The Fermilab NOvA neutrino experiment announced that it has seen strong evidence of muon antineutrinos oscillating into electron antineutrinos over long distances, a phenomenon that has never been unambiguously observed. Image: Sandbox Studio
For more than three years, scientists on the NOvA collaboration have been observing particles called neutrinos as they oscillate from one type to another over a distance of 500 miles. Now, in a new result unveiled today at the Neutrino 2018 conference in Heidelberg, Germany, the collaboration has announced its first results using antineutrinos, and has seen strong evidence of muon antineutrinos oscillating into electron antineutrinos over long distances, a phenomenon that has never been unambiguously observed.
NOvA, based at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, is the world’s longest-baseline neutrino experiment. Its purpose is to discover more about neutrinos, ghostly yet abundant particles that travel through matter mostly without leaving a trace. The experiment’s long-term goal is to look for similarities and differences in how neutrinos and antineutrinos change from one type — in this case, muon — into one of the other two types, electron or tau. Precisely measuring this change in both neutrinos and antineutrinos, and then comparing them, will help scientists unlock the secrets that these particles hold about how the universe operates.
NOvA uses two large particle detectors — a smaller one at Fermilab in Illinois and a much larger one 500 miles away in northern Minnesota — to study a beam of particles generated by Fermilab’s accelerator complex and sent through Earth, with no tunnel required.
The new result is drawn from NOvA’s first run with antineutrinos, the antimatter counterpart to neutrinos. NOvA began studying antineutrinos in February 2017. Fermilab’s accelerators create a beam of muon neutrinos (or muon antineutrinos), and NOvA’s far detector is specifically designed to see those particles changing into electron neutrinos (or electron antineutrinos) on their journey.
If antineutrinos did not oscillate from muon type to electron type, scientists would have expected to record just five electron antineutrino candidates in the NOvA far detector during this first run. But when they analyzed the data, they found 18, providing strong evidence that antineutrinos undergo this oscillation.
“Antineutrinos are more difficult to make than neutrinos, and they are less likely to interact in our detector,” said Fermilab’s Peter Shanahan, co-spokesperson of the NOvA collaboration. “This first data set is a fraction of our goal, but the number of oscillation events we see is far greater than we would expect if antineutrinos didn’t oscillate from muon type to electron. It demonstrates the impact that Fermilab’s high-power particle beam has on our ability to study neutrinos and antineutrinos.”
Although antineutrinos are known to oscillate, the change into electron antineutrinos over long distances has not yet been definitively observed. The T2K experiment, located in Japan, announced that it had observed hints of this phenomenon in 2017. The NOvA and T2K collaborations are working toward a combined analysis of their data in the coming years.
This display shows, from two perspectives, an electron antineutrino appearance candidate in the NOvA far detector. Image courtesy of Evan Niner/NOvA collaboration
“With this first result using antineutrinos, NOvA has moved into the next phase of its scientific program,” said Associate Director for High Energy Physics at the Department of Energy Office of Science Jim Siegrist. “I’m pleased to see this important experiment continuing to tell us more about these fascinating particles.”
NOvA’s new antineutrino result accompanies an improvement to its methods of analysis, leading to a more precise measurement of its neutrino data. From 2014 to 2017, NOvA saw 58 candidates for interactions from muon neutrinos changing into electron neutrinos, and scientists are using this data to move closer to unraveling some of the knottiest mysteries of these elusive particles.
The key to NOvA’s science program is comparing the rate at which electron neutrinos appear in the far detector with the rate that electron antineutrinos appear. A precise measurement of those differences will allow NOvA to achieve one of its main science goals: to determine which of the three types of neutrinos is the heaviest and which the lightest.
Neutrinos have been shown to have mass, but scientists have not been able to directly measure that mass. However, with enough data, they can determine the relative masses of the three, a puzzle called the mass ordering. NOvA is working toward a definitive answer to this question. Scientists on the experiment will continue studying antineutrinos through 2019 and, over the following years, will eventually collect equal amounts of data from neutrinos and antineutrinos.
“This first data set from antineutrinos is a just a start to what promises to be an exciting run,” said NOvA co-spokesperson Tricia Vahle of William & Mary. “It’s early days, but NOvA is already giving us new insights into the many mysteries of neutrinos and antineutrinos.”
For more information on neutrinos and neutrino research, please visit http://neutrinos.fnal.gov.
The NOvA collaboration includes more than 240 scientists from nearly 50 institutions in seven countries: Brazil, Colombia, Czech Republic, India, Russia, the UK and the United States. For more information visit the experiment’s website at http://novaexperiment.fnal.gov.
