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	Tuesday, May 24, 2011

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Calendar

Have a safe day!

Tuesday, May 24
11 a.m.
Accelerator Physics and Technology Seminar (NOTE TIME) - One West
Speaker: Chan Joshi, University of California, Los Angeles
Title: The Future of Plasma Wakefield Acceleration
3 p.m.
LHC Physics Center Topic of the Week Seminar - Sunrise WH11NE
Speaker: Stephen Mrenna, Fermilab
Title: SUSY on the Back of an Envelope – Part 1
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
4 p.m.
Accelerator Physics and Technology Seminar One West
Speaker: Charles E. Reece, Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility
Title: Production and Performance of SRF Cavities for the CEBAF 12 GeV Upgrade and JLab SRF Facilities Upgrade Plans

Wednesday, May 25
2 p.m.
LHC Physics Center Topic of the Week Seminar Sunrise WH11NE
Speaker: Stephen Mrenna, Fermilab
Title: SUSY on the Back of an Envelope – Part 2
3:30 p.m.
DIRECTOR'S COFFEE BREAK - 2nd Flr X-Over
THERE WILL BE NO FERMILAB COLLOQUIUM THIS WEEK

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

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Weather

Partly sunny
64°/49°

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Current Security Status

Secon Level 3

Wilson Hall Cafe

Tuesday, May 24

- Breakfast: Bagel sandwich
- Creamy turkey vegetable soup
- Chili dog
- Country-fried steak
- Chicken Cacciatore
- Italian panini w/ provolone
- Assorted sliced pizza
- Southwestern chicken burrito

Wilson Hall Cafe Menu

Chez Leon

Wednesday, May 25
Lunch
- Chopped shrimp Waldorf salad
- Strawberry cheesecake

Friday, May 27
Closed

Chez Leon Menu
Call x3524 to make your reservation.

Annual Users' Meeting offers new results, peek into future

This year’s annual Users' Meeting will feature new results from the Tevatron, Fermilab’s neutrino experiments, and high-energy physics results from CMS, as well as discussions on future experiments and plans. The meeting, which will take place on Wednesday, June 1, and Thursday, June 2, will also provide Fermilab employees and users a chance to learn more about international physics projects.

All Fermilab employees are invited to attend.

“We’ve got a great line up of presentations this year,” said Todd Adams, Users' Executive Committee chair. “This is a chance for individuals from the high-energy physics community to hear fresh physics results and get a great overview of what is happening at current and future experiments at the frontier of particle physics.”

Fermilab’s Graduate Student Association will also give talks and hold a poster session as part of their New Perspectives conference on May 31.

“We’re working closely with the Graduate Student Association to encourage the participation of young scientists at the Users' Meeting and New Perspectives conference,” said William Wester, Users' Meeting chair.”

Meeting attendees can also submit a proposal to give a five-minute presentation on a topic of their choice during a town hall meeting that will take place on Thursday, June 2. Proposals should include one slide and can be sent to William Wester or Todd Adams.

Other topics slated for the two-day meeting include updates on the SeaQuest experiment, the Dark Energy Survey and MINERvA and results from other projects at the Energy, Intensity and Cosmic Frontiers.

This year’s highlights also include a lecture by the Acting Associate Director of DOE's Office of High-Energy Physics Mike Procario and a talk about KEK's future plans by KEK Director General Atsuto Suzuki.

A public lecture given by Secretary of Energy Steven Chu will take place at 8 p.m. on Thursday, June 2, in Ramsey Auditorium. Tickets for the public lecture are free, but must be reserved. Secure tickets by contacting the Fermilab Box Office, 630-840-ARTS.

Registration is free and is required to attend all scientific and social functions. A catered barbeque dinner will take place on Wednesday, June 1. A special Festa Italiana honoring the 150th anniversary of a united Italy will take place after Chu’s lecture.

— Rhianna Wisniewski

Feature

Aran Garcia-Bellido receives prestigious DOE award

Aran Garcia-Bellido

More thorough analyses of the large amount of existing particle-collision data from the Tevatron and LHC have potential to reveal new physics beyond the Standard Model, and Aran Garcia-Bellido hopes to be a key player in making these discoveries.

Garcia-Bellido, assistant professor at the University of Rochester and collaborator on the DZero and CMS experiments, is a recipient of the DOE Early Career Research Award for his research proposal titled, “Precision physics and searches with top and bottom quark.” The financial award will provide five years of funding to support the work.

