Media invited to attend press conference with Congressman Bill Foster at Fermilab, today, August 5, noon, Industrial Center Building

Congressman Bill Foster will announce today that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will provide Fermilab with an additional $60.2 million to support research toward next-generation particle accelerators and preliminary design for a future neutrino experiment. Foster will make the announcement in Fermilab’s Industrial Center Building. All media are invited to attend.

Media representatives wishing to attend should contact Elizabeth Clements at 630-840-3351, lizzie@fnal.gov or Kurt Riesselmann at 630-840-3351, kurtr@fnal.gov. To allow for a prompt start for the press conference, media are asked to arrive at the Industrial Center Building no later than 11:45 a.m.

Directions to the Industrial Center Building:

From the west, enter Fermilab on Pine Street and continue going straight on the road, driving past Wilson Hall. The Industrial Center Building will be on the left in a complex of five buildings about a quarter mile past Wilson Hall. A sign will be in front of the building, and security guards will provide directions and parking information .

From the east, enter Fermilab on Batavia Road. Drive past Eola Road and the buffalo barn. The Industrial Center Building will be on the right in a complex of five buildings. A sign will be in front of the building, and security guards will provide directions and parking information .

More information about Fermilab and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is available at http://www.fnal.gov/recovery/

: The steel shell for the addition to Industrial Building 3 marks the future location of Fermilab’s new materials laboratory space. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is providing $4.9 million for the project, including approximately $3 million to cover initial construction costs. The remaining budget will fund furnishings and several building upgrades, as well as construction management and a budgeted reserve to account for unplanned costs.

: Fermilab has awarded to R.C. Wegman Construction Co. a $3.5-million contract for the expansion of the MI-8 building. The construction project, funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, is giving a boost to local companies and will provide much-needed space to the technicians who support Fermilab’s neutrino program.

: Construction crews are altering the existing New Muon Building to make the facility capable of producing and testing key components for superconducting radio frequency technology. They are building an underground enclosure and support housings. Technical beamline equipment will occupy the length of the existing facility and the 202-foot extension. The project will also include work inside the existing building to relocate the loading dock to accommodate the new tunnel enclosure.

: In April, crews finished blasting a hole measuring about 50 by 70 by 350 feet in the granite at the site of the NOvA detector facility in Ash River, Minn. They recently completed the roof of the service building for the NOvA experiment and began pouring the concrete base for the structure in May. Photo: Dan Traska of Einarson Flying Service

: Fermilab received more than $50 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds for research and development of superconducting radio frequency technology. The technology will be used to build a test area for components needed for the next-generation particle accelerator. Superconducting radiofrequency technology aims to increase the efficiency of transferring particle energy and the amount of energy, speed and mass the particles can acquire.

: Fermilab will receive more than $50 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds for superconducting radio frequency technology. Some of those funds will be used to build a test area for next-generation particle accelerator components, such as the 9-cell 1.3 GHz superconducting radio frequency cavity shown here.

: Irina Kubantseva, a technician in FermilabÃs Particle Physics Division, will help test the wavelength shifters in the Fermilab chemistry lab when the first shipment arrives in September. Scientists use the chemicals to change the wavelength of particles of light, called photons, into the required range for the experiment.

: Officials break ground at the entrance to the future site of the NOvA detector facility in Ash River, Minnesota on May 1. Fermilab will receive $14.9 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for NOvA, a new neutrino experiment that will seek to explore the mystery of how matter came to dominate antimatter in the universe.

: A construction crew began clearing and leveling roads at the NOvA site in Ash River, Minnesota on June 1. Construction of the facility is expected to generate 60 to 80 jobs plus purchase of materials and services from U.S. companies. Fermilab will receive $14.9 million American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds for the NOvA project.

: Jim’s Ash Trail Store in Ash River, Minnesota featured the NOvA Project meal special during the groundbreaking ceremony in May.

: This rendering depicts the future NOvA detector facility on the property in Ash River, Minnesota, about 40 miles southeast of International Falls. Rendering by Holabird & Root

: A rendering of the entrance to the NOvA detector facility. Physicists will use the NOvA experiment to analyze the mysterious behavior of neutrinos sent through the Earth from Fermilab in Illinois to the NOvA detector in Ash River, Minnesota. Rendering by Holabird & Root

: Ash River near the future site of the NOvA detector facility. Photoa; William Miller, NOvA installation manager

BATAVIA, IL and UPTON, NY – The world’s largest computing grid has passed its most comprehensive tests to date in anticipation of the restart of the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The successful dress rehearsal proves that the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG) is ready to analyze and manage real data from the massive machine. The United States is a vital partner in the development and operation of the WLCG, with 15 universities and three U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories from 11 states contributing to the project.

