Fermilab Experiment Prepares to Send Its First Neutrinos to Minnesota

BATAVIA, Illinois—Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory will begin a projected five-year experiment in early February, 2005 by sending the first batches of subatomic particles called neutrinos on a path through the earth from the laboratory, about 40 miles west of Chicago, to a detector located in the historic Soudan iron mine a half-mile underground in the northeastern corner of Minnesota, about 450 miles away.

Neutrinos are extremely abundant in nature — trillions of them are passing through us at any given moment. They interact with the atoms of ordinary matter so seldom that they can pass through air, water, rocks, or people without a trace. Neutrinos from cosmic rays go through the entire Earth, mysteriously morphing from one kind to another as they travel through space.

The Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (the MINOS experiment) will use neutrinos produced at Fermilab’s Main Injector accelerator to probe the secrets of these elusive subatomic particles: where do they come from, what are their masses and how do they change from one kind to another? When the experiment begins operations, neutrinos in the NuMI (for “Neutrinos at the Main Injector”) beam will travel straight through the earth, from Fermilab to Soudan in 2.5 milliseconds—no tunnel needed. In Minnesota, a 6,000-ton particle detector will search for neutrinos that may have changed from one kind to another during the trip.

The 200-plus MINOS experimenters will use the change from one type of neutrino to another as the key to discovering the neutrino’s secrets. The MINOS experiment involves scientists, engineers, technical specialists and students from 32 institutions in six countries, including Brazil, France, Greece, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. The institutions include universities and national laboratories.

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is a Department of Energy Office of Science national laboratory in Batavia, Illinois. The laboratory is operated under contract by Universities Research Association, Inc. a consortium of 90 research universities.

For more information, please visit NuMI/MINOS Facts for Neighbors.

MINOS Institutions:

Argonne National Laboratory Benedictine University Brookhaven National Laboratory Cal Tech University of Cambridge (U.K.) College de France Harvard University Illinois Institute of Technology Indiana University ITEP-Moscow Lebedev Physical Institute Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory University of Athens (Greece) University College, London (U.K.) University of Minnesota University of Minnesota-Duluth

Oxford University (UK) IHEP-Protvino Rutherford Appleton Lab (U.K.) University of Sao Paulo (Brazil) Soudan Underground Laboratory University of Pittsburgh University of South Carolina Stanford University University of Sussex (U.K.) Texas A&M University University of Texas at Austin Tufts University UNICAMP (Brazil) Western Washington University University of Wisconsin College of William and Mary

Batavia, Ill. – Officials at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced that the laboratory is allowing additional public access to the site as of Monday, January 24. The Department of Energy had ordered the closing of the laboratory to most visitors as a security measure following the terrorist attacks on the U.S. on September 11, 2001.

“I believe that these changes will make our site more welcoming to our neighbors and other visitors without compromising Fermilab’s security,” said laboratory director Michael S. Witherell.

Joanna Livengood, Acting Manager of the DOE Fermi Site Office, offered that “security continues to remain a high priority at Fermilab. Through a joint effort between the DOE and Fermilab, we have adjusted our security measures to allow additional community access to the site without compromising security to the laboratory facilities.”

Visitors can enter Fermilab through both the west side Pine Street entrance and the east side Batavia Road entrance during daylight hours: 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. from mid-October through mid-April, and 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. from mid-April through mid-October. Visitors coming by car will have to show valid identification to a security officer and tell the purpose of their visit, but will no longer need to get visitors’ passes. Pedestrians and bicyclists can continue to enter either entrance without passes. Motorists must leave the site from the same gate they enter. Motorists will receive site maps to guide them to public areas, and signs will warn visitors of roads that are off-limits. Parking restrictions for visitors remain in effect, and drive-through traffic remains prohibited.

Visitors can visit the Lederman Science Center, the ground floor and atrium of Wilson Hall, and the Ramsey Auditorium, where signs will mark the boundaries. Visitors attending the Arts, Lecture and Film Series performances must continue to enter at the Pine Street entrance only.

For more information, contact Fermilab’s Office of Public Affairs at 630-840-3351 or visit the lab’s Web site at www.fnal.gov.

Fermilab is a DOE Office of Science National Laboratory, operated by Universities Research Association, Inc., under contract with the U.S. Department of Energy.