— Christine Herman

Fermilab Press Release

National laboratories offer computing time to Japanese physicists in wake of earthquake

May 23, 2011 – Computational power from facilities at three U.S. Department of Energy national laboratories is aiding Japanese physicists in their quest to understand the interactions that lie at the heart of matter. From now until the end of 2011, while computing facilities in eastern Japan face continuing electricity shortages, a percentage of the computing power at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory near Chicago and Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Virginia will be made available to the Japanese Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) community.

Lattice QCD is a computational technique used to study the interactions of quarks and gluons, the basic building blocks of 99 percent of visible matter. Such calculations require enormous computing power, and as a result groups of QCD physicists worldwide have built dedicated high-performance computing facilities designed specifically for Lattice QCD calculations. In eastern Japan following the devastating earthquake in March 2011, such facilities are turned off during periods of high electricity usage to ensure that power is available for essential activities.

In the News

Atom-smasher retires; lab makes career switch

From The New York Times, May 21, 2011

When scientists at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced last month that they might have discovered a new elementary particle or fundamental force of nature, it was likely the swan song of the lab’s Tevatron accelerator, once the most powerful atom-smasher in the world.

That title now belongs to the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, which is designed to generate seven times Tevatron’s peak energy. Scientists hope the $10 billion accelerator will take them closer to understanding both the micro world of subatomic particles and the origins of the universe and its likely future.

Director's Corner

Users' Meeting 2011

Fermilab Director Pier Oddone

The 44th edition of the Users' Meeting will take place on June 1 and 2, and it should be very exciting. The Users' Meeting is a well-established tradition at Fermilab. Every year it showcases results from the entire Fermilab experimental program, alongside discussions of the lab’s future program and presentations from government officials about policies applicable to particle physics. This year we are very fortunate to have the Secretary of Energy, Dr. Steven Chu, presenting the Meeting’s public lecture at 8 p.m. on June 2.

This year has a special edge as we approach the end of data collection at the Tevatron. This remarkable machine is achieving luminosities considered impossible decades ago with antiprotons -- more than 4 x 10³² cm^-2sec^-1 instantaneous luminosity, with 11 femtobarns of accumulated luminosity recently celebrated.

The Tevatron’s two international collaborations CDF and DZero have many achievements of their own, including major discoveries that have established our Standard Model of particle physics. There is still juice left in the Tevatron and we may yet establish processes beyond the Standard Model if some of the collaborations’ recent results are confirmed. We also have hints of unexpected results in the neutrino sector, with neutrino oscillation data from MiniBooNE and MINOS.

Looking to the future, MINERvA is laying the foundation for understanding different nuclear targets, NOvA construction is proceeding well, and there are new proposals to extend MINOS running. The Dark Energy Survey is nearing completion, better detectors are in development for the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search, and the COUPP dark matter search is operating a small prototype at Sudbury and a larger 60 kg prototype in the NuMI tunnel. Pierre Auger continues to provide interesting results with ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. And the LHC is working splendidly and results are coming out at a fast pace.

We are also in a critical year for two long-term projects, LBNE and Project X. In addition to Project X’s broad Intensity Frontier physics program, it can serve as a foundation for a neutrino factory if one is needed to fully understand the physics of neutrinos. Looking even farther ahead, we are studying the feasibility of muon colliders as a path back to the Energy Frontier.

All this activity augurs a great Users' Meeting next week.

In the News

Experiments at the Large Hadron Collider - How are discoveries made?

From CERN: The Bulletin, May 23, 2011

With the LHC up and running, some might imagine physicists just waiting for a Higgs boson to pop up in one of the four experiments, before publishing a paper and moving on to solve science’s next Big Mystery. However this picture is very far from the reality of experimental particle physics today, where results are based on statistics, statistics and yet more statistics.

This is because new particles are hardly ever detected directly. Depending on the design of the experiment, there can be several centimetres between the collision point and the first layer of detector electronics. This is a vast distance on the scale of a subatomic particle. Particles created in the collisions interact and indeed decay before ever reaching the detector.

Accelerator Update

May 20-23

- Four stores provided ~47.25 hours of luminosity
- NuMI off for target repairs
- Tevatron personnel conducted hollow-beam studies
- Tevatron quenched during transfer of antiprotons
- EE support repaired Tevatron quadrupole regulator's load cable
- Lightning strike on the evening of May 22 caused recycler kickers to prefire, the loss of the stash, and lost communication with Pelletron

*The integrated luminosity for the period from 5/16/11 to 5/23/11 was 59.22 inverse picobarns. NuMI took 4.73E16 of beam during this same time period.

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

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