The full-scale test, collectively called the Scale Test of the Experimental Program 2009 (STEP09), demonstrates the ability of the WLCG to efficiently navigate data collected from the LHC’s intense collisions at CERN, in Geneva, Switzerland, all the way through a multi-layered management process that culminates at laboratories and universities around the world. When the LHC resumes operations this fall, the WLCG will handle more than 15 million gigabytes of data every year.

Although there have been several large-scale WLCG data-processing tests in the past, STEP09, which was completed on June 15, was the first to simultaneously test all of the key elements of the process.

“Unlike previous challenges, which were dedicated testing periods, STEP09 was a production activity that closely matches the types of workload that we can expect during LHC data taking. It was a demonstration not only of the readiness of experiments, sites and services but also the operations and support procedures and infrastructures,” said CERN’s Ian Bird, leader of the WLCG project.

Once LHC data have been collected at CERN, dedicated optical fiber networks distribute the data to 11 major “Tier-1” computer centers in Europe, North America and Asia, including those at DOE’s Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois. From these, data are dispatched to more than 140 “Tier-2” centers around the world, including 12 in the United States. It will be at the Tier-2 and Tier-3 centers that physicists will analyze data from the LHC experiments – ATLAS, CMS, ALICE and LHCb – leading to new discoveries. Support for the Tier-2 and Tier-3 centers is provided by the DOE Office of Science and the National Science Foundation.

“In order to really prove our readiness at close-to-real-life circumstances, we have to carry out data replication, data reprocessing, data analysis, and event simulation all at the same time and all at the expected scale for data taking,” said Michael Ernst, director of Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Tier-1 Computing Center. “That’s what made STEP09 unique.”

The result was “wildly successful,” Ernst said, adding that the U.S. distributed computing facility for the ATLAS experiment completed 150,000 analysis jobs at an efficiency of 94 percent.

A key goal of the test was gauging the analysis capabilities of the Tier 2 and Tier 3 computing centers. During STEP09’s 13-day run, seven U.S. Tier 2 centers for the CMS experiment, and four U.S. CMS Tier 3 centers, performed around 225,000 successful analysis jobs.

“We knew from past tests that we wanted to improve certain areas,” said Oliver Gutsche, the Fermilab physicist who led the effort for the CMS experiment. “This test was especially useful because we learned how the infrastructure behaves under heavy load from all four LHC experiments. We now know that we are ready for collisions.”

U.S. contributions to the WLCG are coordinated through the Open Science Grid (OSG), a national computing infrastructure for science. OSG not only contributes computing power for LHC data needs, but also for projects in many other scientific fields including biology, nanotechnology, medicine and climate science.

“This is another significant step to demonstrating that shared infrastructures can be used by multiple high-throughput science communities simultaneously,” said Ruth Pordes, executive director of the Open Science Grid Consortium. “ATLAS and CMS are not only proving the usability of OSG, but contributing to maturing national distributed facilities in the U.S. for other sciences.”

Physicists in the U.S. and around the world will sift through the LHC data in search of tiny signals that will lead to discoveries about the nature of the physical universe. Through their distributed computing infrastructures, these physicists also help other scientific researchers increase their use of computing and storage for broader discovery.

-30-Notes for editors:

Grid computing and Large Hadron Collider images are available at http://www.uslhc.us/Images. More information about U.S. computing for the LHC, including a list of U.S. institutions involved in the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid, is available at http://www.uslhc.us/The_US_and_the_LHC/Computing.

U.S. support for LHC participation
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science and the National Science Foundation (NSF) invested a total of $531 million in the construction of the Large Hadron Collider and the ATLAS and CMS detectors. DOE provided $200 million for the construction of critical LHC accelerator components, $250 million for the design and construction of the ATLAS and CMS detectors, and continues to support U.S. scientists’ work on the detectors and accelerator R&D. NSF has focused its support on funding university scientists who have contributed to the design and construction of CMS and ATLAS ($81 million). In addition, both agencies promote the development of advanced computing innovations to meet the enormous LHC data challenge. More than 1,700 scientists, engineers, students and technicians from 94 U.S. universities and laboratories participate in the LHC and its experiments. (A full list is available here.)

LHC Computing Grid participants
Signatories to the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, India, Israel, Japan, Republic of Korea, the Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, the Russian Federation, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taipei, Turkey, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, and the United States of America.

Brookhaven National Laboratory is operated and managed for DOE’s Office of Science by Brookhaven Science Associates. Visit Brookhaven Laboratory’s electronic newsroom for links, news archives, graphics, and more.