BATAVIA, Ill. – Officials of the of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) announced yesterday (Wednesday) the completion of a key component of the U.S. contribution to the Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator under construction at CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland. After a competitive bid process, Berkeley Lab awarded Meyer Tool and Manufacturing, a woman-owned small business in Oak Lawn, Illinois, the contract to manufacture eight cryogenic distribution boxes, components of the cooling system for the new accelerator, which is due to begin operating in 2007. Meyer Tool has successfully completed the first box.

“Meyer Tool has an excellent working relationship with Fermilab and Berkeley Lab,” said Bruce Strauss, U.S. LHC Accelerator Program Manager in the DOE’s Office of High Energy Physics, who visited Meyer Tool yesterday morning to celebrate the completion of the first box. “Since its inception, Fermilab has always supported and utilized the great number of machine shops and small manufacturing businesses that are in the Chicago area. Because of the success that we are seeing today, we have confidence that Meyer will deliver the remainder of the boxes on schedule and on budget.”

Berkeley Lab engineer and project manager Joseph Rasson noted the significance of the achievement. “This is a critical milestone,” Rasson said, “And it sets a perfect model of DOE labs working together with a small business to design and build one-of-a-kind hardware.”

The distribution boxes will connect the LHC’s superconducting magnets with the systems that keep the magnets operating at temperatures near absolute zero. The distribution boxes supply cryogens in the form of liquid and gaseous helium, and deliver power to the magnets.

“It is very tricky getting power from room temperature to a cryogenic temperature near absolute zero,” said Fermilab cryogenics engineer Tom Peterson, who worked closely with Meyer Tool. “Accelerators with cryogenics or superconducting magnets use distribution boxes to supply cryogens for the cold devices. You need to have the right interface between the magnets and the other components of the accelerator in order to get the power from room temperature down to 2 Kelvin. These boxes will do the job.”

While Fermilab provided the technical oversight for the project, Berkeley Lab designed the distribution boxes and contracted with Meyer Tool. Although Meyer Tool is fabricating most components of the 13,000 lb. boxes, both Fermilab and Berkeley Lab fabricated several of their components. Fermilab and KEK, a Japanese particle physics laboratory, manufactured the quadrupole magnets, and Brookhaven National Laboratory fabricated the dipole magnets, that will both be connected to the distribution boxes when all the pieces come together in Geneva.

“All our employees at Meyer Tool take great pride in our work, especially the critical components and complex assemblies we manufacture for the DOE and the National Laboratories,” said Ed Bonnema, VP Operations for Meyer Tool. “We work as a team to meet the difficult and exacting specification requirements associated with these types of projects. Today, as a result of this exceptional collaboration, we have the first of the distribution boxes complete, with three more on assembly stands.”

In unique partnership among two national labs and a small local business, Fermilab, Berkeley Lab and Meyer Tool started working on the distribution boxes in April 2003. Meyer Tool will ship the first two distribution boxes to CERN in January. Fermilab, Berkeley Lab and Meyer Tool plan to have all eight boxes completed by September 2005.

Founded in 1969, Meyer Tool has manufactured equipment for major scientific laboratories, including Fermilab, Argonne National Laboratory, Jefferson Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The eight distribution boxes represent a portion of the $531 million total U.S. contribution to the LHC machine and detectors. “The distribution boxes are one of the last portions of the US-LHC project to be completed,” said Fermilab engineer Jim Kerby, US-LHC Accelerator Project Manager. “The accelerators won’t work without them.”

Fermilab is a DOE Office of Science national laboratory, operated under contract by Universities Research Association, Inc.

Related Web sites:
Fermilab: http://www.fnal.gov
CERN: http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: http://www.lbl.gov/

Batavia, Ill.- Officials of Universities Research Association, the consortium of universities that operates the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, today (November 19) announced the appointment of Piermaria Oddone as Fermilab’s fifth director. Acting on the recommendation of its Board of Overseers and with the approval of Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham, URA’s Board of Trustees appointed Oddone to succeed Fermilab’s current director, Michael Witherell, on July 1, 2005. Witherell announced in October 2003 that he would serve as Fermilab director through June 2005.

URA President Frederick M. Bernthal announced the appointment of Oddone, a physicist who is currently deputy director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, where he is responsible for scientific programs and oversees major laboratory initiatives and strategic planning.

“I am delighted to announce the appointment of Pier Oddone to be Fermilab’s next director,” Bernthal said. “His stature as a distinguished particle physicist, his experience in the scientific operation of another great national laboratory and his leadership abilities make him extremely well suited to keep Fermilab at the forefront of scientific excellence and to guide the lab during the critical years ahead.”

