Fermilab receives $5.5 million for role in Open Science Grid

NSF and DOE Office of Science join forces to support community cyberinfrastructure with $30 million in awards to empower scientific collaboration and computation.

BATAVIA, Illinois – Scientists on the track to discovery got good news this month when a powerful computing tool received critical government funding. A five-year, $30 million award to the Open Science Grid Consortium, announced by the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, will operate and expand the Open Science Grid, a computing environment used by scientists to harness computing resources and scientific data from around the world.

Fermilab will receive $1.1 million each year, or $5.5 million over five years, to contribute across many of the activities of the OSG. Besides OSG Executive Director Ruth Pordes, OSG security officer Don Petravick, Gene Oleynik for storage deployments, and Ian Fisk, head of US CMS user facilities, will lead the contributions to the OSG effort.

“The OSG is an important part of the Computing Division’s strategy in support of global computing for the Fermilab scientific communities,” said Fermilab Computing Division head Vicky White.

The OSG will also play a critical role with Fermilab hosting USCMS, the US component of the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment collaboration, when the Large Hadron Collider begins operations at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland in 2007.

“USCMS is pleased with this means to sustain the US distributed infrastructure from which we will extract our science,” said Fermilab’s Lothar Bauerdick, head of software and computing for USCMS. “The Fermilab USCMS community is also playing a leadership role in the OSG as a core piece of its worldwide data analysis system.”

Michael Strayer, Director of the Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing program and Associate Director for Advanced Scientific Computing Research in DOE’s Office of Science, noted that the ability to reliably share and analyze petabytes of data is critical to scientific discovery.

“This investment in sustaining and extending the Open Science Grid is an important component of the petascale science infrastructure,” said Strayer.

The OSG is built and operated by a unique partnership of universities, national laboratories, scientific collaborations and software developers that work together to create a common distributed computing environment, or grid, for scientific research. Computing resources from more than 50 sites in the United States, Asia and South America are shared through the OSG. These resources range from small clusters of ten computers to large facilities with thousands of processors and millions of gigabytes of data storage.

“The OSG has been operating since 2005 and has already had an impact on several areas of scientific research, from particle physics to biology,” said Joseph Dehmer, director of the NSF’s Division of Physics. “The NSF has partnered with the DOE’s Office of Science in support of the OSG’s efforts to empower scientific communities by providing them with effective and dependable access to an unprecedented distributed computing facility.”

Fifteen members of the OSG Consortium, including eleven U.S. universities and four national laboratories, will receive funding through the OSG award. Over the next five years, the consortium will reach out to more scientists and scientific collaborations, helping them to harness the power of grid computing for their research.

“OSG Consortium members contribute to and benefit from the OSG, making it a true community cyberinfrastructure,” says Fermilab’s Pordes. “Our computing services support diverse research groups, and developers of campus and regional grids – points of entry to the grid for university scientists and students – are beginning to use the OSG environment to provide access to their resources.”

Scientists from many fields, including astrophysics, bioinformatics, computer science, nanotechnology, nuclear science and particle physics, use the OSG infrastructure. The LIGO Scientific Collaboration will use the OSG to integrate its computing facilities and enable its search for gravitational waves. Two particle physics collaborations rely on the OSG to fully participate in experiments at the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, Switzerland.

“The U.S. particle physicists participating in the ATLAS and CMS experiments at the LHC will depend on the OSG to connect them with the data when it starts flowing from CERN in 2008,” said Robin Staffin, Associate Director for High Energy Physics in the DOE’s Office of Science. “Scientists will use LHC data to address profound questions about the universe, such as the origin of mass and the nature of dark matter.”

Together with other grid computing projects, from computing grids on university campuses to large national and international grid projects, the consortium works to create a worldwide computing infrastructure for scientific research.

“Distributed computing and cyberinfrastructure have the capability to transform research, but these tools and methods remain challenging for most scientists,” says Miron Livny from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, OSG Facility Coordinator. “Efforts such as the OSG work to democratize computing by lowering the barrier to individual scientists using distributed computing facilities.”