Fermilab is a DOE Office of Science national laboratory, operated under contract by the Fermi Research Alliance, LLC. The Department of Energy Office of Science is the nation’s single-largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences.

The Open Science Grid is a national distributed computing grid for data-intensive research, supported by the Offices of Advanced Scientific Computing Research, High Energy Physics, and Nuclear Physics within the DOE Office of Science, and the National Science Foundation. Visit www.opensciencegrid.org.

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world’s leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer status.

At a recent physics seminar at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Fermilab physicist Pat Lukens of the CDF experiment announced the observation of a new particle, the Omega-sub-b (Ω_b). The particle contains three quarks, two strange quarks and a bottom quark (s-s-b). It is an exotic relative of the much more common proton and has about six times the proton’s mass.

The observation of this “doubly strange” particle, predicted by the Standard Model, is significant because it strengthens physicists’ confidence in their understanding of how quarks form matter. In addition, it conflicts with a 2008 result announced by CDF’s sister experiment, DZero.

The Omega-sub-b is the latest entry in the “periodic table of baryons.” Baryons are particles formed of three quarks, the most common examples being the proton and neutron. The Tevatron particle accelerator at Fermilab is unique in its ability to produce baryons containing the b quark, and the large data samples now available after many years of successful running enable experimenters to find and study these rare particles. The observation opens a new window for scientists to investigate its properties and better understand this rare object.

Combing through almost half a quadrillion (1000 trillion) proton-antiproton collisions produced by Fermilab’s Tevatron particle collider, the CDF collaboration isolated 16 examples in which the particles emerging from a collision revealed the distinctive signature of the Omega-sub-b. Once produced, the Omega-sub-b travels a fraction of a millimeter before it decays into lighter particles. This decay, mediated by the weak force, occurs in about a trillionth of a second. In fact, CDF has performed the first ever measurement of the Omega-sub-b lifetime and obtained 1.13 +0.53-0.40 (stat.) ±0.02(syst.) trillionths of a second.

In August 2008, the DZero experiment announced its own observation of the Omega-sub-b based on a smaller sample of Tevatron data. Interestingly, the new CDF observation announced here is in direct conflict with the earlier DZero result. The CDF physicists measured the Omega-sub-b mass to be 6054.4 ±6.8(stat.) ±0.9(syst.) MeV/c², compared to DZero’s 6165±10(stat.)±13(syst.) MeV/c². These two experimental results are statistically inconsistent with each other leaving scientists from both experiments wondering whether they are measuring the same particle. Furthermore, the experiments observed different rates of production of this particle. Perhaps most interesting is that neither experiment sees a hint of evidence for the particle at the other’s measured value.

Although the latest result announced by CDF agrees with theoretical expectation for the Omega-sub-b both in the measured production rate and in the mass value, further investigation is needed to solve the puzzle of these conflicting results.

The Omega-sub-b discovery follows the observation of the Cascade-b-minus baryon (Ξ_b), first observed at the Tevatron in 2007, and two types of Sigma-sub-b baryons (Σ_b), discovered at the Tevatron in 2006.

The CDF collaboration submitted a paper that summarizes the details of its discovery to the journal Physical Review D. It is available online at: http://arxiv.org/abs/0905.3123

CDF is an international experiment of about 600 physicists from 62 institutions in 15 countries. It is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and a number of international funding agencies. Fermilab is a national laboratory funded by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy, operated under contract by Fermi Research Alliance, LLC.

: Six quarks–up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top–are the building blocks of matter. Protons and neutrons are made of up and down quarks, held together by the strong nuclear force. The CDF experiment now has observed the Omega-sub-b particle, which contains two strange quarks (s) and one bottom quark (b).

: Once produced, the Omega-sub-b (Ωb) particle travels about a third of a millimeter before it disintegrates into two intermediate particles called J/Psi (J/ψ) and Omega-minus (Ω-). The J/Psi then promptly decays into a pair of muons. The Omega-minus baryon, on the other hand, can travel several centimeters and occasionally be measured in the CDF silicon vertex detector. The particle decays into an unstable particle called a Lambda (Λ) baryon along with a long-lived kaon particle (K). The Lambda baryon, which has no electric charge, also can travel several centimeters prior to decaying into a proton (p) and a pion (π). Credit: CDF collaboration.

: Baryons are particles made of three quarks. The quark model predicts the combinations that exist with either spin J=1/2 (this graphic) or spin J=3/2. The graphic shows the various three-quark combinations with J=1/2 that are possible using the three lightest quarks–up, down and strange–and the bottom quark. The CDF collaboration observed the Omega-sub-b, highlighted in the graphic. There exist additional baryons involving the charm quark, which are not shown. The top quark, discovered at Fermilab in 1995, is too short-lived to become part of a baryon.

