Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2014
spacer
Search
spacer
Calendar

Tuesday, Aug. 19

9 a.m.-5:30 p.m.
Fermilab-CERN Hadron Collider Physics Summer Symposium

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

THERE WILL BE NO ACCELERATOR PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR THIS WEEK

Wednesday, Aug. 20

9 a.m.-5 p.m.
Fermilab-CERN Hadron Collider Physics Summer Symposium

9:30 a.m.
All-hands celebration - Auditorium

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

4 p.m.
Fermilab Colloquium - One West
Speaker: Tim Meyer, Fermilab
Title: World Peace and other Aspects of Particle Physics

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

Ongoing and upcoming conferences at Fermilab

Weather
Weather Chance of thunderstorms
83°/64°

Extended forecast
Weather at Fermilab

Current Flag Status

Flags at half staff

Wilson Hall Cafe

Tuesday, Aug. 19

- Breakfast: All-American breakfast
- Breakfast: bacon, egg and cheese bagel
- Ranch chicken breast sandwich
- Smart cuisine: baked Cajun catfish
- Puerto Rican rice and pigeon peas
- California turkey panino
- Shrimp and crab scampi
- Minnesota chicken and rice soup
- Chef's choice soup
- Assorted pizza by the slice

Wilson Hall Cafe menu

Chez Leon

Wednesday, Aug. 20
Lunch
- Grilled vegetable lasagna
- Red cabbage and spinach salad
- Ricotta cheesecake with fresh berry topping

Friday, Aug. 22
Dinner
- Gazpacho salad
- Spicy flank steak
- Habanero pilaf
- Calabacitas
- Banana taco with papaya and strawberry salsa

Chez Leon menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

Archives

Fermilab Today

Director's Corner

Frontier Science Result

Physics in a Nutshell

Tip of the Week

User University Profiles

Related content

Info

Fermilab Today
is online at:
www.fnal.gov/today/

Send comments and suggestions to:
today@fnal.gov

Visit the Fermilab
home page

Unsubscribe from Fermilab Today

Feature

LArIAT begins taking data

Jason St. John, LArIAT run coordinator, explains how the project collects data. Photo: Hanae Armitage

On June 27 Fermilab's LArIAT project collected its first diagnostic data.

Currently, LArIAT, which stands for Liquid-Argon TPC in a Test beam, is taking only beam characterization data, meaning that researchers carefully track and analyze the different patterns of particles that are produced by the beamline used in their experiment. The LArIAT team hopes that by the end of this first data-taking period, the beam will be acutely tuned to their needs — having a low energy range and producing a variety of particles, including electrons, protons, positrons, muons, pions and a few kaons.

So far, the team is making great progress.

"We made simulations of what we could expect from the beamline, and amazingly, when we got the first raw data — without even removing background noise — the distribution of energy of particles that we produced were overlapping one to one with our simulation," said Flavio Cavanna, one of LArIAT's co-spokespersons.

A week later, Cavanna and fellow co-spokesperson Jennifer Raaf presented their nice new results at an LBNE collaboration meeting.

While they continue to take beamline data, LArIAT is also preparing for the future as, ultimately, a calibration and verification system for Fermilab's neutrino projects. The idea is to shoot known particles at a liquid-argon time projection chamber — a type of detector — to see how well the project's computer algorithms can reconstruct and identify specific interaction events.

"In neutrino experiments we mostly have to infer what's going in based on what we see coming out of the interaction," Raaf said. "But in a test beam, we send in charged particles, and, since we know what's going in, we can see how well the data matches up with what we expect to see based on the particle we send in."

The LArIAT team is working diligently to line up the remaining pieces of the project in hopes of taking full data by the beginning of next year.

Hanae Armitage

Video of the Day

Got a minute? Measuring energy at the LHC

Measuring energy in particle detectors is a key requirement for making many measurements. Fermilab's Andrew Whitbeck tells us about one way to do that. View the video. Video: U.S. CMS
Photos of the Day

Pale-leaved sunflower: three views

Helianthus strumosus, or the pale-leaved sunflower, grows along the side of the Pine Street. Photos: Elliott McCrory, AD
In the News

At multiverse impasse, a new theory of scale

From Quanta Magazine, Aug. 18, 2014

Though galaxies look larger than atoms and elephants appear to outweigh ants, some physicists have begun to suspect that size differences are illusory. Perhaps the fundamental description of the universe does not include the concepts of "mass" and "length," implying that at its core, nature lacks a sense of scale.