Funding for the OSG from the DOE’s Office of Science will be provided through the second round of the Scientific Discovery through Advanced Computing program. Funding support from the National Science Foundation is provided by the Mathematical and Physical Sciences Directorate, the Office of Cyberinfrastructure and the Office of International Science and Engineering.

For more information please visit http://www.opensciencegrid.org/

List of institutions that will receive funding through the OSG award:
Boston University
Brookhaven National Laboratory
California Institute of Technology
Columbia University
Cornell University
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
Indiana University
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
University of California, San Diego
University of Chicago / Argonne National Laboratory
University of Florida
University of Iowa
University of North Carolina/Renaissance Computing Institute
University of Wisconsin-Madison

BATAVIA, Illinois – Scientists of the U.S. Department of Energy/Office of Science’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and collaborators of the US/CMS project have joined colleagues from around the world in announcing that the world’s largest superconducting solenoid magnet has reached full field strength in tests at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory.

Weighing in at more than 13,000 tons, the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment’s magnet is built around a 20-foot-diameter, nearly 43-foot-long superconducting solenoid – a wire coil with multiple loops, which generates a magnetic field when electricity passes through it. The CMS solenoid generates a magnetic field of 4 Tesla, some 100,000 times stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field, and stores 2.5 gigajoules of energy, enough to melt nearly 20 tons of gold. Superconductivity is achieved by chilling the coil to a temperature near absolute zero, where virtually all electrical resistance vanishes. Extremely high electrical current can then be used to generate a powerful magnetic field.

CMS is one of the experiments preparing to take data at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator, scheduled to begin operations in November 2007. Physicists from the US, CERN and around the world will address some of nature’s most fundamental questions, such as why particles have mass, and what makes up the so-far-unexplored 96 percent of the universe. Through Fermilab, the DOE’s Office of Science has contributed $23 million to the CMS magnet construction.

“We see this excellent early test result as just the beginning of a great scientific return on our investment,” said Robin Staffin, DOE’s Associate Director, Office of High Energy Physics. “We see a strong and continuing U.S. role at the leading edge of particle physics research during an exciting new era of scientific discovery.”

Some 2000 scientists from 155 institutes in 36 countries – including approximately 600 members of US/CMS, the US contingent of the CMS collaboration – are working together to build the CMS particle detector, which is currently undergoing tests prior to installation in an experimental hall about 328 feet underground. The tests are being carried out with a full slice of the CMS detector, including all its subsystems.

“After recording 30 million tracks from cosmic ray particles,” said CMS spokesman Michel Della Negra of CERN, “all systems are working very well, and we’re looking forward to first collisions in the LHC next year.”

The CMS magnet has two unique characteristics: its strong magnetic field and the uniformity of its field over a large volume.

“This magnet is the central device around which the entire experiment is built,” said Fermilab’s Dan Green, Research Project Manager for US/CMS. “This test is a great success, and the entire process has gone very smoothly.”

The University of Wisconsin at Madison, a US/CMS member, designed the magnet’s steel return yoke for the detector endcap. Fermilab supplied the superconductor cable, along with aluminum matrix and stabilizing aluminum for the superconductor wire coil. The aluminum is needed to protect the coil against quenches by transporting heat away from the conductor. In addition, Fermilab engineered a strengthening of the cryostat supporting the hadron calorimeter, which tracks particle collisions and was also supplied by the US; and designed the magnetic field mapper, which offers detailed and accurate measurement of the field in three dimensions. The measurements are needed to confirm the design, and provide input to the tracking to accurately determine particle momenta. Green said the field mapper would be starting up soon.

CMS magnet construction was approved in 1996, and began in earnest in 1998. By 2002, fabrication of the superconducting wire was complete. Winding the cable to produce the solenoid coil began in 2000 and took five years to achieve. By the end of 2005, the solenoid was ready for testing, and in February this year, it was cooled down to its operating temperature of around -269 degrees Celsius. Following the insertion of particle detectors, testing started at the end of July.

The magnet is a common project in which all of CMS’s 155 institutes have taken part, with major contributions made by the Department of Energy’s Fermilab and the University of Wisconsin in US/CMS; the French Atomic Energy Commission in Saclay (CEA); CERN, the Swiss Federal Polytechnic Institute in Zurich (ETHZ); the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics (INFN) in Genoa, and the Russian Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP) in Moscow.