Oddone, 60, said he looks forward to the opportunity to serve as Fermilab’s director at a key moment for the field of high-energy physics and for the laboratory.

“We are living in a time of remarkable opportunity for particle physics,” Oddone said. “The next few years will bring a revolution in our understanding of the universe. As one of the world’s great physics laboratories, Fermilab will make vital contributions to the discoveries ahead. I am excited and honored to lead this unique laboratory during such an extraordinary era.”

Raymond L. Orbach, director of the federal Department of Energy’s Office of Science, called Oddone superbly qualified to guide Fermilab into the future.

“We are very fortunate that Pier Oddone will become the next director of Fermilab,” Orbach said. “He is an outstanding scientist and a proven leader and manager whose appointment serves Fermilab, the Office of Science and the nation well. We are indebted to Fermilab’s current director Michael Witherell for his leadership and accomplishments. Pier Oddone will be a worthy successor.”

Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham recently honored Witherell with the Secretary’s Gold Award “for outstanding leadership combining excellence in science with excellence in safety” during his tenure as Fermilab’s director since 1999. Witherell will become vice chancellor for research at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in July 2005. He praised Oddone’s appointment as his successor.

“I am very pleased that Pier Oddone has agreed to be the next Fermilab director.” Witherell said. “I have had the pleasure of knowing him as a friend and colleague for many years. Pier is a superb physicist who has years of experience managing science at another great laboratory. He understands that the advance of particle physics in the U.S. and in the world depends on strong leadership from Fermilab. This is a terrific choice. I look forward to working closely with him during the months ahead to ensure a smooth transition.”

Oddone’s appointment concluded a five-month search for a Fermilab director by a 19-member committee led by former Presidential Science Advisor Neal Lane of Rice University. In October, the search committee presented its results to URA’s Board of Overseers, chaired by Cornell University physicist Donald Hartill.

“Pier is enthusiastic about the opportunity to lead Fermilab,” Hartill said. “His experience in managing the diverse and outstanding scientific research programs at Berkeley Lab is a strong asset. With that experience and his strong scientific background, Fermilab is in good hands and will continue to play a key and leading role in the world of particle physics.”

Oddone, a U.S. citizen, was born in Peru and speaks fluent Spanish and Italian. He graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and received a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University. Following a post-doctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology, Oddone moved to the Department of Energy’s Berkeley Lab, where he worked on experiments there and at DOE’s Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in nearby Palo Alto. Oddone was director of the Physics Division at Berkeley Lab from 1987-91 and has been deputy director of the laboratory since 1989. Oddone is well known as the inventor of the Asymmetric B-Factory, a new kind of particle collider designed to study the difference between matter and antimatter. B factories are currently operating at both SLAC and KEK laboratory in Japan. Oddone was a founding member of SLAC’s BaBar collaboration, which, along with KEK’s Belle collaboration, discovered the existence of matter-antimatter asymmetry in particles known as B mesons. Oddone is the recipient of the 2005 Panofsky Prize for the invention of the Asymmetric B-Factory.

Oddone is married to Barbara S. de Oddone, Esq., an attorney. They are the parents of Gian Michele and Alessandra. After many years in California, Oddone said that he and his wife look forward to getting to know the Chicago area.

Fermilab is operated by Universities Research Association, Inc, a consortium of 90 research universities that has operated Fermilab under a contract with the Department of Energy since the laboratory’s founding in 1967. The Department’s Office of Science is the steward of 10 national laboratories in the national laboratory system, including Fermilab.

BATAVIA, Illinois – Michael S. Witherell, Director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Acceleratory Laboratory, today (Nov. 1) announced the establishment of the Fermilab Particle Astrophysics Center, and named the renowned Fermilab and University of Chicago cosmologist Edward “Rocky” Kolb as its director.

“Astrophysics efforts began at our lab with the very successful Theoretical Astrophysics Group, and Rocky Kolb was a big part of establishing that tradition here,” Witherell said. “Rocky is well known and well respected in the larger world of astrophysics outside Fermilab, so he was the obvious choice to get things started with the Center for Particle Astrophysics.”

