ACCELERATOR PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR TODAY

Friday, Oct. 12

3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK (NOTE LOCATION) - Atrium

4 p.m.
Town Meeting - CPM2012 - Auditorium
Speaker: Pierre Ramond, University of Florida

THERE WILL BE NO JOINT EXPERIMENTAL-THEORETICAL PHYSICS SEMINAR THIS WEEK

5 p.m.
Special Seminar - Curia II
Speaker: Steve Collins, Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Title: Flying Curiosity to Mars: Delivering NASA's Rover

8 p.m.
Fermilab Lecture Series - Ramsey Auditorium
Speaker: Paul Davies, Arizona State University
Title: The Eerie Silence: ET, Where Are You?

Click here for NALCAL,
a weekly calendar with links to additional information.

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Wilson Hall Cafe

Thursday, Oct. 11

- Breakfast: corned-beef hash and eggs
- Harvest moon vegetable soup
- Sloppy joe
- Baja chicken enchilada casserole
- Smart cuisine: Mediterranean-style ziti with asparagus
- Buffalo chicken tender wrap
- Pizza puffs
- Grilled- or crispy-chicken Caesar salad

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Friday, Oct. 12
Dinner
- Coquille St. Jacques
- Pork tenderloin with porcini sauce
- Cauliflower gratin
- Green bean amandine
- Apple pie with vanilla bean ice cream

Wednesday, Oct. 17
Lunch
- Cheese ravioli with tomato basil sauce
- Caesar salad
- Peach Melba

Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

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Feature

Electronics in extra dimension: 3D integrated chip for high-energy physics

Fermilab engineer Gregory Deptuch, PPD, discusses 3DIC technology at a satellite workshop at last year's Technology and Instrumentation for Particle Physics conference in Chicago. Photo: Ted Liu, PPD

Particle detectors are the eyes of physicists, peering closely into particle events to help us understand the basic laws of nature.

To develop the kind of sight needed to view the complex particle events of future experiments, Fermilab researchers are transforming detection technology by developing new, intelligent detectors. They are pushing past the limits of two-dimensional chips, the current technology, by adding to them another dimension. The three-dimensional integrated chip, or 3DIC, will be key for future detectors.

"3DIC technology should be looked at as a toolbox that can allow us to make a transformational change in the way pixel detectors are and will be designed in the future," said PPD engineer Gregory Deptuch, head of a group that is working on 3DIC R&D.

The "3D" term refers to the chip's layered arrangement of circuitry, as contrasted with a single-plane, side-by-side arrangement. The design allows for shorter connections between the chip's elements, which in turn allows for increased functional density, buying more space and making for more efficient pathways along which to shepherd information.

"Some people think we just take a chip, cut it in half and stack it," said physicist Ted Liu. "But what we're doing is architecturally changing things at the design level to take full advantage of the 3DIC technology to dramatically improve the performance."

Industry currently develops 3D chips for cameras and computers. Recognizing 3DIC's potential for high-energy physics, in 2005 now-retired Fermilab engineer Ray Yarema initiated the 3D-chip R&D program at Fermilab. This stimulated great interest among detector community worldwide, and in 2008 HEP researchers formed an international consortium, led by Fermilab, to facilitate 3DIC developments for various uses in science. Now the laboratory is working with several industrial partners, primarily with Tezzaron Inc. located near Fermilab, to fabricate prototype chips.

With the 3DIC's increased functional density, the chips can be intelligent enough to discriminate between signal and background almost as soon as a collision's signals come out of the gate, helping to filter what is important and dispense with what is not.

"If you are able to discriminate the signals, you are the winner," Deptuch said.

Fermilab researchers have been testing 3DIC prototypes for various detector components to be used in the CMS and ATLAS detectors at the Large Hadron Collider, detectors for the proposed International Linear Collider and even in photon science projects. The tests confirmed what researchers had expected – 3D is the way to go.

"Both science and industry are looking at 3DIC as a cheaper alternative to building smaller and denser chips than the traditional 2D design," said PPD engineer Jim Hoff.

One of the laboratory's main efforts is to develop a processor for tracking particles as they spring from the interaction point, performing fast pattern recognition and feeding information to a trigger system, which is a filter for particle physics events. The technology is expected to appear in CMS following its high-luminosity upgrade.

"This new circuitry could effectively integrate the entire original CDF silicon tracking trigger system – four racks of electronics – into one 3D chip," Liu said.