Notes for Editors
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.

Fermilab is a Department of Energy National Laboratory operated under a contract with DOE by Universities Research Association, Inc. Funding for U.S. participation in the LHC is provided by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science and the National Science Foundation.

US/CMS member institutions
(49 institutions, from 22 states and Puerto Rico)

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

Colorado
University of Colorado, Boulder

Connecticut
Fairfield University, Fairfield
Yale University, New Haven

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
Iowa State University, Ames
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

Minnesota
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis

Mississippi
University of Mississippi, Oxford

Nebraska
University of Nebraska, Lincoln

New Jersey
Princeton University, Princeton
Rutgers 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
Vanderbilt University, Nashville

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

Virginia
University of Virginia, Charlottesville
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg

Wisconsin
University of Wisconsin, Madison

Batavia, Ill.–Scientists at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory joined collaborators from around the world in announcing today (July 26) that the giant CMS detector at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Geneva, Switzerland, has been sealed and switched on to collect data for an important series of tests using cosmic ray particles. Cosmic rays from space provide a source of high-energy particles like those from accelerator-generated particle collisions.

U.S. physicists are among the CMS scientists taking and analyzing data from cosmic rays to calibrate and align the CMS particle detector in preparation for the start-up of the Large Hadron Collider accelerator at CERN next year. DOE’s Fermilab, near Chicago, Illinois, serves as the host laboratory for the U.S. CMS collaboration, and the U.S. helped to fund the design and construction of the detector.

“The U.S. Department of Energy is excited about what the LHC will bring to scientists’ understanding of the birth and present state of the universe,” said Dr. Robin Staffin, DOE associate director for High Energy Physics. “These results will surely be ‘historic events’!”

The LHC is a discovery machine, designed to answer fundamental questions about the universe. Four major experiments, ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb, will observe high-energy particle collisions produced by the LHC, looking for answers to questions such as what gives matter its mass, what the invisible 96 percent of the universe is made of, why nature prefers matter to antimatter and how matter evolved from the first instants of the universe’s existence. U.S. scientists collaborate on all four experiments.

“At the U.S. National Science Foundation, we are eagerly looking forward to the discoveries to be made at the LHC,” said Marvin Goldberg, program director in NSF’s Division of Physics. “Critical milestones like the cosmic challenge tell us that LHC startup is drawing near. Our anticipation is shared not only by particle physicists, but by school teachers, their students, and computer scientists. The LHC program is an example of what can be achieved by people at universities and laboratories of many nations working together cooperatively.”

The detector elements for the cosmic challenge, including two square meters of silicon, constitute an array larger than any used in CERN’s previous generation of experiments, but make up only about one percent of the final detector that will ultimately be installed in CMS when the LHC starts up.

“This is a major milestone in the progress toward the first data-taking in 2007,” said Fermilab physicist Dan Green, research program manager of the U.S. CMS collaboration. “It marks the end of the beginning. The detector is coming together as a fantastic instrument of discovery.”

Progress with the LHC accelerator itself passed an important milestone earlier this month, with installation of the main superconducting dipole magnets reaching the halfway mark, when the 616th dipole out of a total of 1232 was installed at 3 a.m. on July 12. The dipoles are the LHC’s key elements, and will steer the machine’s high-energy beams around their 27-km orbit.

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Notes for Editors

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 National Laboratory operated under a contract with DOE by Universities Research Association, Inc. Funding for U.S. participation in the LHC is provided by the Department of Energy’s Office of Science and the National Science Foundation.