The Center will function as an intellectual focus for particle astrophysics efforts at the world’s highest-energy particle physics lab, bringing together the Theoretical and Experimental Astrophysics Groups. It will also encompass existing projects, including the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory, and the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search, as well as proposed projects, including the SuperNova Acceleration Probe to study dark energy as part of the Joint Dark Energy Mission, and the Dark Energy Survey, where Fermilab is building a camera for the Cerro Tololo Interamerican Observatory (CTIO) in Chile.

New data have revealed that only five percent of the universe is made of normal, visible matter described by the Standard Model. Ninety-five percent of the universe consists of dark matter and dark energy whose fundamental nature is a mystery. To reconstruct the cosmic story, telescopes and space probes detect the relics from the early universe, and particle accelerators recreate and study the extreme physics that characterized the stages of development and the transitions between them. Astrophysical observations of the relics of the big bang must agree with data from physics experiments recreating the particles and forces of the early universe. The two ends of the exploration-cosmology and particle physics-must meet.

“Like 16th century astronomers who suddenly faced the proposition of a heliocentric solar system, physicists are now eager to explore what may be a second Copernican revolution,” said Dr. Raymond L. Orbach, Director of the DOE Office of Science. “The growing and compelling confluence between cosmology and particle physics will play a crucial role in that quest. There could not be a better time to establish the Fermilab Particle Astrophysics Center, and we are delighted that Rocky Kolb has agreed to be its first Director.”

Michael Turner, Assistant Director for Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the National Science Foundation, reinforced Orbach’s support.

“Fermilab could not have chosen a better individual to lead this new center,” said Turner, who founded the Theoretical Astrophysics Group at Fermilab with Kolb in the 1970s. “Rocky is one of the pioneers in bringing together particle physics with cosmology. It was the Astrophysics Group at Fermilab that he and I worked together to establish that really cemented this connection. But he did all the work, and you can quote me on that.”

Following his appointment, Kolb announced that the Center for Particle Astrophysics will also support a graduate student for a year of work and study at Fermilab. The Brinson Pre-Doctoral Fellowship will be funded by The Brinson Foundation of Chicago, whose interests in scientific research include the areas of astrophysics and cosmology as well as geophysics and medical research. The Brinson Foundation lists Chicago’s Adler Planetarium among its many annual grants.

“We could not be more pleased to establish a relationship with this intriguing new effort in particle astrophysics at Fermilab,” said Gary Brinson, founder of the Chicago philanthropic organization. “The Brinson Fellowship reflects two of our core beliefs: that education is essential to the human mind and spirit and provides the basis for people to reach their full potential; and that advances in science and technology can be harnessed to materially improve the human condition. We offer our best wishes to Fermilab, to Rocky Kolb, and to the students who will lead the advances of the future.”

The Fellowship will be offered to students in the final year of their doctoral studies, who would work alongside a member of a Fermilab project. Kolb noted that, while Fermilab is not specifically an educational institution, the opportunity to train “the stars of the future” in particle astrophysics is invaluable.

“Particle cosmology is a reasonably new field,” he said. “Establishing this world-class center means we can attract future leaders with the chance to further their career and their education, and to have an impact on the field for many years to come. We will advertise world-wide, with the goal of attracting the best graduate students-and then, attracting the best doctoral students.”

Kolb, author of “BLIND WATCHERS OF THE SKY: The People and Ideas that Shaped Our View of the Universe,” also hopes the center can attract funding from private and non-governmental organizations. Astronomy has a long history of alternative funding, while particle physics remains primarily government-funded. Fermilab’s Theoretical Astrophysics Group is also funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

The Particle Astrophysics Center will celebrate its founding with a series of activities in the first week of December, including a Colloquium presentation on Wednesday, Dec. 8 by Michael Turner; a public lecture on Friday, Dec. 10 by 2002 Nobel Laureate Riccardo Giacconi, a founder of X-ray astronomy and builder of the first X-ray telescope; and a workshop, Fundamental Physics in Clusters of Galaxies, expected to attract more than 100 participants.

Fermilab is a DOE Office of Science national laboratory, operated under contract by Universities Research Association, Inc.

Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham today (October 25) presented the Secretary’s Gold Award to eight current and former directors of Department of Energy national laboratories, including Fermilab Director Michael Witherell. The award is the Energy Department’s highest honorary award and includes a plaque with citation, a medallion and a rosette.

“I’m proud to recognize the people whose hard work and dedication contribute so much to the Department of Energy’s vital missions,” said Secretary Abraham, who presented the awards at a luncheon at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. “Our world-class laboratories are a marvelous resource and have made far-reaching contributions—not only to the Department of Energy, but to our Nation and indeed the world. The incredible work done in the laboratories is made possible by the strong, steady, and responsible leadership of these directors.”

