Fermilab, international partners break ground on new beamline for the world’s most advanced neutrino experiment
With a ceremony held today, Fermilab joined with its international partners to break ground on a new beamline that will help scientists learn more about ghostly particles called neutrinos. The beamline is part of the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility, which will house the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, an international endeavor to build and operate the world’s most advanced experiment to study neutrinos.
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Discovery of a new type of particle beam instability
Fermilab scientist Alexey Burov has discovered that accelerator scientists misinterpreted a certain collection of phenomena found in intense proton beams for decades. Researchers had misidentified these beam instabilities, assigning them to particular class when, in fact, they belong to a new type of class: convective instabilities. In a paper published this year, Burov explains the problem and proposes a more effective suppression of the unwanted beam disorder.
How do you make the world’s most powerful neutrino beam?
The Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment will tackle some of the biggest mysteries in physics — and to do so, it will need the most intense high-energy beam of neutrinos ever created. Engineers are up to the complicated task, which will need extreme versions of some common-sounding ingredients: magnets and pencil lead.
DOE awards Fermilab and partners $3.2 million for Illinois quantum network
Researchers are wielding quantum physics, technologies and expertise to develop a proposed Illinois Express Quantum Network, which would stretch between Fermilab and Northwestern University’s Evanston and Chicago campuses. The metropolitan-scale, quantum-classical hybrid design combines quantum technologies with existing classical networks to create a multinode system for multiple users.
Transitions into medical physics
Scientists who moved from particle physics or astrophysics to medical physics sit down with Symmetry to talk about life, science and career changes.
Prep work to start for DUNE-related construction at Fermilab
Site preparation work starts at Fermilab this fall for the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. Contractors will begin site prep where the powerful particle beam will be extracted and sent toward its final destination in South Dakota.
Fermilab in the news
From Physics World, Nov. 13, 2019: In her new book “Fire, Ice and Physics: the Science of Game of Thrones,” Rebecca C Thompson, head of the Office of Education and Public Outreach at Fermilab, analyzes “Game of Thrones” fan theories by looking at actual physics.
From Science, Nov. 12, 2019: Three years ago, a team of particle astrophysicists appeared to nix the idea that a faint glow of gamma rays in the heart of our Milky Way galaxy could be emanating from dark matter. But the conclusion that the gamma rays come instead from more ordinary sources may have been too hasty, the team reports in a new study. So the dark matter hypothesis may be alive and well after all. Fermilab scientist Dan Hooper is quoted in this article.
From Northwestern University, Nov. 8, 2019: Northwestern and Fermilab researchers, including Fermilab scientists Anna Grassellino and Alexander Romanenko, show how impurities can increase the maximum accelerating field of superconducting radio-frequency cavities, a finding with huge potential cost advantages.