: The CDF collaboration has observed 16 Omega-sub-b candidates in the data collected through October 2008. The mass of the Omega-sub-b is measured to be 6054.4 ± 6.8 MeV/c2. The lifetime of the Omega-sub-b is measured to be 1.13 ± 0.53 picoseconds. Credit: CDF collaboration.

: The Fermilab accelerator complex accelerates protons and antiprotons close to the speed of light. Converting energy into mass, the Tevatron collider can produce particles that are heavier than the protons and antiprotons that are colliding. The Tevatron produces millions of proton-antiproton collisions per second, maximizing the chance for discovery. Two experiments, CDF and DZero, search for new types of particles emerging from the collisions.

: The CDF detector, about the size of a 3-story house, weighs about 6,000 tons. Its subsystems record the “debris” emerging from high-energy proton-antiproton collisions. The detector surrounds the collision point and records the path, energy and charge of the particles emerging from the collisions. This information can be used to find and determine the properties of the Omega-sub-b particle.

: Some of the 600 scientists of the CDF collaboration in front of Wilson Hall at Fermilab.

CERN Director-General Rolf Heuer, Nobel Laureate Leon Lederman and Fermilab physicist Boris Kayser answer questions about antimatter, the Large Hadron Collider and particle physics research

The U.S. National Science Foundation invites you to join a live media briefing on the science behind the motion picture Angels & Demons on May 19 at 1:00 p.m. EDT (12 noon CDT; 7:00 p.m. CEST). This blockbuster film, which gives particle physics a moment on the red carpet, hits movie screens around the world this week. The briefing will feature three world-renowned physicists from the European particle physics laboratory CERN and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory.

Based on Dan Brown’s best-selling novel, Angels & Demons focuses on a plot to destroy the Vatican using a small amount of antimatter. That antimatter is made using the Large Hadron Collider and is stolen from CERN. Parts of the movie were filmed at CERN.

The briefing, a live video teleconference, will feature Rolf Heuer, director-general at CERN, Leon Lederman, Nobel laureate and director emeritus at Fermilab, and Boris Kayser, Fermilab physicist and chair of the American Physics Society’s Division of Particles and Fields. To watch and ask questions during the briefing, visit the Science 360 Web site (http://www.science360.gov/live/). Journalists should send an email to lisajoy@nsf.gov to obtain a call-in number and passcode. Anyone can submit questions any time to webcast@nsf.gov.

This media briefing is part of a larger worldwide event: “Angels & Demons Lecture Nights: the Science Revealed.” More information about the series, including a list of lectures and local contacts, is available at www.uslhc.us/Angels_Demons.

* U.S. participation in the Large Hadron Collider project is supported by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science and the National Science Foundation.

* CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world’s leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer status.

* Fermilab is a Department of Energy Office of Science national laboratory operated under contract by the Fermi Research Alliance, LLC. The DOE Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the nation and helps ensure U.S. world leadership across a broad range of scientific disciplines.

Ash River, Minn. – Construction begins this month on a cutting-edge physics laboratory in northern Minnesota, supported by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Congressman James Oberstar of Minnesota and Congressman Bill Foster of Illinois today (May 1) are joining officials from the U.S. Department of Energy, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the University of Minnesota to break ground for NOvA, the world’s most advanced neutrino experiment.

“This project is part of a bold, visionary initiative which will have profound implications for our understanding of the structure and evolution of the universe,” Congressman Oberstar said. “The billion-year-old rock formations in Northeast Minnesota are helping researchers unlock mysteries of the origins of the universe.”

The DOE Office of Science has provided $40.1 million in Recovery Act funding for the construction project. It will provide an additional $9.9 million in Recovery Act funding to Fermilab, which manages the project, for purchasing key high-tech components for the project from U.S. companies, enabling those firms to retain and hire workers.

Community members also are gathering in nearby Orr, Minn., for a public presentation about the project and its impact on the local community.

The NOvA project will construct the NuMI Off-Axis Electron Neutrino Appearance (NOvA) detector facility, a laboratory of the University of Minnesota’s School of Physics and Astronomy, near the Ash River, about 40 miles southeast of International Falls. The lab will house a 15,000-ton particle detector that will investigate the role of subatomic particles called neutrinos in the origin of the universe.

“The NOvA project will fundamentally expand our understanding of neutrinos, but it will also help strengthen scientific partnerships between the University of Minnesota and Fermilab in my district,” Congressman Foster said. “Fermilab is where much of detector equipment is being built, and the neutrino beams also originate at Fermilab. This project represents the kind of investment that simultaneously supports basic scientific research, our national labs and our economy.”