This little-explored idea, known as scale symmetry, constitutes a radical departure from long-standing assumptions about how elementary particles acquire their properties. But it has recently emerged as a common theme of numerous talks and papers by respected particle physicists. With their field stuck at a nasty impasse, the researchers have returned to the master equations that describe the known particles and their interactions, and are asking: What happens when you erase the terms in the equations having to do with mass and length?

Read more

Director's Corner

Doing our part to make the P5 vision a reality

Fermilab Director
Nigel Lockyer

Three months ago the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5) released its recommendations for the future of particle physics in the United States. Many lab employees, users and members of the broader scientific community have worked hard this summer to kick-start the effort to achieve the P5 vision. Today's column provides an update of where we stand in our effort to align the lab's priorities and activities to match those recommended by P5.

Building a world-leading neutrino physics program
The biggest challenge P5 delivered to our laboratory is to host a world-leading short- and long-baseline neutrino physics program. Since May, Fermilab's neutrino team has worked intensely with national and international partners to lay the groundwork for a forefront short-baseline program and for the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility.

We are moving forward on two fronts toward LBNF. Joe Lykken is working with funding agency representatives to propose a model that will transform our lab into one that can host international projects. This will be no easy feat, and this group is working hard to propose a mechanism that will work within the DOE system and allow international funding agencies to feel ownership of and be able to review projects hosted by Fermilab. On the second front, more than 50 members of the international neutrino community came to a late-July summit at Fermilab. As a result of the meeting, an Interim International Executive Board was formed that will guide the scientific strategy for LBNF. The IIEB will also steer the community toward submitting a letter of intent to our Physics Advisory Committee this fall and a conceptual design report for the experiment by next summer.

On the accelerator side, Steve Holmes has been leading a very active effort to redirect our SRF R&D program to support the PIP-II project, which will produce megawatt neutrino beams for LBNF. PIP-II's cornerstone will be the construction of a new Superconducting Linac (SCL) that will make excellent use of the infrastructure and expertise we have developed through our ILC R&D efforts and are currently exercising through our contributions to SLAC's LCLS-II project.

Support for CMS and LHC upgrades
As the U.S. host laboratory for the CMS experiment and the lab with lead responsibilities for U.S. contributions to the high-luminosity LHC accelerator upgrade, we have a major role to play in supporting these high-priority projects. We are committed to helping the LHC community succeed and look forward to the discoveries to come. First up will be the Phase 1 upgrades for the LHC experiments. Congratulations go to the CMS upgrade team for a successful DOE CD-2/3 review earlier this month. The LHC Accelerator Research Program continues to pass milestones in its high-field magnet and crab cavity R&D and is moving toward implementing this work in a construction project for the high-luminosity LHC.

Moving forward on dark matter and dark energy
In July the DOE and NSF jointly announced their selections for the second-generation dark-matter program, including the SuperCDMS project, which will build a large detector in Canada's SNOLAB to search for low-mass dark-matter particles. We are working actively with our many SuperCDMS partners to advance the experiment following the agencies' announcement. The other dark-matter efforts in which we participate, including DarkSide, DAMIC and COUPP/PICO, will continue to take data with their current experiments. We also provide leadership for the Dark Energy Survey, which just began its second season and will remain the world's forefront dark-energy experiment for the rest of its five-year run, and support for the community's other high-priority efforts, including DESI and LSST.

Exploring the unknown through muons
The P5 plan identified our Mu2e and Muon g-2 projects as immediate targets of opportunity in the search for new physics and recommended their timely completion. The Muon g-2 electromagnet slid safely into its new home at the end of July, marking the end of a year-long, 3,200-mile journey. The very active Muon g-2 collaboration is now installing the magnet and preparing to take data in 2017. The Mu2e project also took a big step forward in July, receiving DOE approval to purchase 45 miles of custom-made superconducting cables. As the cables will take more than a year to fabricate, this gives the collaboration a jump-start on preparations to run in 2020.

The level of effort that has taken place over the last three months is proof of the excitement the P5 plan has inspired among the particle physics community and our lab's employees. Our collective dedication to achieving the panel's vision points to an even faster pace of progress over the next months and years.

Announcements

Today's New Announcements

NBI 2014 Workshop - Sept. 23-26

Walk 2 Run offers two time slots in August

eBook by head of Technical Division available at the Fermilab Library

Zumba Toning and Zumba Fitness registration

International folk dancing Thursday evenings at Ramsey through August

Scottish country dancing Tuesday evenings at Ramsey through August

English country dancing at Kuhn Barn

Bowlers wanted

Outdoor soccer

Batavia Smashburger employee discount