A tale of three cities

The world’s largest particle hunter of its kind will travel across the ocean from CERN to Fermilab this summer to become an integral part of neutrino research in the United States.

It’s lived in two different countries, and it’s about to make its way to a third. It’s the largest machine of its kind, designed to find extremely elusive particles and tell us more about them. Its pioneering technology is the blueprint for some of the most advanced science experiments in the world. And this summer, it will travel across the Atlantic Ocean to its new home (and its new mission) at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

It’s called ICARUS, and you can follow its journey over land and sea with the help of an interactive map on Fermilab’s website.

The ICARUS detector measures 18 meters (60 feet) long and weighs 120 tons. It began its scientific life under a mountain at the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics’ (INFN) Gran Sasso National Laboratory in 2010, recording data from a beam of particles called neutrinos sent by CERN, Europe’s premier particle physics laboratory. The detector was shipped to CERN in 2014, where it has been upgraded and refurbished in preparation for its overseas trek.

When it arrives at Fermilab, the massive machine will take its place as part of a suite of three detectors dedicated to searching for a new type of neutrino beyond the three that have been found. Discovering this so-called “sterile” neutrino, should it exist, would rewrite scientists’ picture of the universe and the particles that make it up.

“Nailing down the question of whether sterile neutrinos exist or not is an important scientific goal, and ICARUS will help us achieve that,” said Fermilab Director Nigel Lockyer. “But it’s also a significant step in Fermilab’s plan to host a truly international neutrino facility, with the help of our partners around the world.”

First, however, the detector has to get there. Next week it will begin its journey from CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, to a port in Antwerp, Belgium. From there the detector, separated into two identical pieces, will travel on a ship to Burns Harbor, Indiana, in the United States, and from there will be driven by truck to Fermilab, one piece at a time. The full trip is expected to take roughly six weeks.

An interactive map on Fermilab’s website (IcarusTrip.fnal.gov) will track the voyage of the ICARUS detector, and Fermilab, CERN and INFN social media channels will document the trip using the hashtag #IcarusTrip. The detector itself will sport a distinctive banner, and members of the public are encouraged to snap photos of it and post them on social media.

Once the ICARUS detector is delivered to Fermilab, it will be installed in a recently completed building and filled with 760 tons of pure liquid argon to start the search for sterile neutrinos.

The ICARUS experiment is a prime example of the international nature of particle physics and the mutually beneficial cooperation that exists between the world’s physics laboratories. The detector uses liquid-argon time projection technology – essentially a method of taking a 3-D snapshot of the particles produced when a neutrino interacts with an argon atom – which was developed by the ICARUS collaboration and now is the technology of choice for the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), which will be hosted by Fermilab.

“More than 25 years ago, Nobel Prize winner Carlo Rubbia started a visionary effort with the help and resources of INFN to make use of liquid argon as a particle detector, with the visual power of a bubble chamber but with the speed and efficiency of an electronic detector,” said Fernando Ferroni, president of INFN. “A long series of steps demonstrated the power of this technology that has been chosen for the gigantic future experiment DUNE in the U.S., scaling up the 760 tons of argon for ICARUS to 70,000 tons for DUNE. In the meantime, ICARUS will be at the core of an experiment at Fermilab looking for the possible existence of a new type of neutrino. Long life to ICARUS!”

CERN’s contribution to ICARUS, bringing the detector in line with the latest technology, expands the renowned European laboratory’s participation in Fermilab’s neutrino program. It’s the first such program CERN has contributed to in the United States. Fermilab is the hub of U.S. participation in the CMS experiment on CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, and the partnership between the laboratories has never been stronger.

ICARUS will be the largest of three liquid-argon neutrino detectors at Fermilab seeking sterile neutrinos. The smallest, MicroBooNE, is active and has been taking data for more than a year, while the third, the Short-Baseline Neutrino Detector, is under construction. The three detectors should all be operational by 2019, and the three collaborations include scientists from 45 institutions in six countries.

Knowledge gained by operating the suite of three detectors will be important in the development of the DUNE experiment, which will be the largest neutrino experiment ever constructed. The international Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility (LBNF) will deliver an intense beam of neutrinos to DUNE, sending the particles 800 miles through Earth from Fermilab to the large, mile-deep detector at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota. DUNE will enable a new era of precision neutrino science and may revolutionize our understanding of these particles and their role in the universe.

Research and development on the experiment is underway, with prototype DUNE detectors under construction at CERN, and construction on LBNF is set to begin in South Dakota this year. A study by Anderson Economic Group, LLC, commissioned by Fermi Research Alliance LLC, which manages the laboratory on behalf of DOE, predicts significant positive impact from the project on economic output and jobs in South Dakota and elsewhere.

This research is supported by the DOE Office of Science, CERN and INFN, in partnership with institutions around the world.

Follow the overseas journey of the ICARUS detector at IcarusTrip.fnal.gov. Follow the social media campaign on Facebook and Twitter using the hashtag #IcarusTrip.

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. Visit Fermilab’s website at www.fnal.gov and follow us on Twitter at @Fermilab.

The DOE 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.

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is one of the world’s leading laboratories for particle physics. The Organization is located on the French-Swiss border, with its headquarters in Geneva. Its Member States are: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom. Cyprus and Serbia are Associate Member States in the pre-stage to Membership. India, Pakistan, Turkey and Ukraine are Associate Member States. The European Union, Japan, JINR, the Russian Federation, UNESCO and the United States of America currently have Observer status. Visit CERN’s website at home.cern and follow them on Twitter @CERN.

The Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN) manages and supports theoretical and experimental research in the fields of subnuclear, nuclear, astroparticle physics in Italy under the supervision of the Ministry of Education, Universities and Research (MIUR).  INFN carries out research activities at four national laboratories, in Catania, Frascati, Legnaro and Gran Sasso and 20 divisions, based at university physics departments in different cities of Italy. Visit INFN’s website at www.infn.it and follow them on Twitter @UffComINFN.

