Putting to good use: Old lab equipment goes to new science

If you’re a scientist looking for a bargain on a UV lamp source, CompuFlow thermo-anemometer, miscellaneous fiber optic components or an oscilloscope, Fermilab has you covered.

At the lab’s Warehouse No. 2, racks piled high with items stretch into the distance. When equipment at Fermilab is no longer needed, it’s picked up and stored here, where much of it is processed and sent to schools, universities and government agencies who request it.

The whole operation is run by Scott Borton, who oversees three separate initiatives at Fermilab: Computers for Learning, the Federal Disposal System and the Laboratory Equipment Donation Program (LEDP). Between 2015 and 2017, the total value of assets donated through all three programs was over $3,000,000.

For Fermilab, it’s a great way to extend the life of equipment that’s come to the end of its usefulness for the laboratory. And for prospective buyers, it’s hard to imagine a better deal.

“This is all free. They pay for shipping and that’s it,” Borton said.

Designed to reduce waste and provide opportunities for schools, labs and agencies lacking the funds, the programs are well-used at Fermilab, with items sent to Borton on a regular basis.

Fermilab employees send to the warehouse old or underused equipment that they no longer need. Plenty of items come through the warehouse, so it’s not always clear what the status of this equipment is.

“In a lot of the cases, the equipment’s been moved and transferred so often that nobody has any idea if it works or not,” Borton said.

When this happens, Borton and his staff often draw on the experience of Fermilab’s experts to determine the status of equipment to make sure it’s in working condition.

Although the equipment is used, the zero on the price tag is enticing for physics professors such as Raul Armendariz, who teaches at Queensborough Community College in New York City. Armendariz learned about LEDP and arranged for the equipment transfer through Fermilab’s QuarkNet program.

“Getting the laboratory equipment is so important,” Armendariz said. “It allows us to build detectors and create projects for students and have them take part in the learning community.”

In December, Armendariz used the nationwide LEDP program to purchase — at no cost — 1,800 pounds of plastic scintillator scavenged from Fermilab’s CDF detector, which was decommissioned in 2013. He plans to use the scintillator to set up a cosmic ray array at local high schools and colleges in New York City.

“We’re at a community college and we don’t have big money for this kind of stuff — that’s why the LEDP is crucial for us,” Armendariz said.

For Borton, recycling what was once state-of-the-art equipment to schools and other labs is just another day at work.

“At least the stuff isn’t going to scrap,” he said. “It’s being reused somewhere.”

What does running large particle accelerators have in common with hospital imaging scanners? The operating system for both requires high performance and stability.

Fermilab first developed Scientific Linux as an open-source operating system in 2004 to fulfill exactly these demands, and it continues to release new versions.

GE Healthcare, a company that builds medical imaging equipment, found that it had the same needs when it came to operating systems. It now employs Scientific Linux as a foundation for its own, customized HELiOS, which stands for Healthcare Enterprise Linux Operating System.

According to GE, more than 30,000 medical imaging machines worldwide use this SL-based operating system to search for broken bones, tumors and other injuries on organs, and their numbers will easily double in the next two years. On GE machines, HELiOS manages the whole process, from taking an image of a patient to reconstructing the image and even displaying it for doctors.

At Fermilab, Scientific Linux runs on all computers for particle accelerator operation and on most data taking systems for experiments. Many scientists use it every day to write simulations or perform data analysis.

“Originally we created Scientific Linux for the high-energy physics community, but it was never exclusively for them. Everybody can download and use it,” said Connie Sieh, Fermilab computer specialist and co-developer of Scientific Linux. “We were really surprised when GE contacted us. We had never expected that our SL would spread that far or that it would be used in medicine.”

GE initiated the contact with Fermilab about the software, discussing customization issues. From there, the two institutions began a regular, informal exchange of knowledge and ideas to improve both operating systems.

“Now we talk and meet on a regular basis, which is great, and Fermilab assistance is very welcome,” said James Foris, senior system engineer at GE Healthcare. “This exchange really reflects the open-source mentality we all share in software development.”

Fermilab develops Scientific Linux in the same way most Linux distributions are developed: The source code is freely available and can be changed or customized. Fermilab’s computing experts continually customize the Red Hat Linux distribution to provide a stable, scalable and extensible operating system to support the needs of the scientific community. GE then leverages Fermilab’s Scientific Linux to create HELiOS, a Linux distribution for healthcare applications.

“We use this style of software development for our products to ensure that our customers get a stable system tailored to their needs,” Foris said. “And avoiding the extra costs for software licenses always helps.”

One other attractive feature of Scientific Linux is its long lifespan: A single SL version, such as SL version 7, is supported by updates for 10 years. (A quick lesson in new versions versus new updates: Installing a new version, say version 7, is like buying a new car, while updating a version, say from version 7 to 7.1, is like getting an oil change or new tires. An update includes some new features, but never a major change in the whole design of the software. Major changes are released as new versions, such as SL version 8.)

