In the news

From Crain’s Chicago Business, Aug. 26, 2020: Chicago’s two national laboratories, Fermilab and Argonne, have been picked to lead national research centers for quantum computing that will receive $115 million each over the next five years. Fermilab will lead the Superconducting Quantum
Materials and Systems Center, which will take on one of the main problems of quantum technology: the length of time that a qubit, the basic element of a quantum computer, can maintain information.

From Pour la Science, Aug. 24, 2020: Les neutrinos existent en trois variétés, mais certains indices suggèrent l’existence d’une quatrième, qui pourrait jouer un rôle important en cosmologie. Des expériences sont en cours afin de détecter ces hypothétiques particules. Les données de MiniBooNE n’ont fait qu’appuyer davantage les arguments en faveur de cette quatrième saveur de neutrino.

From Futurism, Aug. 19, 2020: When an ambitious new Fermilab-hosted experiment called DUNE begins its work, physicists believe they’ll be able to learn a whole lot more about supernova explosions than ever before. That’s because DUNE is expected to be sensitive to an extremely elusive particle called a neutrino that’s blasted far and wide across the cosmos when a star explodes. According to a new paper shared online on Saturday, physicists expect DUNE to scoop up a never-before-detected kind of neutrino and, in doing so, break down why and how stars die in unprecedented detail.

From the Department of Energy, Aug. 17, 2020: Seven DOE national laboratories, including Fermilab, will lead a total of 14 projects aimed at both automating facility operations and managing data modeling, acquisition, mining, and analysis for the interpretation of experimental results. The projects involve large X-ray light sources, neutron scattering sources, particle accelerators and nanoscale science research centers.

From New Atlas, Aug. 12, 2020: An extensive search for a hypothetical particle has turned up empty. The sterile neutrino is a proposed subatomic particle that could even be a candidate for the mysterious dark matter, and although previous studies have hinted at its existence, and the MINOS+ and Daya Bay experiments have all but ruled it out.

From APS Physics, Aug. 10, 2020: Fermilab scientist Pedro Machado co-authors this article on how the MINOS and MINOS+ experiments at Fermilab and the Daya Bay experiment have placed the most stringent limits to date on a hypothetical fourth neutrino. Still, the possibility that such a particle exists remains open.

From the Department of Energy, Aug. 11, 2020: Fermilab scientist Chris Polly shares his love of physics, the importance of muons, a short history of scientists’ quest to measure how the muon wobbles in a magnetic field, and his journey to becoming leader of the Muon g-2 experiment.

From Forbes, Aug. 10, 2020: The Department of Energy announced the development of a national quantum internet, with DOE national laboratories forming the backbone. The Chicago Quantum Exchange is a meeting place for collaboration and community creation for national laboratories Argonne and Fermilab, University of Chicago, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Northwestern University, and a number of large corporations.

From Argonne National Laboratory, Aug. 5, 2020: The U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research Leadership Computing Challenge has awarded 24 projects a total of 5.74 million node hours at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility to pursue challenging, high-risk, high-payoff simulations. Fermilab scientists Andreas Kronfeld and Igor Rakhno are among those who have been awarded time on the facility’s Theta supercomputer.

From Photonics, July 27, 2020: The U.S. Department of Energy has unveiled a blueprint strategy for the development of a national quantum internet, reaffirming its commitment to widening the nation’s quantum capabilities by relying on its 17 national laboratories to serve as the backbone of the coming quantum internet and the secure transmission of information.