US Institutions Participating in LHC

88 institutions from across the United States participate in LHC experiments, and four US national laboratories belong to the LHC Accelerator Research Program (LARP). They are:

Arizona
University of Arizona, Tucson (ATLAS)

California
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena (CMS)
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley (ATLAS, LARP)
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore (CMS)
Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, Menlo Park (ATLAS, LARP)
University of California, Berkeley (ATLAS)
University of California, Davis (CMS)
University of California, Irvine (ATLAS)
University of California, Los Angeles (CMS)
University of California, Riverside (CMS)
University of California, San Diego (CMS)
University of California, Santa Barbara (CMS)
University of California, Santa Cruz (ATLAS)

Colorado
University of Colorado, Boulder (CMS)
Connecticut
Fairfield University, Fairfield (CMS)
Yale University, New Haven (ATLAS, CMS)

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

Illinois
Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne (ATLAS)
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Batavia (CMS, LARP)
Northwestern University, Evanston (CMS)
University of Chicago, Chicago (ATLAS)
University of Illinois at Chicago (CMS)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (ATLAS)

Indiana
Indiana University, Bloomington (ATLAS)
Purdue University, West Lafayette (CMS)
Purdue University Calumet, Hammond (CMS)
University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame (CMS)

Iowa
Iowa State University, Ames (ATLAS, CMS)
University of Iowa, Iowa City (CMS)

Kansas
Kansas State University, Manhattan (CMS)
University of Kansas, Lawrence (CMS)

Maryland
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore (CMS)
University of Maryland, College Park (CMS)

Massachusetts
Boston University, Boston (ATLAS, CMS)
Brandeis University, Waltham (ATLAS)
Harvard University, Cambridge (ATLAS)
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge (ATLAS, CMS)
Northeastern University, Boston (CMS)
Tufts University, Medford (ATLAS)
University of Massachusetts, Amherst (ATLAS)

Michigan
Michigan State University, East Lansing (ATLAS)
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (ATLAS)

Minnesota
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis (CMS)

Mississippi
University of Mississippi, Oxford (CMS)

Nebraska
Creighton University, Omaha (ALICE)
University of Nebraska, Lincoln (CMS)

New Jersey
Princeton University, Princeton (CMS)
Rutgers State University of New Jersey, Piscataway (CMS)

New Mexico
New Mexico University, Albuquerque (ATLAS)

New York
Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton (ATLAS, LARP)
Columbia University, New York (ATLAS)
Cornell University, Ithaca (CMS)
New York University, New York (ATLAS)
Rockefeller University, New York (CMS)
State University of New York at Albany (ATLAS)
State University of New York at Buffalo (CMS)
State University of New York at Stony Brook (ATLAS)
Syracuse University, Syracuse (LHCb)
University of Rochester, Rochester (CMS)

North Carolina
Duke University, Durham (ATLAS)

Ohio
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland (TOTEM)
Ohio State University, Columbus (ALICE, ATLAS, CMS)
Ohio Supercomputer Center, Columbus (ALICE)

Oklahoma
Oklahoma State University, Oklahoma (ATLAS)
University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma (ATLAS)

Oregon
University of Oregon, Eugene (ATLAS)

Pennsylvania
Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh (CMS)
Penn State University, University Park (TOTEM)
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (ATLAS)
University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh (ATLAS)

Puerto Rico
University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez (CMS)

Rhode Island
Brown University, Providence (CMS)

Tennessee
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge (ALICE)
Vanderbilt University, Nashville (CMS)

Texas
Rice University, Houston (CMS)
Southern Methodist University, Dallas (ATLAS)
Texas A&M University, College Station (CMS)
Texas Tech University, Lubbock (CMS)
University of Texas at Arlington (ATLAS)

Virginia
Hampton University, Hampton (ATLAS)
University of Virginia, Charlottesville (CMS)
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg (CMS)

Washington
University of Washington, Seattle (ATLAS)

Wisconsin
University of Wisconsin, Madison (ATLAS, CMS)

BATAVIA, Illinois – “Citizen scientists” can take part in ecology research at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory beginning this month with the Prairie Quadrat Program, coordinated by the Fermilab Education Office. The Prairie Quadrat Program, which is free and open to the public, will teach participants how to map a prairie plot, identify prairie plants, and help Fermilab ecology experts track restoration progress.

“We are trying to restore the land back to its original condition before the pioneers,” said Mary Hawthorne of the Education Office. “This program will train ordinary citizens to help us.”