For GE, this long lifespan means that they can support the software of their magnetic resonance imagers and other systems for 10 years, providing publicly reviewed and available bug fixes and security updates, without making major changes, which can be inconvenient for their customers.

Fermilab’s computing experts increase the security of the operating system to fulfill the standards of usage at a Department of Energy national laboratory. They implement features for easy access to file sharing and data storage, which are crucial for high-performance computing. GE uses those computing features for their own image reconstruction.

Scientific Linux was created for running accelerators and calculating particle collisions, and now its use has extended to our everyday lives, assisting people worldwide with their health and well-being.

The Scientific Linux team wishes to thank Red Hat for its contributions to maintaining an open, free, collaborative, and transparent open source community for software development.

How long have you worked at Fermilab?
Twenty-seven years. I started in 1990 working in what was at that time the Research Division, working on detector development on the 14th floor of the high-rise. The group had only six people, so I was the — as I am today — jack of all trades. Whether it was cryogenics, electronics, mechanical — I handled it all.

What might you do in a typical workday?
I have two different parts to my job. For my on-site job, I’m an engineering physicist. I do work in the Village area, where I work on plastic extrusion and the test beam area, helping keep that running.

The rest of my job is my role as Mr. Freeze.

How did you become Mr. Freeze?
I’m actually Mr. Freeze III. Stan Stoy was the first one, back in the ’70s. In the early ‘90s, the Education Office came and asked if I would be willing to pick it up. My background in cryogenics allowed me to be creative in the position, and as of May 31 of this year, I’ll have been Mr. Freeze for 20 years. (Editor’s note: Jerry proudly pointed to his shirt with “Mr. Freeze” monogrammed on it when he said this.)

What kind of responsibilities do you have as Mr. Freeze?
My department, the Particle Physics Division, allows me 20 percent of my time to do shows. But that’s just day time — I also get requested for evening and weekend shows, which I do on my own time. I do about 120 events a year overall.

My goal during these shows is mostly to get kids excited about science. I want to show them things that they’re not going to see every day. If I can generate interest in science that keeps them going, I’ve succeeded.

What’s something people might not know about you?
My pastime, my outside exercise activity is roller skating. I’m actually a pretty good roller skater, which is probably surprising to some people. They see “The Big Bang Theory” and don’t expect a physicist to be good at something like that.

Editor’s note: A Fermilab group led by Hugh Lippincott, a Wilson fellow at Fermilab, and Eric Dahl, a joint appointee and assistant professor at Northwestern University, is responsible for implementing key parts of the critical systems that handle the xenon in the LUX-ZEPLIN detector. These include the heat exchange system that allows the entire 10-ton xenon target to be purified every 2.3 days, as well as the controls system that safeguards the greater than $10 million xenon payload in emergency scenarios. View the original Berkeley Lab press release on their news site.

The race is on to build the most sensitive U.S.-based experiment designed to directly detect dark matter particles. Department of Energy officials have formally approved a key construction milestone that will propel the project toward its April 2020 goal for completion.

The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment, which will be built nearly a mile underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF) in Lead, S.D., is considered one of the best bets yet to determine whether theorized dark matter particles known as WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) actually exist. There are other dark matter candidates, too, such as “axions” or “sterile neutrinos,” which other experiments are better suited to root out or rule out.

The fast-moving schedule for LZ will help the U.S. stay competitive with similar next-gen dark matter direct-detection experiments planned in Italy and China.

On Feb. 9, the project passed a DOE review and approval stage known as Critical Decision 3 (CD-3), which accepts the final design and formally launches construction.

“We will try to go as fast as we can to have everything completed by April 2020,” said Murdock “Gil” Gilchriese, LZ project director and a physicist at the DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), the lead lab for the project. “We got a very strong endorsement to go fast and to be first.” The LZ collaboration now has about 220 participating scientists and engineers who represent 38 institutions around the globe.

The nature of dark matter—which physicists describe as the invisible component or so-called “missing mass” in the universe that would explain the faster-than-expected spins of galaxies, and their motion in clusters observed across the universe—has eluded scientists since its existence was deduced through calculations by Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky in 1933.

The quest to find out what dark matter is made of, or to learn whether it can be explained by tweaking the known laws of physics in new ways, is considered one of the most pressing questions in particle physics.

Successive generations of experiments have evolved to provide extreme sensitivity in the search that will at least rule out some of the likely candidates and hiding spots for dark matter, or may lead to a discovery.

LZ will be at least 50 times more sensitive to finding signals from dark matter particles than its predecessor, the Large Underground Xenon experiment (LUX), which was removed from SURF last year to make way for LZ. The new experiment will use 10 metric tons of ultra-purified liquid xenon, to tease out possible dark matter signals. Xenon, in its gas form, is one of the rarest elements in Earth’s atmosphere.

“The science is highly compelling, so it’s being pursued by physicists all over the world,” said Carter Hall, the spokesperson for the LZ collaboration and an associate professor of physics at the University of Maryland. “It’s a friendly and healthy competition, with a major discovery possibly at stake.”

