Between Monday, May 2, and Monday, May 9, Fermilab achieved several luminosity records.
Four of the top ten initial luminosity stores were achieved last week, including store 8709, which set a record of 4.31 x 1032 cm-2s-1, or 431 µb-1/s, on May 3. The unit of measurement µb-1/s is roughly equivalent to 70,000 proton-antiproton collisions per second.
During the same week, the Accelerator Division also reached a new average integrated luminosity record for a single calendar week of 76.5 inverse picobarns. The achievement replaces the previous record of 73.1 inverse picobarns, which was set during the week of April 13-20, 2009.
Fermilab also exceeded the 168-hour floating-week integrated luminosity record of more than 81 inverse picobarns.
There are two ways to express the likelihood of collisions, or luminosity, during any particular store: peak luminosity, which describes the initial (and highest) luminosity in a store, and integrated luminosity, which describes how many total collisions are produced over the lifetime of that store.