Participating “citizen scientists” may choose to document plants on their plot just once, or a few times per season; or they may “adopt” their plot and track its progress for years to come. Volunteers will enter their data into a website used by scientists to monitor the prairie’s condition. Quadrat participants will get to hike and explore parts of Fermilab’s preserve that are not normally open to the public.

“This is an excellent opportunity for people to share in Fermilab’s stewardship project,” said Fermilab Education Office Director Marge Bardeen.

Some of the free sessions will be geared toward groups of children and families, offering additional activities to keep children interested and occupied while parents “work their quad.”

There will be a total of 11 outings in May, June, July, and August. A complete schedule of outings and registration information can be found at http://www-ed.fnal.gov/data/life_sci/citizen/.

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, Illinois – Summertime is a bright season of adventure and discovery for children, and now is the perfect time to add Science Adventures to your children’s schedule of discoveries for June, July and August at the Lederman Science Center at Fermilab, a U.S. Department of Energy lab.

Parents find adventures for Kindergarteners through seventh graders, with sessions lasting from a couple of hours to a full five-day week. Adventures are led by teachers from surrounding communities, members of Fermilab’s Education Office, and other professionals. Find a class that matches your child’s gifts and interests. A sampling, from June through July:

• Leonardo da Vinci, Grades K-4. Taste the life and times of a great artist, scientist and thinker. Design and build a catapult or flying machine…compose a picture using mathematical proportions…time travel to Italy in the 1400’s. (June 26-30, 12 PM to 2:00 PM, $95 per person)
• Good Vibrations, Grades K-3. Bang! Boom! Swish! Sound is all around us. Investigate the nature of sound. Create your own sound wave. Design musical instruments to make beautiful music. (July 15, 10:30 AM-11: 30 AM, $25 per person)
• Unlocking Science and Math Problems, Grades 2-5. Enjoy daily science experiments, games, puzzles and magic “tricks.” Young scientists investigate the Bernoulli effect, patterns in math and science, the magnetic force and so much more! This class is an exciting hands-on program for young scientists. (June 26-30, 9 AM to 11:00 AM, $95 per person)
• Lego Engineering Juniors, Grades 4-6. By popular demand, the Lego program is being expanded to younger grades, with a junior program on architectural engineering. We will build skyscrapers and check to see if they would withstand high winds and earthquakes. If time permits, we will also attempt a small mechanical engineering project. We encourage original designs. (June 24, 9:30 AM to 12:00 PM, $20 per person)
• Camp Invention, Grades 2-6. Crash-land on an alien planet in “Problem Solving on Planet ZAK,” build and test a new skateboard design with crash test dummies in “Spills and Chills,” design prototypes of roller coasters and other rides in “Imagination Point Ride Physics,” create a new problem-solving invention with recycled household items in “I Can Invent.”

To see the complete schedule and enroll in Science Adventures, go to the Fermilab Education Office’s home page on the Web (http://www-ed.fnal.gov). Then click on “Science Adventures.” Click on each adventure listing for a full description, times and fees, along with a registration form. For Camp Invention, you must register at http:www.campinvention.org, or call 330-849-8528.

This summer, the Education Office also offers “Hands-On Science for School Volunteers, Grades K-5.” Parent-Teacher Association volunteers can qualify to borrow a set of hands-on activities after attending this workshop! Free delivery, pickup and loan of a set of five exhibits that demonstrate the concepts of momentum and acceleration. Send a minimum of two representatives from your PTA for training (June 23, 9:30 AM-12:00 PM, $10 per person). Sign up at the “Science Adventures” home page.

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

BATAVIA, Illinois – Scientists of the CDF collaboration at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced today (April 11, 2006) the precision measurement of extremely rapid transitions between matter and antimatter. As amazing as it may seem, it has been known for 50 years that very special species of subatomic particles can make spontaneous transitions between matter and antimatter. In this exciting new result, CDF physicists measured the rate of the matter-antimatter transitions for the B_s (pronounced “B sub s”) meson, which consists of the heavy bottom quark bound by the strong nuclear interaction to a strange anti-quark, a staggering rate that challenges the imagination – 3 trillion times per second.

