cryogenics

Plans are moving ahead for the liquid nitrogen refrigeration system which will use liquid nitrogen to cool the 17,500 tons of liquid argon that will fill the neutrino detectors at the Long Baseline Neutrino Facility in the Sanford Lab. The system is expected to be built by 2026, and operational underground by the end of 2026 to support the installation of some detector elements, and the operations of the full facility starting in early 2028.

From SLAC, August 31, 2022: Fermilab researchers worked with a team of 20 operators and engineers at SLAC on cryogenics to build a helium-refrigeration plant to lower the LCLS-II accelerator to superconducting temperatures. Now, it only takes one and a half hours to make a superconducting particle accelerator at SLAC colder than outer space.

From the DOE Office of Science, Aug. 25: The DOE Office of Science announced 10 DOE national laboratory projects, including one led by Fermilab, have been selected to receive funding as part of research related to microelectronics co-design. Senior engineer Davide Braga’s work on hybrid cryogenic detector architectures for sensing and edge computing enabled by new fabrication processes was chosen as one of the 10 awards.