Construction of the facility, supported under a cooperative agreement for research between the U.S. Department of Energy and the University of Minnesota, is expected to generate 60 to 80 jobs. In addition, the construction will result in procurements for concrete, steel, road-building materials and mechanical and electrical equipment from U.S. firms.

“The NOvA project is an investment in our scientific future that will help us to better understand the role that neutrinos have played in the evolution of the universe,” said Dennis Kovar, DOE Associate Director of Science for High Energy Physics. “NOvA’s groundbreaking reaffirms America’s commitment to retaining its position of leadership in accelerator-based particle physics.”

The NOvA project involves about 180 scientists and engineers from 28 institutions. The collaboration will build the neutrino detector and install it in the new laboratory. When the detector is completed, physicists will explore the mysterious behavior of neutrinos by examining pulses of neutrinos sent straight through the earth from Fermilab in Illinois to the NOvA detector facility in Minnesota. The neutrinos travel the 500 miles in less than three milliseconds.

“The planning for the NOvA Facility has been years in the making, and we’re very excited that it is becoming a reality,” said University of Minnesota physics professor Marvin Marshak, a lead faculty member on the project. “This project will provide tremendous opportunities for University of Minnesota faculty and students to work with experts from around the world on important research.”

The new laboratory expands the university’s international reputation as a leader in neutrino research. The University of Minnesota currently runs the Soudan Underground Laboratory near Tower, Minn., the only laboratory of its kind in the United States. For more information about the NOvA groundbreaking, please visit http://www.fnal.gov/nova/.

For additional information about the NOvA experiment, please see http://www-nova.fnal.gov/fermilab_nova.pdf

Fermilab is a Department of Energy Office of Science national laboratory operated under contract by the Fermi Research Alliance, LLC. The DOE Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the nation and helps ensure U.S. world leadership across a broad range of scientific disciplines.

: This rendering depicts the future NOvA detector facility on the property in Ash River, Minnesota, about 40 miles southeast of International Falls. Rendering by Holabird & Root

: Members of the NOvA collaboration pose during a collaboration meeting the weekend of April 24, 2009. Photo: George Joch of Argonne National Laboratory

: Ash River near the future site of the NOvA detector facility. Photoa; William Miller, NOvA installation manager

: A rendering of the entrance to the NOvA detector facility. Physicists will use the NOvA experiment to analyze the mysterious behavior of neutrinos sent through the Earth from Fermilab in Illinois to the NOvA detector in Ash River, Minnesota. Rendering by Holabird & Root

Parents looking for a way to get their children outdoors and for them to have fun with hands-on science activities have an event to add to their calendar. This year’s Family Outdoor Activity Fair at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory will take place from 1 to 4 p.m. on Sunday, April 26. The event is free and open to the public, but registration is required: fair participants need to send an email with the number of children and adults attending the event to edreg@fnal.gov.

The outdoor activity fair will offer more than a dozen activities for children ages 5-12. Older children can make their own sun dial while younger children can identify animal tracks. Everyone also can enjoy a presentation of live birds of prey. Children can explore the wildlife living in ponds and on logs and visit the bison pen to check for new calves.

“Science doesn’t just have to happen in a lab,” said Gail Poisson, event co-organizer. “We want to show parents and their children science is everywhere.”

This is the second year for the fair, which began as a way to help parents get their children excited about science. The event is funded by the Supporting Parents in Advocacy, Reform and Knowledge in Science program.

Fermilab is a Department of Energy national laboratory operated under contract by the Fermi Research Alliance, LLC. The DOE Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the nation and helps ensure U.S. world leadership across a broad range of scientific disciplines.

Batavia, Ill.—The U.S. Department of Energy has named the U.S. Compact Muon Solenoid detector project as a recipient of the DOE Secretary’s Award for Achievement. DOE presents the awards to management teams that demonstrate significant results in completing projects within cost and schedule. Fermilab physicist Dan Green will accept the award on behalf of the U.S. CMS collaboration on March 31, at the 2009 Annual DOE Project Management Workshop in Alexandria, Virginia.

The U.S. CMS collaboration will share the award for the detector project with the U.S. ATLAS collaboration. The projects provide a unique opportunity for U.S. scientists to participate in the largest collaborative effort ever attempted in the physical sciences. Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory serves as the host laboratory for the U.S. CMS project. Brookhaven National Laboratory hosts the U.S. ATLAS project. Scientists from U.S. universities and national laboratories contributed key components and expertise to the state-of-the-art detectors built for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics, in Geneva, Switzerland.