Dr. Raymond Orbach, Director of the DOE Office of Science, congratulated the CDF collaboration on “this important and fascinating new result” from the experiment.

“Exploration of the anti-world’s mysteries is a crucial step towards our understanding of the early universe, and how we came to be,” Orbach said. “Discoveries as important as oscillations to and from the antiworld have been made possible by the remarkable, record-breaking Run II luminosity of the Tevatron, a tribute to the skill of the Fermilab family. We look forward to continuing world leadership in high energy physics at this wonderful laboratory.”

Over the last 20 years, a large number of experiments worldwide have participated in a program to perform high precision measurements of the behavior of matter and antimatter, especially as it pertains to strange, charm and bottom quarks. The physics of particles containing bottom quarks is so exciting that two accelerator complexes, one in Stanford California and the other in Tsukuba Japan, were constructed to study these particles. Scientists hope that by assembling a large number of precise measurements involving the exotic behavior of these particles, they can begin to understand why they exist, how they interact with one another and what role they played in the development of the early universe. Although none of them exists in nature today, these particles were present in great abundance in the early universe. Scientists can only study them at large particle accelerators.

With a talk at Fermilab on Monday afternoon, the CDF collaboration presented to the scientific community the first measurement of this B_s matter-antimatter transition rate of about 3 trillion times per second, measured to a precision of 2 percent. They reported on data acquired by the CDF detector between February 2002 and January 2006, a running period known as “Tevatron Run II,” where tens of trillions of proton-antiproton collisions were produced at the Tevatron. There have been many attempts to measure this rate. The most recent result comes from the DØ collaboration (CDF’s sister experiment at the Tevatron) where they announced upper and lower bounds on the oscillation frequency (See the DØ announcement here).

The CDF and DØ results are compatible, although presented in different units. CDF reports the frequency of oscillation: the time period for a particle to become an anti particle and back again. DØ reports an angular frequency; equivalent to multiplying CDF’s result by a factor of 2pi (6.28). Therefore, CDF’s result of 3 trillion multiplied by 2pi gives a result of 18 trillion Hertz — consistent with DØ’s bounds of 17 and 21 trillion Hertz.

“If you think of matter and antimatter as performing a dance with each other, then we have measured the incredibly rapid tempo of that dance,” said CDF cospokesperson Jacobo Konigsberg. “The Tevatron physics program has offered the promise of making such a precision measurement, and it has delivered on that promise. The collaboration was intensely focused on mining this measurement away from Nature.”

Within the 700-member CDF collaboration, a team of 80 scientists from 27 institutions performed the data analysis leading to the precision measurement just one month after the data-taking was completed.

“After four years of intense effort with a spectacular team we spent some exciting weeks when we started to see the oscillation signal emerge from the data,” said analysis team leader Christoph Paus, professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Experiment cospokesperson Rob Roser said the work was integrated within a relentlessly thorough confirmation process involving the entire CDF collaboration and all segments of the 4,000-ton collider detector.

“We’ve had many collaborators, each with a different background, examining this result from different angles,” Roser said. “They’ve worked through many sleepless nights, especially our graduate students and postdocs, to ensure that we have not overlooked something.”

Luciano Ristori, an Italian scientist and CDF collaborator with INFN in Pisa (National Institute for Nuclear Physics), is one of the primary architects of the novel electronics required to identify events with B mesons from the billions that collided. He looked upon this result with great pride.

“This is a very important result that required many years of hard work by a large number of very talented people,” Ristori said. “It is a great achievement that the CDF Collaboration and the Lab can be proud of.”

At Tsukuba University in Japan, CDF collaborator Prof. Shinhong Kim pointed to the future.

“This great result shows that the CDF experiment will continue to make important contributions to B physics study. This also gives a great example that international collaboration has been successful in high energy physics.”

Another CDF collaborator, Joseph Kroll, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania echoed his comments.

“Many of the upgrades to the CDF detector for Run II were aimed at increasing our sensitivity to observing B_s oscillations,” Kroll said. “Every collaborator contributed in some way to this measurement. It is very exciting to finally achieve this goal.”

Fermilab Director Pier Oddone cited the focus by accelerator and detector teams to achieve the new result.