Witherell has been director of Fermilab since July 1, 1999. The award citation lauded him “for outstanding leadership combining excellence in science with excellence in safety. Under your leadership, Fermilab has become well-positioned to make major advances in High Energy Physics and has successfully fulfilled its commitments to the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The Tevatron has reached its luminosity goals, a major achievement in itself, and MiniBooNE has begun operations. All of this has been achieved with a dramatic improvement in safety. The Department of Energy thanks you for your outstanding service.”

For a list of all eight recipients, please read the Department of Energy press release.

Fermilab is a national laboratory funded by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy, operated by Universities Research Association, Inc.

BATAVIA, Ill. — Scientists from the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory are presenting new results from experiments performed at the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator during the 32nd International Conference on High Energy Physics in Beijing, China, August 16-22. The physicists from Fermilab and from universities and laboratories around the world traveled to Beijing to present new results from the DZero and CDF experiments.

Collider Run II of the Tevatron began in 2001 after the accelerators and the DZero and CDF detectors completed a major upgrade. Physicists from DZero and CDF are presenting new results on a variety of topics using Run II data, including properties of the top quark, W and Z bosons, bottom and charm mesons, and searches for new physics such as the Higgs boson and extra dimensions.

“New, important physics results are coming out of the Tevatron continuously,” said Fermilab Director Mike Witherell. “Some of these results using Run II data were presented last week at the Tevatron Connection at Fermilab, and are now being presented at Beijing.”

Some of the most exciting results DZero and CDF collaborators are presenting involve measurements of particles called B mesons. Studying the behavior of B mesons — combinations of one bottom quark and one quark of another type (up, down, charm or strange)– may help scientists understand why the universe is made of matter instead of antimatter. The excess of matter, which cannot be explained by the Standard Model, the fundamental theory of particle physics, is one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in our understanding of the universe.

“Both CDF and DZero have the capability to do really precise measurements of B physics that will be complementary to those made at dedicated B factories like BaBar at SLAC and Belle at KEK,” said John Womersley, DZero co-spokesperson. “The Tevatron can also make particles containing bottom quarks that can’t be seen anywhere else.”

Theory predicts that the B_s meson, a combination of a bottom and a strange quark, exists in two different states. The CDF collaboration is presenting a new measurement of the difference in lifetime between the two B_s states. If the new measurement, which is about four times higher than the Standard Model prediction, remains the same after more data is analyzed, it will be an astonishing result that cannot be explained by current theories. DZero is presenting strong evidence for the B_c meson, a combination of a bottom and a charm quark, confirming hints of its existence previously reported by CDF. The B_c can only be produced at the Tevatron, and the new measurements of its mass and lifetime are the most precise in the world.

The CDF and DZero collaborations are both presenting new measurements of the top quark’s mass. The top quark, discovered at Fermilab in 1995, is of great interest to physicists due to its ability to constrain predictions of the mass of the Higgs boson and its possible role in a phenomenon called electroweak symmetry breaking, through which all the particles in the universe attained mass.

“A small change in the mass of the top quark results in a big change in the predicted Higgs boson mass,” said Young-Kee Kim, CDF co-spokesperson. “As we gather more data and reduce the error on the mass of the top quark, many theoretical predictions for electroweak symmetry breaking and other new phenomena will be critiqued and possibly discarded.”

Both collaborations are also presenting new results on the search for exotic phenomena such as extra dimensions and supersymmetry. Fermilab physicists look for particles that can live in extra dimensions, and their effects on particles living in our four dimensions. They also search for particles predicted by the theory of supersymmetry, postulated 30 years ago to solve problems with the Standard Model, such as its inability to include the force of gravity and to explain dark matter. The energies and number of proton-antiproton collisions at the Tevatron allow Fermilab scientists to look for supersymmetric particles that are not accessible at any other experiments. No evidence has yet been seen for extra dimensions or supersymmetric particles, but the collaborations have placed new best-in-the-world limits on the occurrence of these phenomena.

“The new physics results would not have been possible without the terrific performance of our accelerators this year,” said Witherell. “The campaign to improve the accelerators has been very successful, and we are making more improvements for next year.”

