Physicists achieve significant improvement in spotting accelerator-produced neutrinos in a cosmic haystack

Three vertical planes of sense wires stand in the center of this 3D chart that shows on the left how particles flying through the detector create electrons that drift to the sense wires of the detector, and on the right shows electric signals – the waveforms – that these wires will collect as a function of time. To the left, an incoming neutrino travels through the liquid argon of the time projection chamber, and it eventually splits into two charged particles that knock loose electrons in the liquid. To the right of the sense wires, waveforms are shown for the Y plane and the V plane.

Physicists achieve significant improvement in spotting accelerator-produced neutrinos in a cosmic haystack

Press release

Ground-breaking image reconstruction and analysis algorithms developed for surface-based MicroBooNE detector filter out cosmic ray tracks to pinpoint elusive neutrino interactions with unprecedented clarity.

Joint appointment at JGU and Fermilab: Alfons Weber is JGU’s new W3 Professor of Experimental Particle Physics

Press release

Alfons Weber has achieved full professorship teaching Experimental Particle Physics at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. His joint appointment at JGU and Fermilab represents the expansion of PRISMA+ neutrino physics research program.

A starry night sky with purple diagonal stripe from lower left to upper right corner above an observatory lit up in bright red. A shadow of a building or facility is in the lower right corner.

Dark Energy Survey releases most precise look at the universe’s evolution

Press release

The Dark Energy Survey collaboration has created the largest ever maps of the distribution and shapes of galaxies, tracing both ordinary and dark matter in the universe out to a distance of over 7 billion light years. The analysis, which includes the first three years of data from the survey, is consistent with predictions from the current best model of the universe, the standard cosmological model. Nevertheless, there remain hints from DES and other experiments that matter in the current universe is a few percent less clumpy than predicted.

An orange and silver drill rig (a tractor-like apparatus with two parallel arms that reach above the cab and then make a steep diagonal to the ground) and several red and silver drill rigs sit in the foreground of a silty construction site. Other equipment is in the midground and hills filled with evergreens and blue sky above in the background.

Construction crews start lowering equipment a mile underground for excavation for DUNE

Fermilab feature

How do you build a ship in a bottle? Everything necessary to construct the enormous Fermilab-hosted international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment must fit down a narrow, mile-deep shaft cut through solid rock. Contractors have started the months-long process of disassembling excavation equipment and lowering it underground.

At an angle from the second floor looking down into a rectangle of multi-colored, interconnected pipes.

ICARUS gets ready to fly

Fermilab feature

The ICARUS detector, part of Fermilab’s Short-Baseline Neutrino Program, will officially start its hunt for elusive sterile neutrinos this fall. The international collaboration led by Nobel laureate Carlo Rubbia successfully brought the detector online and is now collecting test data and making final improvements.

A person wearing a hardhat stands inside a bright yellow honeycomb-like box that appears to be two or three times their height.

Argonaut project launches design effort for super-cold robotics

Fermilab scientists are developing one of the most cold-tolerant robots ever made so they can monitor the interiors of particle detectors. The project has already garnered some interest from engineers at other research institutions, including NASA.

A tessellated image of a white cap with a blue dot on the right edge, with shadow surrounding. This image is tessellated many times. A single cap, center right, is different: It has a white dot with a white concentric circle around it on top. No blue.

Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument starts 5-year survey

Press release

DESI will capture and study the light from tens of millions of galaxies and other distant objects to better understand our universe and the properties of dark energy. The formal start of DESI’s five-year survey follows a four-month trial run of its custom instrumentation that captured 4-million spectra of galaxies — more than the combined output of all previous spectroscopic surveys. Fermilab has contributed multiple components to the international collaboration led by Berkeley Lab.

Three factoid cards, which look similar to playing cards or a baseball card, appear on a background of stars in a night sky (or in outer space) in a cartoon rendering. On each of the cards is a circle adjusted its sunglasses, presumably each a type of neutrino. Underneath these images on the cards are scribbles representing text and a question mark. In the upper left corner, the abbreviations for electron neutrino, a muon neutrino or a tau neutrino appear.

Which neutrino is the heaviest?

Symmetry feature

Figuring out which type of neutrino is heaviest, or solving the puzzle of neutrino mass hierarchy, would be a huge leap in our understanding of both neutrinos and the physics that govern our universe. The NoVA experiment or DUNE could help physicists do just that.

A man in a dark suit and blue tie sits at a table with a blue tablecloth signing a document. Behind him to the right is a screen on which another man with a charcoal suit signs a document on a table with a blue tablecloth and a 16-story building and reflection pool in the background.

UK to play vital role in creating the world’s most powerful neutrino beam

The Science and Technology Facilities Council, or STFC, has signed an agreement with Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, in the United States, designating how the two organizations will collaborate to build one of the world’s most powerful linear accelerators.

A cartoon-style illustration of a gray outdoor staircase with ornate serpents, tongues out, as the bannisters. Green grass in front, red and purple lightning shapes striking down all over the illustration.

Seeing through walls and breaking down barriers

Symmetry feature

Physicists and archaeologists are teaming up to provide research opportunities for Black and Hispanic undergraduates to image an archaeological site in Mexico using muon tomography. Fermilab personnel will help with the project, and Fermilab will also produce the scintillators for use in the muon detector.

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