A planned upgrade to the current XENON1T experiment at National Institute for Nuclear Physics’ Gran Sasso Laboratory (the XENONnT experiment) in Italy, and China’s plans to advance the work on PandaX-II, are also slated to be leading-edge underground experiments that will use liquid xenon as the medium to seek out a dark matter signal. Both of these projects are expected to have a similar schedule and scale to LZ, though LZ participants are aiming to achieve a higher sensitivity to dark matter than these other contenders.

Hall noted that while WIMPs are a primary target for LZ and its competitors, LZ’s explorations into uncharted territory could lead to a variety of surprising discoveries. “People are developing all sorts of models to explain dark matter,” he said. “LZ is optimized to observe a heavy WIMP, but it’s sensitive to some less-conventional scenarios as well. It can also search for other exotic particles and rare processes.”

LZ is designed so that if a dark matter particle collides with a xenon atom, it will produce a prompt flash of light followed by a second flash of light when the electrons produced in the liquid xenon chamber drift to its top. The light pulses, picked up by a series of about 500 light-amplifying tubes lining the massive tank—over four times more than were installed in LUX—will carry the telltale fingerprint of the particles that created them.

Daniel Akerib, Thomas Shutt, and Maria Elena Monzani are leading the LZ team at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. The SLAC effort includes a program to purify xenon for LZ by removing krypton, an element that is typically found in trace amounts with xenon after standard refinement processes.

“We have already demonstrated the purification required for LZ and are now working on ways to further purify the xenon to extend the science reach of LZ,” Akerib said.

SLAC and Berkeley Lab collaborators are also developing and testing hand-woven wire grids that draw out electrical signals produced by particle interactions in the liquid xenon tank. Full-size prototypes will be operated later this year at a SLAC test platform. “These tests are important to ensure that the grids don’t produce low-level electrical discharge when operated at high voltage, since the discharge could swamp a faint signal from dark matter,” said Shutt.

Hugh Lippincott, a Wilson Fellow at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) and the physics coordinator for the LZ collaboration, said, “Alongside the effort to get the detector built and taking data as fast as we can, we’re also building up our simulation and data analysis tools so that we can understand what we’ll see when the detector turns on. We want to be ready for physics as soon as the first flash of light appears in the xenon.” Fermilab is responsible for implementing key parts of the critical system that handles, purifies, and cools the xenon.

All of the components for LZ are painstakingly measured for naturally occurring radiation levels to account for possible false signals coming from the components themselves. A dust-filtering cleanroom is being prepared for LZ’s assembly and a radon-reduction building is under construction at the South Dakota site—radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas that could interfere with dark matter detection. These steps are necessary to remove background signals as much as possible.

The vessels that will surround the liquid xenon, which are the responsibility of the U.K. participants of the collaboration, are now being assembled in Italy. They will be built with the world’s most ultra-pure titanium to further reduce background noise.

To ensure unwanted particles are not misread as dark matter signals, LZ’s liquid xenon chamber will be surrounded by another liquid-filled tank and a separate array of photomultiplier tubes that can measure other particles and largely veto false signals. Brookhaven National Laboratory is handling the production of another very pure liquid, known as a scintillator fluid, that will go into this tank.

The cleanrooms will be in place by June, Gilchriese said, and preparation of the cavern where LZ will be housed is underway at SURF. Onsite assembly and installation will begin in 2018, he added, and all of the xenon needed for the project has either already been delivered or is under contract. Xenon gas, which is costly to produce, is used in lighting, medical imaging and anesthesia, space-vehicle propulsion systems, and the electronics industry.

“South Dakota is proud to host the LZ experiment at SURF and to contribute 80 percent of the xenon for LZ,” said Mike Headley, executive director of the South Dakota Science and Technology Authority (SDSTA) that oversees SURF. “Our facility work is underway and we’re on track to support LZ’s timeline.”

UK scientists, who make up about one-quarter of the LZ collaboration, are contributing hardware for most subsystems. Henrique Araújo, from Imperial College London, said, “We are looking forward to seeing everything come together after a long period of design and planning.”

Kelly Hanzel, LZ project manager and a Berkeley Lab mechanical engineer, added, “We have an excellent collaboration and team of engineers who are dedicated to the science and success of the project.” The latest approval milestone, she said, “is probably the most significant step so far,” as it provides for the purchase of most of the major components in LZ’s supporting systems.

For more information about LZ and the LZ collaboration, visit: http://lz.lbl.gov/.

Major support for LZ comes from the DOE Office of Science’s Office of High Energy Physics, South Dakota Science and Technology Authority, the UK’s Science & Technology Facilities Council, and by collaboration members in South Korea and Portugal.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world’s most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab’s scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel Prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. For more, visit www.lbl.gov.

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 the Office of Science website at science.energy.gov.

The Sanford Underground Research Facility’s mission is to enable compelling underground, interdisciplinary research in a safe work environment and to inspire our next generation through science, technology, engineering, and math education. For more information, please visit the Sanford Lab website at http://www.sanfordlab.org.