Fermilab is America’s premier national laboratory for particle physics and accelerator research. A U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science laboratory, Fermilab is located near Chicago, Illinois, and operated under contract by the Fermi Research Alliance LLC, a joint partnership between the University of Chicago and the Universities Research Association Inc. Visit Fermilab’s website at www.fnal.gov and follow us on Twitter at @Fermilab.
DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.
If you’re fascinated by the weird world of particles — and who isn’t? — check out Fermilab’s newest website: All Things Neutrino. If you’re curious about what neutrinos are, where they come from, what their history is, and why scientists can’t stop studying them, look no further.
The new website has launched just in time for the biggest neutrino conference in the world, Neutrino 2018, where results from neutrino experiments at Fermilab and around the world will be presented. Neutrino 2018 takes place in Germany from June 4-9, and All Things Neutrino is the perfect companion to help understand the findings coming from the conference.
As the famous physicist Albert Einstein once said, “Education is not the learning of facts but the training of the mind to think.”
This year, SciTech Hands-On Museum, located in downtown Aurora, Illinois, celebrates 30 years of engaging minds of all ages. In 1988, founding director Ernest Malamud, a Fermilab physicist, envisioned an inspiring space to introduce people of all ages to STEM fields.
“We wanted to create a space that broke down the most basic tenets of science,” Malamud said. “Each exhibit would feature just one of these principles, for instance light and color, so visitors could learn the basics and, in that way, become engaged.”
In 1982, Malamud took a leave of absence from Fermilab to work at the world-famous Exploratorium, a STEM museum in San Francisco, planting the seed in his mind to create a similar space serving Chicago’s western suburbs. Then, in 1987, he wrote a proposal for what would become the first and largest hands-on science museum in the western Chicagoland.
While Malamud worked at Fermilab on Tevatron upgrades and experiments such as DZero in 1990, the city of Aurora granted him a lease for a former U.S. Post Office. Juggling the roles of both scientist and director, he realized he would have to choose. Fermilab’s director at the time, John Peoples, saw great potential in his vision. Even though it was unprecedented for a scientist at Fermilab to be assigned a position at a separate institution — a museum — Malamud was hired by Fermilab as director of SciTech. He served as the museum’s director for eight years and with museum volunteer Olivia Diaz, Fermilab, other research institutions and the community, built the museum from the ground up. After he returned to work as a scientist, Diaz took over the position of museum director.
The SciTech Museum is located in downtown Aurora, Illinois. Photo: SciTech Museum
“Very early on, we realized that the children in and around Aurora, especially in underserved communities, weren’t getting much exposure to STEM fields,” Diaz said. “Since they would become our future scientists and engineers, it was urgent for us to bring science to them, so we created programs that traveled to area schools.”
The museum still engages all facets of the local community by bringing in students and families with classroom visits, private parties, Scout classes, camps and more. By partnering with the community and other nonprofit organizations, SciTech is able to promote its programs by distributing free passes and scholarships.
Malamud and other Fermilab scientists have acted as the museum’s directors and helped as volunteers for many years. To this day, Fermilab is represented by a member on the museum’s Board of Directors.
“Fermilab has been with the museum all along and has been a great driver of its success,” Diaz said, “They helped give SciTech its start, and since then have been a major source of volunteers. Fermilab staff have served on the Board of Directors, created and built exhibits, served as scientist mentors, and participated in the creation of new and unique outreach programs.”
Since its humble beginnings, the museum has become a community staple, and Arlene Hawks, the museum’s current executive director, says that the number of field trips and outreach events are dramatically on the rise. About 75,000 visitors come to SciTech every year from across the western suburbs, and the museum plans to increase its reach. Right now, it’s captivating visitors with an interactive display sponsored by ComEd called “Smart Energy” and an exhibit sponsored by Molex that walks visitors through the science of fiber optics.
Hawks hopes partnerships and funding from Fox Valley businesses and organizations will continue to help the museum develop fresh, interactive STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics) exhibits. The arts are of particular importance to Hawks, who has a Ph.D. in theater and knows creativity and art can be used as vehicles to learn STEM subjects.
“We have a very hard-working staff, albeit it small, that puts so much passion and effort into Ernie’s dream to make science exciting and accessible for all,” Hawks said.
The museum has impressive plans for its future. Hawks hopes to someday build further exhibits for visitors interested in the natural sciences and refresh the museum’s interior with a more deliberate layout. To create a more welcoming atmosphere, the museum will install a water feature in the area leading out to Fox Motion Park, overlooking the Fox River, which runs through downtown Aurora. This new feature will include an interactive display focusing on the Fox River.
Hawks says she’s thrilled that the museum has thrived and grown with the support of community partners and the Board of Directors, keeping Ernie Malamud’s vision of exploring and discovering the sciences alive.