“This award is a tribute to the entire U.S. CMS collaboration,” said Green, who currently serves as the CMS Collaboration board chair. “It recognizes the team efforts of more than 700 scientists who built one-third of the detector on time and on budget.

CMS has approximately 2,300 international collaborators. Supported by the DOE Office of Science and the National Science Foundation, the U.S. CMS collaboration consists of roughly 420 Ph.D. physicists, over 100 graduate students and nearly 200 engineers, technicians, and computer scientists from 48 U.S. universities and Fermilab. The U.S. is the largest single national group in the experiment.

“I congratulate Fermilab and Dan Green on effectively managing the U.S. CMS detector project,” said Pepin Carolan, who served as DOE Federal Project Director for U.S. CMS and U.S. ATLAS. “Both U.S. ATLAS and U.S. CMS play a critical role in training future generations of scientists to maintain U.S. leadership in science, technology and innovation.”

Notes for editors:

Press kits are available at:
http://www.uscms.org/public_2/about/press_kit/index.shtml

The United States contributions to the CMS experiment and the Large Hadron Collider are funded by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science and the National Science Foundation.

CERN is the European Organization for Nuclear Research, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer status.

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is the host laboratory for the US CMS Collaboration. Fermilab is a Department of Energy National Laboratory operated under a contract with DOE by the Fermi Research Alliance for the DOE Office of Science.

U.S. CMS member institutions
(48 institutions, from 23 states and Puerto Rico)

California
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore
University of California, Davis
University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Riverside
University of California, San Diego
University of California, Santa Barbara

Colorado
University of Colorado, Boulder

Connecticut
Fairfield University, Fairfield

Florida
Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne
Florida International University, Miami
Florida State University, Tallahassee
University of Florida, Gainesville

Illinois
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Batavia
Northwestern University, Evanston
University of Illinois at Chicago

Indiana
Purdue University, West Lafayette
Purdue University Calumet, Hammond
University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame

Iowa
University of Iowa, Iowa City

Kansas
Kansas State University, Manhattan
University of Kansas, Lawrence

Maryland
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore
University of Maryland, College Park

Massachusetts
Boston University, Boston
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
Northeastern University, Boston

Michigan
Wayne State University, Detroit

Minnesota
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

Mississippi
University of Mississippi, Oxford

Nebraska
University of Nebraska, Lincoln

New Jersey
Princeton University, Princeton
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, Piscataway

New York
Cornell University, Ithaca
Rockefeller University, New York
State University of New York at Buffalo
University of Rochester, Rochester

Ohio
Ohio State University, Columbus

Pennsylvania
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh

Puerto Rico
University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez

Rhode Island
Brown University, Providence

Tennessee
University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Vanderbilt University, Nashville

Texas
Rice University, Houston
Texas A&M University, College Station
Texas Tech University, Lubbock

Virginia
University of Virginia, Charlottesville

Wisconsin
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Funds are part of $1.2 billion from Recovery Act to be disbursed by Department of Energy’s Office of Science

Batavia, Ill.—In the first installment of funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science under President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, DOE’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory will receive $34.9 million.

The funds are part of $1.2 billion announced by Secretary of Energy Steven Chu today from funding allocated under the Recovery Act to DOE’s Office of Science. The funds will support an array of Office of Science-sponsored construction, laboratory infrastructure, and research projects across the nation. The Secretary made the announcement during a visit to Brookhaven National Laboratory, in Upton, NY.

“Leadership in science remains vital to America’s economic prosperity, energy security, and global competitiveness,” said Secretary Chu. “These projects not only provide critically needed short-term economic relief but also represent a strategic investment in our nation’s future. They will create thousands of jobs and breathe new life into many local economies, while helping to accelerate new technology development, renew our scientific and engineering workforce, and modernize our nation’s scientific infrastructure.”

The Fermilab allocation is part of $1.2 billion that Secretary Chu announced is being disbursed now in the first installment of a total of $1.6 billion allocated to the DOE Office of Science by Congress under the Recovery Act legislation. Officials are working on details remaining to enable approval and release of the balance of $371 million.

Fermilab will invest the funds in critical scientific infrastructure to strengthen the nation’s global scientific leadership as well as to provide immediate economic relief to local communities. The laboratory will use $25 million for construction and improvement projects that will generate engineering and construction jobs in Illinois businesses and pay for materials and services purchased from U.S. companies. The laboratory will devote the remaining $9.9 million to purchasing key high-tech components from U.S. companies for the NOvA neutrino project, allowing these firms to retain and hire workers.

In addition to the $34.9 million for Fermilab, the initial round of Office of Science funding provides $40.1 million to the University of Minnesota for construction of the Fermilab-managed NOvA neutrino experiment. The NOvA funding for Minnesota will generate an estimated 60-plus construction jobs and procurements for concrete, steel, road-building materials and mechanical and electrical equipment from U.S. firms.

