In the news

From the Chicago Quantum Exchange, July 7, 2020: The Chicago Quantum Exchange has added to its community seven new corporate partners in computing, technology and finance that are working to bring about and primed to take advantage of the coming quantum revolution. These new industry partners are Intel, JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Quantum Design, Qubitekk, Rigetti Computing, and Zurich Instruments. The Chicago Quantum Exchange is anchored by the University of Chicago, Fermilab, Argonne National Laboratory and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and it includes the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Northwestern University.

From Department of Energy, July 6, 2020: DOE announces $132 million in funding for 64 university research awards on a range of topics in high-energy physics to advance knowledge of how the universe works at its most fundamental level. Projects include experimental work on neutrinos at Fermilab, the search for dark matter, studies of the nature of dark energy and the expansion of the universe with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument and and investigation of the Higgs boson from data collected at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland.

From New Scientist, July 1, 2020: Fermilab theorist Gordan Krnjaic and Fermilab postdoc Daniel Carney of the University of Maryland are quoted in this article on efforts to sense its minuscule gravitational force as it brushes past us.

From Physics, July 2, 2020: Fermilab scientist Marcela Carena is quoted in this overview of the European Strategy for Particle Physics Update. The update outlines a number of current and future priorities, including international neutrino experiments such as the forthcoming Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, hosted by Fermilab, and the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider. It also prioritizes a 100-kilometer circular collider.

From Daily Sabah, June 30, 2020: This profile of Fermilab scientist Emrah Tiras starts with his childhood in Turkey and ends with his work on the ANNIE and NOvA Fermilab neutrino experiments.

From Scientific American, July 2020: Evidence for the existence of a sterile neutrino is compelling, but the idea that certain experiments might be detecting a fourth neutrino remains controversial. Projects around the world seek to settle the matter, including Fermilab’s Short-Baseline Neutrino program.

From The Innovation Platform, July 10, 2020: In this Q&A, Mauricio Suarez, Illinois Accelerator Research Center head and Fermilab deputy head of technology development and industry engagements, discusses the development of compact particle accelerators, using accelerators for the environment and in medicine, and commercializing technologies developed for high-energy physics.

From Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, June 17, 2020: While COVID-19 risks had led to a temporary halt in fabrication work on high-power superconducting magnets built by a collaboration of three national labs for an upgrade of the world’s largest particle collider at CERN in Europe, researchers at Berkeley Lab are still carrying out some project tasks. Fermilab scientist Giorgio Apollinari, head of the U.S.-based magnet effort for the HL-LHC, is quoted in this piece.

From Science News, June 17, 2020: An experiment searching for cosmic dark matter may have finally detected something. But it’s not dark matter. Scientists with the XENON1T experiment reported data June 17 showing an unexpectedly large number of blips within their detector. Fermilab scientist Dan Hooper is quoted in this piece.

From Scientific American, June 9, 2020: Dark matter researchers are reassessing theories about how dark matter particles lighter than a proton might appear in their detectors. In a recent paper, Fermilab scientists Noah Kurinsky and Gordan Krnjaic propose that a detector could find plasmons — aggregates of electrons moving together in a material — produced by dark matter.