Since January 2004, the Tevatron peak luminosity, or the peak number of protons and antiprotons colliding, has increased over 100 percent. The integrated luminosity, or total number of proton-antiproton collisions, exceeded the goals for fiscal year 2004 three months early.

The integration of the Recycler, a novel storage ring for antiprotons, into Tevatron operations has contributed to peak luminosity records in the last couple of months. Protons are much easier to produce than antiprotons, so the smaller number of available antiprotons limits the Tevatron luminosity. Scientists expect even greater increases in luminosity when the Recycler becomes fully operational in the coming year.

“I always had confidence in the very talented people here, but the results from this past year exceeded expectations,” said Roger Dixon, head of Fermilab’s Accelerator Division. “We still have a long way to go to reach our ultimate goal.”

Fermilab is a national laboratory funded by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy, operated by Universities Research Association, Inc.

Batavia, Ill. – Following the launch today by Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham of a major new Department of Energy initiative for science education, officials of DOE’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory expressed support for the new program. At a gathering of researchers and graduate students at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in Palo Alto, California earlier today (Thursday), Secretary Abraham outlined a seven-point program to use resources of DOE and its national laboratories to improve science education for the nation’s students.

“As a DOE national laboratory, Fermilab has a longstanding commitment to strengthening science education,” said Fermilab Director Michael S. Witherell. “Secretary Abraham’s initiative will help to leverage the unique resources at Fermilab and other DOE national laboratories around the country. By connecting students and teachers with the excitement of research, we have the opportunity to inspire and educate the next generation of scientists.”

Witherell cited the QuarkNet program as one such opportunity. Based at Fermilab, the six-year-old program brings high school students and teachers to the frontier of 21st century research by involving them directly in the research programs of the world’s major particle physics laboratories.

Through university scientists across the country, QuarkNet is connected to high-energy physics experiments operating at Fermilab and other particle physics research centers. The students and teachers work alongside scientists in an experience designed to catalyze the young people’s interest in today’s revolutionary science of particle physics.

“So far, QuarkNet has reached 507 teachers and their students in 25 states and Puerto Rico,” said Fermilab Education Manager Marjorie Bardeen. “But beyond the numbers, over and over again we see students come alive to the fascination of real scientific research. The national laboratories have extraordinary capabilities to offer in strengthening science education in this country.”

This week found Glenbard North High School (Illinois) physics teacher Dan Rubino at work in the experimental control room of Fermilab’s DZero experiment. DZero scientists analyze the results of trillions of high-energy particle collisions at Fermilab’s Tevatron particle accelerator to try to discover what the universe is made of and how it works. Under the guidance of Fermilab physicist Don Lincoln, Rubino and four local high schoolers were working to correct the calibration of the detection of certain particle jets that contain subatomic particles called muons. Lincoln had noted a problem in the current jet calibration and asked the students to help him discover the source of the error in order to correct it.

Paul Bierdz, an Illinois Math and Science Academy student from Oak Forest, Illinois, said he found the experience amazing.

“The three-story detector,” Bierdz said, “the millions of lines of analysis code and petabytes of data-all dedicated to discovering the simplicity of a few particles that are responsible for the entire universe.”

Fermilab is operated by Universities Research Association, Inc., under a contract with the U.S. Department of Energy.

-30-

More information about QuarkNet and other Fermilab Science education programs is available at http://www-tele.fnal.gov/pub/education/index.html.

More information about all of the components of the Department of Energy’s science education initiative is available at http://www.science.doe.gov/Sub/Newsroom/News_Releases/DOE-SC/2004/Education-Initiative/Education-Initiative.htm

BATAVIA, Illinois–Officials at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory today (Thursday) announced a potential five-hundredfold increase in the laboratory’s computer network connections to U.S. and international science communities. A new high-performance optical fiber link will connect Fermilab with one of the most advanced optical networking facilities in the world–the Science Technology And Research Light-Illuminated Gigabit High-Performance Transit facility on the Chicago campus of Northwestern University.

StarLight is a high-performance network exchange for many worldwide research and educational wide-area networks. A 92-kilometer optical fiber connects Fermilab, a particle physics laboratory located in Chicago’s western suburbs, with the StarLight facility, enhancing Fermilab’s high-speed connectivity with universities and institutions in North and South America, Europe and Asia. Such advanced networks are necessary in the global field of particle physics–scientists from 31 countries currently collaborate on Fermilab experiments.