June 15, 1967, is Fermilab’s official birthday — the day employees first showed up to work at National Accelerator Laboratory. Other momentous milestones also happened in June. Read on.

The Muon g-2 experiment has begun its search for phantom particles with its world-famous and well-traveled electromagnet.

What do you get when you revive a beautiful 20-year-old physics machine, carefully transport it 3,200 miles over land and sea to its new home, and then use it to probe strange happenings in a magnetic field? Hopefully you get new insights into the elementary particles that make up everything.

The Muon g-2 experiment, located at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, has begun its quest for those insights. On May 31, the 50-foot-wide superconducting electromagnet at the center of the experiment saw its first beam of muon particles from Fermilab’s accelerators, kicking off a three-year effort to measure just what happens to those particles when placed in a stunningly precise magnetic field. The answer could rewrite scientists’ picture of the universe and how it works.

“The Muon g-2 experiment’s first beam truly signals the start of an important new research program at Fermilab, one that uses muon particles to look for rare and fascinating anomalies in nature,” said Fermilab Director Nigel Lockyer. “After years of preparation, I’m excited to see this experiment begin its search in earnest.”

Getting to this point was a long road for Muon g-2, both figuratively and literally. The first generation of this experiment took place at the U.S. DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York state in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The goal of the experiment was to precisely measure one property of the muon – the particles’ precession, or wobble, in a magnetic field. The final results were surprising, hinting at the presence of previously unknown phantom particles or forces affecting the muon’s properties.

The new experiment at Fermilab will make use of the laboratory’s intense beam of muons to definitively answer the questions the Brookhaven experiment raised. And since it would have cost 10 times more to build a completely new machine at Brookhaven rather than move the magnet to Fermilab, the Muon g-2 team transported that large, fragile superconducting magnet in one piece from Long Island to the suburbs of Chicago in the summer of 2013.

The magnet took a barge south around Florida, up the Tennessee-Tombigbee waterway and the Illinois River, and was then driven on a specially designed truck over three nights to Fermilab. And thanks to a GPS-powered map online, it collected thousands of fans over its journey, making it one of the most well-known electromagnets in the world.

“Getting the magnet here was only half the battle,” said Chris Polly, project manager of the Muon g-2 experiment. “Since it arrived, the team here at Fermilab has been working around the clock installing detectors, building a control room and, for the past year, adjusting the uniformity of the magnetic field, which must be precisely known to an unprecedented level to obtain any new physics. It’s been a lot of work, but we’re ready now to really get started.”

That work has included the creation of a new beamline to deliver a pure beam of muons to the ring, the installation of a host of instrumentation to measure both the magnetic field and the muons as they circulate within it, and a year-long process of “shimming” the magnet, inserting tiny pieces of metal by hand to shape the magnetic field. The field created by the magnet is now three times more uniform than the one it created at Brookhaven.

Over the next few weeks the Muon g-2 team will test the equipment installed around the magnet, which will be storing and measuring muons for the first time in 16 years. Later this year, they will start taking science-quality data, and if their results confirm the anomaly first seen at Brookhaven, it will mean that the elegant picture of the universe that scientists have been working on for decades is incomplete and that new particles or forces may be out there, waiting to be discovered.

“It’s an exciting time for the whole team, and for physics,” said David Hertzog of the University of Washington, co-spokesperson of the Muon g-2 collaboration. “The magnet has been working, and working fantastically well. It won’t be long until we have our first results and a better view through the window that the Brookhaven experiment opened for us.”

The Muon g-2 collaboration includes more than 150 scientists and engineers from more than 30 institutions in nine countries.

Learn more about the Muon g-2 experiment.

The Muon g-2 experiment is supported by DOE’s Office of Science and the National Science Foundation.

Fermilab is America’s premier national laboratory for particle physics 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. Visit Fermilab’s website at https://www.fnal.govand follow us on Twitter @Fermilab.

The DOE 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.

As we hope you’ve heard, this year Fermilab is celebrating its 50th anniversary! We’re reaching out to friends, partners, employees past and present, and fans around the world to help us celebrate on June 15, the lab’s 50th birthday. We hope you’ll join us in wishing Fermilab a happy birthday. There are several ways to do this:

No fewer than three particle physics laboratories lay claim to some aspect of the detector, called ICARUS, that will soon become the newest member of Fermilab’s neutrino family. The Italian INFN Gran Sasso National Laboratory took data using the 760-ton, 65-foot-long detector for its ICARUS experiment from 2010 to 2014. The European laboratory CERN sent beam to the detector when it was at Gran Sasso. And Fermilab is soon to inherit the detector for its Short-Baseline Neutrino Program. Fermilab is currently awaiting the detector’s arrival from CERN, where staff have been refurbishing it for use in the SBN Program.

So it is fitting that technicians, led by Frederic Merlet of CERN, from the two European laboratories recently converged at Fermilab to work with the U.S. ICARUS team, led by Fermilab’s David Augustine.

During the visit, which took place from May 1-21, the technicians assembled the steel structure that will host the detector’s two 300-ton time projection chambers.

“They accomplished this amazing task with absolutely superb work ethic and cooperation,” said Fermilab physicist Fernanda G. Garcia, who is the project installation and integration manager. “The installation went smoothly thanks in great part to Dave and Frederic’s leadership skills.”

It was not only just technicians, but also machinists, quality and safety personnel, business administrators, and transportation coordinators who came together to prepare the detector’s future home.

The contributions of our trans-Atlantic partners at CERN and INFN demonstrate once more that the science of particle physics is a global pursuit.