“At Fermilab, we are committed to put Recovery Act funding to work in the way the nation intends: to strengthen our country’s long-term future by investment in basic science and to provide immediate economic help for our local communities and the nation by creating jobs and buying materials and services,” said Fermilab Director Pier Oddone. “We are ready to move forward today.”

DOE’s news release is available at www.energy.gov

This isn’t your average field trip. This month, more than 6,000 high school students participating in Hands-on Particle Physics Masterclasses will have the chance to form national or international scientific collaborations, just like real particle physicists do.

With the help of particle physicists, about 400 students from across the United States will analyze data from large particle collider experiments at CERN, the European Center for Nuclear Research. Most students will participate in this activity at universities and research institutes near their schools.

Classroom groups will discuss their findings via videoconference with other groups of students from across the country or across the globe. Physicists at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, including the laboratory’s deputy director, Young-Kee Kim, will help moderate videoconferences.

“This is a great opportunity to give students a deeper understanding of particle physics,” Kim said. “I hope this program will inspire them.”

This year high school students from around the world will participate in the international Hands-on Particle Physics Masterclass program, which began in Europe in 2005 and has expanded into the United States, South Africa and Brazil. Scientists at more than 100 universities and laboratories in 23 countries, including 22 institutions in the United States, will host students.

Students in the United States will participate through QuarkNet, a national program that unites high school students, physics teachers and particle physicists.

The opportunity to experience state-of-the-art research in an authentic environment will give students insight into the international organization of modern research. At the same time, they will learn about the building blocks of our universe through presentations by scientists involved in particle physics research.

“The Masterclass gives students the opportunity to understand the way physicists do high-energy physics,” said Jeff Rylander, instructional supervisor for the science department at Glenbrook South High School in Glenbrook, Ill. Rylander brought eight of his students to Argonne National Laboratory for a Masterclass last year and worked with a particle physicist from Fermilab.

“They appreciated looking at real data and interacting with a real physicist,” he said.

Summer Blot, now a physics student at the University of Chicago, attended the Masterclass last year with her QuarkNet group at Mills E. Goodwin High School in Richmond, Va. “It was neat that after only about an hour or two of learning how to do it, we were able to try analyzing data,” she said. “It made me realize that this is really what I want to do.”

Most students have to wait until graduate school to do that kind of data analysis, Blot said. “The fact that I have experience with it starting my first year is amazing to a lot of people. It gave me an advantage.”

This year’s lectures will discuss the Large Hadron Collider, the particle accelerator about 17 miles in circumference at the border of Switzerland and France. Students will analyze visual displays of real data collected at LEP, the previous large particle accelerator at CERN, and simulated data produced by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider.

The Hands-on Particle Physics student research days take place under the central coordination of Physics Professor Michael Kobel, Technical University of Dresden, in close cooperation with the European Particle Physics Outreach Group and with the support of the Helmholtz Alliance “Physics at the Terascale,” and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research BMBF.

QuarkNet is funded by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy.

For editors:

The European Particle Physics Outreach Group is an independent committee of representatives of CERN member states and the research laboratories CERN and DESY. The committee’s goal is to make particle physics more accessible to the public. For more information: http://eppog.web.cern.ch/eppog/

For more information on the Hands-on Particle Physics Masterclasses: http://www.physicsmasterclasses.org

International schedule: http://www.physicsmasterclasses.org/mc/schedule.htm

U.S. schedule: http://cosm.hamptonu.edu/vlhc

For more information on QuarkNet and the Fermilab Education Office: http://www-ed.fnal.gov/ed_home.html

Batavia, Ill.—Scientists of the CDF experiment at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced yesterday (March 17) that they have found evidence of an unexpected particle whose curious characteristics may reveal new ways that quarks can combine to form matter. The CDF physicists have called the particle Y(4140), reflecting its measured mass of 4140 megaelectron volts. Physicists did not predict its existence because Y(4140) appears to flout nature’s known rules for fitting quarks and antiquarks together.

“It must be trying to tell us something,” said CDF cospokesperson Jacobo Konigsberg of the University of Florida. “So far, we’re not sure what that is, but rest assured we’ll keep on listening.”

Matter as we know it comprises building blocks called quarks. Quarks fit together in various well-established ways to build other particles: mesons, made of a quark-antiquark pair, and baryons, made of three quarks. So far, it’s not clear exactly what Y(4140) is made of.