“I’m just delighted to have been sitting in the director’s chair for the last five years, about to celebrate our 30th anniversary,” Hawks said. “We are determined to carry on with the museum’s founding vision of nurturing the curiosity of both children and adults.”
The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility and Fermilab are executing the integration of the Adaptive Input/Output System and the BigData Express high-speed data transfer service.
Editor’s note: This is a version of a feature article that was first released by Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
Projects large enough to run on high-performance computing (HPC) resources pack data—and a lot of it. Transferring this data between computational and experimental facilities is a challenging but necessary part of projects that rely on experiments to validate computational models.
Staff at two U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facilities — the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory — facilitated this process by executing the integration of the Adaptive Input/Output System (ADIOS) and the BigData Express (BDE) high-speed data transfer service.
Now ADIOS and BDE developers are changing the way researchers can transport and analyze data by incorporating a new methodology into the tool that allows for compressing and streaming of data coming out of simulations in real time. The methodology is being tested by OLCF user C. S. Chang, a plasma physics researcher at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) who studies the properties of the plasmas that exist in giant fusion devices called tokamaks. Chang seeks an understanding of the power needed to run ITER and the heat load to the material wall that will surround its plasma, both of which are key to fusion’s viability. ITER is an international collaboration working to design, construct, and assemble a burning plasma experiment that can demonstrate the scientific and technological feasibility of fusion power for the commercial power grid. ITER, which counts DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) among its partners, is currently under construction in southern France.
“If users can separate out the most important pieces of data and move those to another processor that can recognize the intended prioritization and reduce the data, it can provide them with feedback that they may need to stop a simulation if necessary,” said Scott Klasky, leader of the ADIOS framework and group leader for ORNL’s Scientific Data Group.
Wenji Wu, principal investigator of the BDE project and principal network research investigator of Fermilab’s Core Computing Division, added, “The new approach leverages the software-defining network [SDN] capabilities for resource scheduling and the high-performance data streaming capabilities of BDE.”
SDN allows users to dynamically control network resources rather than manually request to connect.
“This combination enables real-time data streaming with guaranteed quality of service, whether it be over short or long distances,” Wu said. “In addition, this approach yields small memory footprints.”
Although the project is still in the development phase, preliminary tests allowed Chang and his team to successfully transfer fusion data between the OLCF — located at ORNL — and PPPL.
“With this new methodology, users can stream data on the network without ever touching the file system and request network resources on the fly,” said ADIOS and BDE researcher Qing Liu, who has a joint appointment with the New Jersey Institute of Technology and ORNL.
Without streaming capabilities, scientists can perform only after-the-fact analyses for many experiments, such as KSTAR, the Korean Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research. But with simulations and experiments increasing in size, near–real-time monitoring and control are becoming necessary. The new ADIOS–BDE integration could also play a major role in large experimental projects, such as the fusion project Chang is leading and the Square Kilometer Array, an effort involving dozens of institutions to build the world’s largest radio telescope. The new streaming capabilities could more easily enable the capture of short-lived events such as pulsars — neutron stars that emit electromagnetic radiation — that the telescope aims to record.
“KSTAR wants to transfer their data as the experiment is happening, to process their data during the experiment,” Klasky said. “These additions to ADIOS will enable both sides to quickly perform data analysis and visualization in real time.”
Seo-Young Noh, director of the Global Science Experimental Data Hub Center at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information, leads a group that has contributed significantly to the BDE project.
“Our work has made cross-Pacific, real-time data streaming possible,” Noh said.
Klasky, Liu, and their collaborators will give a best paper plenary talk related to these new capabilities—titled “Understanding and Modeling Lossy Compression Schemes on HPC Scientific Data” — at the 32nd IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium. The team noted that the new ADIOS methodology will allow scientists to efficiently select the type of compression that will best fit their scientific and research needs, affording them the ability to analyze their data faster than ever before.
Liang Zhang, the developer of BDE data streaming capabilities, is working with Liu to enhance and test the tool. They expect the tool’s new capabilities to be fully tested and deployed by late 2019. This work also involves ADIOS researcher Jason Wang and BDE researchers Nageswara Rao, Phil DeMar, Qiming Lu, Sajith Sasidharan, S. A. R. Shah, Jin Kim, and Huizhang Luo.
Fermilab is America’s premier national laboratory for particle physics and accelerator research. A U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science laboratory, Fermilab is located near Chicago, Illinois, and operated under contract by the Fermi Research Alliance LLC, a joint partnership between the University of Chicago and the Universities Research Association Inc. Visit Fermilab’s website at www.fnal.gov and follow us on Twitter at @Fermilab.
ORNL is managed by UT-Battelle for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. DOE’s Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.