“Fermilab’s connection to StarLight will greatly expand our opportunities to work with our university and laboratory partners,” said Don Petravick, Head of the Computation and Communications Fabric Department of Fermilab’s Computing Division. “Fermilab already has several petabytes–several quadrillion bytes–of particle physics data, and will host even more in the coming years. This new connection will allow interested scientists anywhere in the world access to that data in different and more efficient ways.”

The connection to StarLight will enhance Fermilab’s ability to conduct research in computer science as well as particle physics. The laboratory plays a leading role in developing data grid software that will enable experiments to distribute data worldwide.

“This cutting-edge technology is important for the national science program,” said Jane Monhart, director of the DOE’s Fermi Area Office. “The ability of worldwide research institutions to connect at high speeds through hubs such as StarLight is an important step in the next phase of national and international research.”

The new optical fiber connection has the potential to improve Fermilab’s computer network connectivity, currently provided by the DOE’s Energy Sciences Network at 622 megabits per second, to 330 gigabits per second. The connection follows the ESnet roadmap for connecting Fermilab, Argonne National Laboratory and StarLight in a high-bandwidth Metropolitan Area Network that also connects to ESnet. Thousands of DOE scientists and collaborators worldwide are linked by the ESnet high-speed network.

“I am delighted that Fermilab has been able to achieve this new and very significant connectivity to Starlight,” said ESnet Manager Bill Johnston. “This is an important milestone in the DOE Science Networking Roadmap that will provide Fermilab with high-speed and fail-safe connectivity to the ESnet core as well as to the international networks at StarLight.”

Among the networks that connect through StarLight are: I-WIRE, a state-wide advanced research optical network; LHCNet, a DOE funded link to CERN for LHC large scale science; CA*net4, which connects Chicago with all major Canadian universities and research institutions; Abilene, which connects universities and research laboratories across the U.S.; the DOE UltraScience Net; and the National Lambda Rail, a cross-country fiber-optic infrastructure for research and experimentation in networking technologies and applications.

“The StarLight community is pleased that Fermilab has joined us as a partner in creating the next generation of U.S. and international advanced networking,” said Joel Mambretti, Director of the International Center for Advanced Internet Research at Northwestern University, which develops and manages StarLight in partnership with the University of Illinois at Chicago, Argonne National Laboratory and major international networks.

Fermilab will initially link with its research partners through StarLight at 10 gigabits per second–16 times its current rate. This new link with researchers around the world will be required for upcoming particle physics experiments such as those at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland.

“The first likely application will be through our new high-speed link to the UKLight research network,” said Petravick. “We will be able to share data from current Fermilab experiments with our university collaborators in the United Kingdom at an incredible rate.”

Fermilab is a national laboratory funded by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy, operated by Universities Research Association, Inc.

StarLight is developed and managed by the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Chicago, iCAIR at Northwestern University, and the Mathematics and Computer Science Division at Argonne National Laboratory, in partnership with Canada’s CANARIE and Holland’s SURFnet. StarLight is made possible by major funding from the US National Science Foundation to the University of Illinois at Chicago and Department of Energy funding to Argonne National Laboratory. StarLight is a service mark of the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois.

BATAVIA, Illinois — Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory will announce on Friday, June 18 the observation of an unexpected new member of a family of subatomic particles called “heavy-light” mesons. The new meson, a combination of a strange quark and a charm antiquark, is the heaviest ever observed in this family, and it behaves in surprising ways — it apparently breaks the rules on decaying into other particles.

As a rule, the more massive the meson, the shorter its lifetime before decaying into other particles. But not this time. This heavy meson lives three times longer than its lighter relatives.

“Strong decays follow the rule that the heavier the particle, the faster it falls apart, all other things being equal,” said Carnegie Mellon University physicist and SELEX spokesman James Russ. “It’s that last part-all other things being equal-that makes the new particle so interesting.”

SELEX deputy cospokesperson Peter Cooper of Fermilab said this kind of contradiction is “just not supposed to happen. If this meson played by the normal rules of the strong interaction,” Cooper said, “it should fall apart quickly and we never would have seen it.”

In another contradiction, SELEX also saw the new meson decay about six times more often than expected into an eta particle (a rarer but well-studied member of the meson family), rather than into the expected particle, called a K meson.

“It’s like watching a water bucket with a large hole and small hole in the bottom,” Russ said. “For some reason, the water is pouring out the small hole six times faster than it’s coming out of the large one. Something unusual must be going on inside the bucket.”

