Fermilab welcomes CALICE
to Test Beam facility

Members of the CALICE collaboration and Fermilab scientists take a break from installing the experiment in the Meson Test Beam Facility at Fermilab.

One of Fermilab's most distinct buildings now has a new resident. Last month, members of the CALICE collaboration moved their calorimeters into the newly renovated Meson Test Beam Facility. They will test the calorimeters with low- and high-energy particle beams during the next two years.

"Fermilab is very pleased to host the collaboration," said Fermilab physicist Marcel Demarteau. "We redesigned our beamline at the test beam facility to satisfy the CALICE collaboration's needs."

The international Calorimeter for the Linear Collider Experiment collaboration previously tested their hadron and electromagnetic calorimeters at DESY and CERN. By testing at Fermilab, the 200-member collaboration will have access to beams at low energies and closer proximity to U.S. institutions that produce technologies for CALICE. There are eight U.S. institutions involved, including the University of Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory and Northern Illinois University in Illinois.

Calorimeters are detector systems that measure the energy of particles. CALICE's fine-grain hadron and electomagentic calorimeters are designed to detect the energy of each particle passing through the detector.

Tests of the CALICE calorimeters will most directly impact decisions on which technologies are best for an electron-positron linear collider, such as the proposed ILC. But CALICE project head Felix Sefkow said that the results will have broader uses.

"The results will have an impact on understanding calorimetry already in existence and under construction, such as experiments at the Tevatron or at the LHC," Sefkow said.

CALICE will receive beam during three, three-week periods each year. Between beam-delivery periods, CALICE collaboration members will swap out technologies to see which elements work best.

The CALICE experiment currently includes an electromagnetic calorimeter containing a mostly European-made electromagnetic calorimeter with silicon sensors. Scientists will swap this out for a Japanese-made scintillator-based model this fall. In 2009, scientists will swap the current scintillator-based hadron calorimeter for a gaseous-based model built in the U.S. The tests will help to decide which technologies a future collider experiment should use.

"CALICE cross cuts the ILC efforts in calorimetry. No detector design effort proceeds without this test beam step," said Erik Ramberg, head of the Meson Test Beam facility.

-- Rhianna Wisniewski

Giving back to Mother Earth

Rich Kujath, a senior groundskeeper with Roads and Grounds, and Marilyn Dixon, Directorate, roll a tree into an already-dug hole. The tree planting was part of Fermilab's celebration of Earth and Arbor days. About 50 people attended the event and planted 65 trees.

Of budgets and black holes

From The Economist, May 1, 2008

From outside, the huge silver doughnut looks like a flight of vain architectural fancy, or perhaps a racetrack for very superior greyhounds. Racetrack turns out to be nearer the truth-but it is electrons, not animals, that are doing laps. Energised by huge magnets, they accelerate to close to the speed of light, before a final series of wiggles persuades them to emit beams of tightly focused, fiercely energetic X-rays. These are then used by researchers to probe the fundamental structure of anything from Dead Sea scrolls too fragile to open, to samples of avian-flu virus, aircraft wings or ancient bones.

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