Fermilab features

Scientists on the Dark Energy Survey have used observations of the smallest known galaxies to better understand dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up 85% of the matter in the universe. The smallest galaxies can contain hundreds to thousands of times more dark matter than normal visible matter, making them ideal laboratories for studying this mysterious substance. By performing a rigorous census of small galaxies surrounding our Milky Way, scientists on the Dark Energy Survey have been able to constrain the fundamental particle physics that governs dark matter.

Fermilab scientist Robert Ainsworth has won a $2.5 million Department of Energy Early Career Research Award to study different ways of ensuring stability in high-intensity proton beams. By studying how certain types of beam instabilities emerge and evolve under different conditions, his team can help sharpen scientists’ methods for correcting them or avoiding them to begin with.

On July 22, the Department of Energy’s Under Secretary for Science joined partners and Fermilab leadership for the groundbreaking of the PIP-II cryoplant building and the site dedication for the Integrated Engineering Research Center.

The ArgoNeuT collaboration has published new measurements of the neutrino interaction channel critical for future experiments that seek to understand the difference between matter and antimatter in the world of neutrinos. Their paper presents new strategies for identifying electron neutrinos in liquid-argon neutrino detectors like ArgoNeuT.

Fans of Fermilab know that our scientists are experts in the weird realm of quantum physics. In recent years, they’ve been harnessing the strange properties of the quantum world to develop game-changing technologies in quantum computing, quantum sensors and quantum communication. Learn more about the burgeoning area of quantum information science and how Fermilab is advancing this exciting field.

A dash of virtual reality helps replicate the serendipitous interactions of an in-person conference when participants are scattered across the globe.

Fermilab scientists have broken their own world record for an accelerator magnet. In June, their demonstrator steering dipole magnet achieved a 14.5-tesla field, surpassing the field strength of their 14.1-tesla magnet, which set a record in 2019. This magnet test shows that scientists and engineers can address the demanding requirements for a future particle collider under discussion in the particle physics community.

Scientists have begun operating the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, or DESI, to create a 3-D map of over 30 million galaxies and quasars that will help them understand the nature of dark energy. The new instrument is the most advanced of its kind, with 5,000 robotic positioners that will enable scientists to gather more than 20 times more data than previous surveys. Researchers at Fermilab helped develop the software that will direct these positioners to focus on galaxies several billion light-years away and are currently in the process of fine-tuning the programs used before the last round of testing later this year.

On June 19, scientists at the CMS experiment at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider published their 1,000th paper. The monumental achievement reflects an incomparable contribution to humanity’s understanding of the universe — and it’s just the beginning.

Construction workers have carried out the first underground blasting for the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility, which will provide the space, infrastructure and particle beam for the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. This prep work paves the way for removing more than 800,000 tons of rock to make space for the gigantic DUNE detector a mile underground.