This first observation of the new meson expands the picture of the ways in which the strong force works within the atomic nucleus. The same strong force that keeps the nuclei of atoms from flying apart also controls the decay rates of particles. Why does the new meson break the highly predictable decay pattern of other mesons? How many other patterns might there be?

Mesons tend to be a short-lived tribe. Their lifetimes are so short that they show themselves as a range of masses-what particle physicists call the particle’s “width.” This unusual effect — a particle’s mass being uncertain because it lives a very short time — is a direct result of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. It is a vivid demonstration that these particles live in a quantum world. The meson lifetime is 10 (-24) seconds, or about the amount of time it takes light to cross a proton. By comparison, light travels one foot in a billionth of a second.

A meson is made up of a quark and an antiquark, bound together by the strong force. The combination of a massive quark, like the charm quark, with a light quark (in this case, a strange quark) presents an especially interesting laboratory in which to study the strong force. In heavy-light mesons, the motion of the quarks is simpler than in other mesons — the heavy quark sits still and physicists only have to keep track of the motion of the lighter quark completing the system.

“This new particle is showing a possible deviation from the expected path that most mesons take,” Fermilab theorist Christopher Hill confirmed. “It suggests that some intriguing new dynamical aspect of the strong force is at work, and it opens the door for many future explorations, at Fermilab and around the world.”

The discovery by the members of the SELEX collaboration uses data from their fixed-target experiment at Fermilab’s Tevatron, the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator. SELEX studies the results of protons colliding with solid targets of copper and diamond. While the SELEX experiment stopped taking data in 1997, an extended analysis revealed this new particle lurking within their data.

In the spring of 2003, experiments at three electron-positron colliders — BABAR at Stanford (Cal.) Linear Accelerator Center, CLEO at Cornell University in New York, and BELLE at KEK in Tsukuba, Japan — announced the discovery of a new pair of charm-strange mesons. While these mesons had been predicted theoretically, their properties didn’t match theory. They had such low masses that they could not decay in the preferred way, so they had long lifetimes.

Following the 2003 announcements, SELEX began to reexamine its own results to seek out more eta particles and determine whether they existed in more interesting combinations. But before any results could be deemed conclusive, the collaboration had to prove that it understood the unique photon detector well enough to vouch for that type of data. Several Russian collaborators within SELEX conducted painstaking tests of the detector, which they had built; their answer was “yes.”

The SELEX discovery adds yet another contradiction to the conventional predictions of meson behavior. The known symmetries of heavy-light mesons predict that other active experiments, such as BABAR, CLEO and BELLE, as well as Fermilab’s FOCUS experiment, will be able to see this particle and various partner particles in their data, expanding even further our picture of the strong force, and building on the SELEX result.

The collaboration has submitted a paper describing the result –“First Observation of a Narrow Charm-Strange Meson D_sJ⁺(2632)->D_s(eta)⁺ and D⁰K⁺” — to Physical Review Letters. The result is being presented on Friday, June 18 in a seminar at Fermilab by physicist Anatoly Evdokimov of the Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics, Moscow, Russia.

A relatively small experiment by the standards of particle physics, SELEX is made up of about 125 physicists from 21 institutions around the world. Included are six institutions in the U.S., four in Russia, three in South America, two in Italy, and one each in Turkey, Germany, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Israel and the Peoples Republic of China.

Fermilab is a U.S. Department of Energy-Office of Science national laboratory, operated under contract by Universities Research Association, Inc.

SELEX collaborating institutions:
Ball State University, Muncie, IN
Bogazici University, Istanbul, Turkey
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
Centra Brasileiro de Pesquisas Fisicas, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Fermilab, Batavia, IL
Institute for High Energy Physics, Protvino, Russia
Institute of High Energy Physics, Beijing, Peoples Republic of China
Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics, Moscow, Russia
Max-Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics, Heidelberg, Germany
Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
Petersburgh Nuclear Physics Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia
Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, Israel
Universidad Autonoma de San Luis Potosi, San Luis Potosi, Mexico
Universidade Federal da Paraiba, Paraiba, Brazil
H. H. Wills Physics Laboratory, University of Bristol, UK
University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA
University of Michigan-Flint, Flint, MI
University of Rochester, Rochester, NY
University of Rome “La Sapienza” and INFN, Rome, Italy
University of Sao Paulo, Brazil
University of Trieste and INFN, Trieste, Italy