"The international community recognizes 3D technology as crucial for advancing particle physics instrumentation," Deptuch said. "It's not an exaggeration to say we're the world leader in 3DIC research in HEP."

Joseph Piergrossi

In the News

New measurements of the most perfect liquid

From Physics, Oct. 8, 2012

For several years, researchers have known that the quark-gluon matter created in the collision of relativistic nuclei has an exceptionally low viscosity. Now, the latest experiments exploring this state of matter are being reported in Physical Review Letters by the collaboration running the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. The team was able to study the quark-gluon matter at higher collision energies and for longer times compared to earlier experiments. As a result, their data will lead to more accurate calculations of the viscosity and expansion of the strongly interacting matter and may help researchers better understand the structure of gluons in high-energy particles.

Read more
In the News

Advanced Photon Source lights the way to 2012 chemistry Nobel

From Argonne National Laboratory, Oct. 10, 2012

ARGONNE, Ill. — Thanks in part to research performed at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded today to Americans Brian Kobilka and Robert Lefkowitz for their work on G-protein-coupled receptors.

Read more
Result of the Week

Charm cross section agrees with theory

This schematic diagram shows how a W and a charmed jet are produced and then decay.

The CDF experiment has observed for the first time collisions that produce a W boson and a charm quark jet.

Protons and antiprotons are made up of quarks and gluons. The CDF experiment observes rare processes in which a quark, usually a strange quark, and a gluon fuse together. The quark and gluon decay into a W boson and a single jet. The W boson is inferred from the observation of a subsequent decay into a highly energetic lepton (muon or electron) and missing transverse energy (neutrino). As to the single jet, here we are looking for a special type, called a
c-jet or charmed jet. The charmed jet decay chain sometimes includes the production of another lepton (see above figure), one of lower energy, that is inside the jet. Finding low-energy leptons inside a jet is complicated, but CDF has been doing this now for quite a long time – since the discovery of the top quark in 1995.

The experiment is further complicated by having large backgrounds. Similar to the signals we are looking for, the main background also consists of a W plus an ordinary jet. To help us distinguish the background W + jets from the signal W + jets, we use what we know about the signals' electrical charges.

The electrical charges of the signal's W and c-jet have opposite signs. For example, if the W has a positive charge (the charge of the high-energy lepton that decays from the W), the c-jet will have negative charge (the charge of the low-energy lepton located inside the jet). Since we seek events with opposite charge, we subtract all events of like charge, leaving only events from the (oppositely charged) signal.

In 2008, we reported seeing such W +
c-jet events, but this is the first measurement in which a signal is observed at a level that will convince everyone (a level larger than 5 sigma). The measured cross section for the process we observe (W plus a single charmed jet) is 13.6 +3.4/-3.1 picobarns and is in agreement with a value of 11.4 ± 1.3 picobarns calculated by John Campbell and Keith Ellis of the Fermilab Theory Department in 1999.

Learn more

edited by Andy Beretvas

These CDF physicists contributed to this data analysis. Top row from left: Lucio Cerrito (University College London), John Paul Chou (Harvard, now at Rutgers). Bottom row from left: Melissa Franklin (Harvard), Shulamit Moed (Fermilab).
In Brief

Physics Advisory Committee meeting - next week

The Fermilab Physics Advisory Committee meets next Monday and Tuesday, Oct. 15 and Oct. 16, to discuss LBNE, Mu2e, CMS and Cosmic Frontier experiments, together with proposals for new accelerator-based experiments.

To view the meeting schedule, visit the PAC Web page.

Photo of the Day

Interior of future Muon Ring

Ruben Carcagno, TD, took this photo of the former antiproton source, which will serve as the Muon Ring when accelerator operations resume in 2013.
Announcements

Today's New Announcements

Sit and Knit in celebration of I Love Yarn Day - Oct. 12

Guest caller at English country and Barn dance - Oct. 14

NALWO bulb and plant exchange event - today

C2ST public lecture: Exploring the Universe - today

The Eerie Silence: E.T., Where Are You? - Oct. 12

Argentine tango classes - begin Oct. 17

NALWO Playgroup Halloween party - Oct. 26

In the Footsteps of Django - Oct. 27

Prescription safety eyewear notice

Applications being accepted for Wilson Fellowship

Abri Credit Union - money just got cheaper

Winter volleyball begins soon

Accelerate to a Healthy Lifestyle update

Mac users: upcoming changes to VPN client software

Professional development courses

Atrium work updates

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