Fermilab Today

Thursday, October 23, 2003

Thursday, October 23
1:30 p.m. (NOTE TIME) Theoretical Physics Seminar - Curia II Speaker: J. Besprosvany, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico
Title: Standard-Model Parameters from Spin-Extended Models and Compositeness
3:00 p.m. Fermilab Long Range Planning Committee Open Session: Linear Collider - 1 West
* Goals and Orientation (S. Holmes)
* Accelerator R&D: Opportunities and Resources (D. Finley)
* Detector R&D: Opportunities and Resources (E. Fisk)
* Outreach and International (J. Butler)
* “The Plan” (S. Holmes)
- Strategic elements
- Prototype recommendations
THERE WILL BE NO DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK TODAY
THERE WILL BE NO ACCELERATOR PHYSICS AND TECHNOLOGY SEMINAR TODAY

Friday, October 24
1:30 p.m. Computing Techniques Seminar (NOTE DATE and TIME) - 1 West
Speaker: H. Hinnant, Metrowerks
Title: Inside std::vector
3:30 p.m. Wine & Cheese - 2nd Flr X-Over
4:00 p.m. Joint Experimental Theoretical Physics Seminar - 1 West
Speaker: S. Westerhoff, Columbia University
Title: HiRes: Mapping the High Energy Universe

Thursday, October 23
Wild mushroom bisque
Baked ziti w/sweet marinara sauce and melted mozzarella $3.50
Slow roasted pork loin w/carmelized onion pan gravy $4.75
Roasted turkey and creamy brie w/wild greens $4.75
Jack crab quesadilla w/peppers and onions grilled on a flavored tortilla w/melted jack cheese $4.75
Sushi

Eurest Dining Center Weekly Menu
Chez Leon

Partly Cloudy 58º/33º

Extended Forecast

Weather at Fermilab

Secon Level 3

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

Submit items to
today@fnal.gov

Fermilab Today archive

Fermilab Today classifieds

Subscribe/Unsubscribe to Fermilab Today

Helping Hands During the Shutdown: A Series of Profiles
During the current accelerator shutdown, many Fermilab employees have been helping out across organizational lines. Over the final weeks of the shutdown, Fermilab Today will highlight a few of the people who have pitched in for the shutdown.

The series begins today with:
From Circuits to Vacuums: A Profile of Carl Lundberg

Carl Lundberg

Carl Lundberg, a former operator in the old Research Division control room, normally puts his expertise in electronics to work for the Particle Physics Division. But when he volunteered to help out in the Beams Division during the shutdown, extra hands were needed to work on vacuum systems, a new area for Lundberg.

"As always, Carl applied himself to learn what needed doing," said Dan Johnson, deputy head of Operations.

A 23-year Fermilab veteran, Lundberg usually builds and tests circuit boards, but for the past few weeks he and a few colleagues have expanded a regular vacuum team of two into a force of seven. Updates include new collimators for cutting the beam's halo in the Booster, and new pipe components with different field characteristics. With sufficient guidance, and a fair amount of adaptability, Lundberg and fellow volunteers "just dove into it."

Yesterday Fermilab Today ran a story about the 10-year service award recipients. Ann Nestander, of the Beams Division, was not included in the list of names that appeared in the article. Fermilab Today sends many apologies to Ann!

Ann Nestander is third from the left in the back row.

October 20 - October 22
- Linac technicians replace two RF power amplifiers
- Booster RF stations tested
- The Cockcroft-Walton Accelerator

View the current accelerator update
View the Tevatron Luminosity Charts

From Scientific American, November 2003
The Future of String Theory -- A Conversation with Brian Greene

Brian Greene
(Photo courtesy
Randy Harris)

String theory used to get everyone all tied up in knots. Even its practitioners fretted about how complicated it was, while other physicists mocked its lack of experimental predictions. The rest of the world was largely oblivious. Scientists could scarcely communicate just why string theory was so exciting--why it could fulfill Albert Einstein's dream of the ultimate unified theory, how it could give insight into such deep questions as why the universe exists at all. But in the mid-1990s the theory started to click together conceptually. It made some testable, if qualified, predictions. The outside world began to pay attention. Woody Allen satirized the theory in a New Yorker column this past July--probably the first time anyone has used Calabi-Yau spaces to make a point about interoffice romance.
read more

CDF, DZero publish combined electroweak results

Results on the mass of the W boson obtained at hadron and lepton colliders and comparison with the Standard Model prediction.

In the first joint publication ever by CDF and DZero, the two experiments have combined their individual results to obtain the most precise W and Z boson measurements from the Tevatron to date. For example, the ratio of W and Z production rates has been measured: R=10.59+-0.23. The decay width of the W boson is now known to 2.5% accuracy. The mass of the W boson, fundamental to the electroweak theory, is determined to better than one-in-a-thousand accuracy: M_W = 80456+-59 MeV (see figure above).

Combined efforts such as this one will facilitate the interpretation of results from the Tevatron, currently the world's only source of W and

Ashutosh Kotwal

Ashutosh Kotwal
Z bosons, by the physics community at large. For example, the mass of the W boson is crucial in pinning down the mass of the as-yet unobserved Higgs boson, the centerpiece of the electroweak theory, affecting experiments at future accelerators.

Precise tests of Standard Model theory are made possible by the large samples of W and Z bosons, the massive carriers of the electroweak force, produced at the Tevatron in Run I. The even-larger data sets now being collected at the improved detectors in Run II should yield a significant increase in precision, providing the harbingers of exciting new physics.


Sarah Eno (left), University of Maryland, and Martin Grunewald (right), University College Dublin, both of DZero, and Ashutosh Kotwal (above), Duke University, CDF, collaborated on the combined W result.

The Musical Arts Quintet

Free Lunchtime Recital Today
There will be a free lunch recital at noon on Thursday, October 23 in the auditorium by the Musical Arts Quintet, woodwind quintet in residence at Ball State University. The group includes Janet MacKay-Galbraith, flute; Carrie Vecchione, oboe; Stan Geidel, clarinet; Keith Sweger, bassoon; and Fred Ehnes, french horn. Program includes music by Samuel Barber, George Onslow, Paquito D'Rivera and the premiere of a new work by Anthony Iannoccone, commisioned by the Meet The Composer consortium.