The Y(4140) particle decays into a pair of other particles, the J/psi and the phi, suggesting to physicists that it might be a composition of charm and anticharm quarks. However, the characteristics of this decay do not fit the conventional expectations for such a make-up. Other possible interpretations beyond a simple quark-antiquark structure are hybrid particles that also contain gluons, or even four-quark combinations.

The CDF scientists observed Y(4140) particles in the decay of a much more commonly produced particle containing a bottom quark, the B + meson. Sifting through trillions of proton-antiproton collisions from Fermilab’s Tevatron, CDF scientists identified a small sampling of B+ mesons that decayed in an unexpected pattern. Further analysis showed that the B+ mesons were decaying into Y(4140).

The Y(4140) particle is the newest member of a family of particles of similar unusual characteristics observed in the last several years by experimenters at Fermilab’s Tevatron as well as at KEK laboratory in Japan and at DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California.

“We congratulate CDF on the first evidence for a new unexpected Y state that decays to J/psi and phi,” said Japanese physicist Masanori Yamauchi, a cospokesperson of KEK’s Belle experiment. “This state may be related to the Y(3940) state discovered by Belle and might be another example of an exotic hadron containing charm quarks. We will try to confirm this state in our own Belle data.”

Theoretical physicists are trying to decode the true nature of these exotic combinations of quarks that fall outside our current understanding of mesons and baryons. Meanwhile experimentalists happily continue to search for more such particles.

“We’re building upon our knowledge piece by piece,” said CDF cospokesperson Rob Roser of Fermilab, “and with enough pieces, we’ll understand how this puzzle fits together.”

The Y(4140) observation is the subject of an article submitted by CDF to Physical Review Letters this week. Besides announcing Y(4140), the CDF experiment collaboration is presenting more than 40 new results at the Moriond Conference on Quantum Chromodynamics in Europe this week, including the discovery of electroweak top-quark production and a new limit on the Higgs boson, in concert with experimenters from Fermilab’s DZero collaboration. Both experiments are actively pursuing a very broad program of physics, including ever-more-precise measurements of the top and bottom quarks, W and Z bosons and searches for additional new particles and forces.

“Thanks to the remarkable performance of the Tevatron, we expect to greatly increase our data sample in the next couple of years, said Konigsberg. “We’ll study better what we’ve found and hopefully make more discoveries. It’s a very exciting time here at Fermilab.”

: The CDF collaboration found evidence for a new particle dubbed Y(4140), produced by the Tevatron collider at Fermilab. The particle’s signature peak became apparent when scientists analyzed the decay of particles that produce pairs of muons and pairs of K mesons, revealing a new particle structure. The Y particle has a mass of 4140 megaelectronvolts.

: The Tevatron typically produces about 10 million proton-antiproton collisions per second, sometimes creating particles known as B mesons. A B meson contains a quark-antiquark pair that includes either a bottom quark or anti-bottom quark. B mesons can decay directly into a J/Ψ (psi) particle and a Φ (phi) particle. The CDF scientists found evidence that some B mesons unexpectedly decay into an intermediate quark structure identified as a Y particle.

: The Standard Model of elementary particles and forces includes six quarks, which bound together to form composite particles. Physicists have an excellent understanding of how three quarks cluster together to form protons, neutrons and heavier baryons, and how a quark and anti-quark bind together to create pions, kaons and other mesons. But electron-positron colliders at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the Japanese laboratory KEK have revealed examples of composite quark structures–named X and Y particles–that are not the usual mesons and baryons. Now the CDF collaboration at Fermilab has found evidence for the Y(4140) particle.

: CDF physicist Kai Yi, University of Iowa, unveiled the evidence of the Y(4140) particle to scientists at Fermilab at seminar on March 17, 2009.

: The CDF detector, about the size of a 3-story house, weighs about 6,000 tons. Its subsystems record the “debris” emerging from high-energy proton-antiproton collisions. The detector surrounds the collision point and records the path, energy and charge of the particles emerging from the collisions. This information can be used to find and determine the properties of the Omega-sub-b particle.

: The Fermilab accelerator complex accelerates protons and antiprotons close to the speed of light. Two experiments, CDF and DZero, record the particles emerging from millions of collisions per second produced by the Tevatron collider. Each collision produces hundreds of particles.

Notes for Editors:

CDF is an international experiment of about 602 physicists from 63 institutions in 13 countries. Funding for CDF comes from DOE’s Office of Science, the National Science Foundation, and a number of international funding agencies.

CDF collaborating institutions are at:
http://www-cdf.fnal.gov/collaboration/index.html

InterAction Collaboration media contacts:

A full list of worldwide InterAction media contacts is available at: http://www.interactions.org/presscontacts/

For more information on the InterAction Collaboration, visit www.interactions.org.