“It is one of the signature measurements for Run II,” Oddone said. “As we collect several times the data already on hand, I have great expectations for future discoveries.”

Marvin Goldberg, Division of Physics program director, congratulated the collaboration.

“In the NSF Division of Physics, we call university groups our ‘Great Discovery Machine,'” Goldberg said. “These very important results from CDF required a remarkable synergy between the university groups and Fermilab, as well as major advances in all sectors of the Fermilab program.”

These sentiments are echoed by DØ cospokepeople Gerald Blazey and Terrence Wyatt.

“B_s mixing is an important result for the Tevatron, and we would like to congratulate CDF on this beautiful result,” they wrote. “The DØ result last month generated a great deal of excitement. This new result will generate further interest in B_s oscillations and demonstrates the vitality of the full Tevatron program.”

Within the high energy physics community, this CDF precision measurement will immediately be interpreted within different theoretical models of how the universe is assembled. One popular and well motivated theory is supersymmetry, in which each known particle has its own “super” partner particle. Fermilab theoretical physicist Marcela Carena noted that general versions of supersymmetry predict an even faster transition rate than was actually measured, so some of those theories can be ruled out based upon this result.

“At the Tevatron,” Carena said, “important information on the nature of supersymmetric models will be obtained from the combination of precise measurements of B_s matter-antimatter transitions and the search for the rare decay of B_s mesons into muon pairs. It is even possible that an indirect indication for supersymmetry would show up in these measurements before the Large Hadron Collider turns on at CERN.” Both DØ and CDF experiments expect to achieve improved results in these areas in the near future.

Scientists always hope for results that are surprising, and that contradict the conventional wisdom and predictions. The CDF scientists are no different. Their B_s precision measurement is squarely in accord with predictions of the Standard Model, but they view the agreement as another challenge in their quest for New Phenomena during Collider Run II of the Tevatron.

“It just means that Nature is tough on us as we try to learn its secrets,” said the outgoing CDF cospokesperson Young-Kee Kim, who will become Fermilab’s deputy director in July. “But we don’t give up, because we’re pretty tough, too. Although the standard model lives to fight another day, the broad physics program at the Tevatron still has many opportunities to open a window for new physics.”

CDF is an international experiment of 700 physicists from 61 institutions and 13 countries. It is supported by DOE, NSF and a number of international funding agencies (the full list of international funding agencies for the CDF experiment can be found at http://www-cdf.fnal.gov/collaboration/Funding_Agencies.html). With the Tevatron, the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator, in 1995 the CDF and DZero collaborations discovered the top quark, the final and most massive quark in the Standard Model.

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

CDF institutions:
1. Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan
2. Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois
3. Institut de Fisica d’Altes Energies (IFAE-Barcelona), Spain
4. Baylor University, Waco, Texas
5. Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts
6. University of California at Davis, Davis, CA
7. University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA
8. University of California at San Diego, San Diego, CA
9. University of California at Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA
10. Instituto de Fisica de Cantabria, CSIC-University of Cantabria, 39005 Santander, Spain
11. Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA
12. University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
13. Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, Dubna, Russia
14. Duke University, Durham, North Carolina
15. Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), Batavia, Illinois
16. University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida
17. University of Geneva, Switzerland
18. Glasgow University, United Kingdom
19. Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
20. University of Helsinki, Finland
21. University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois
22. INFN, University of Bologna, Italy
23. INFN, Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati, Italy
24. INFN Sezione di Padova, Universita di Padova, Italy
25. INFN, University and Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa, Italy
26. INFN, University di Roma I, Italy
27. INFN, Trieste, Italy, and Universita di Udine, Italy
28. IPP, Institute of Particle Physics, McGill University, Montréal, Canada
29. University of Toronto, Canada
30. ITEP, Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics, Moscow, Russia
31. The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland
32. Universitaet Karlsruhe, Germany
33. National Laboratory for High Energy Physics (KEK), Tsukuba, Japan
34. The Center for High Energy Physics(CHEP) Kyungpook National University, Seoul National University, and SungKyunKwan University, Korea
35. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) Berkeley, California
36. University of Liverpool, United Kingdom
37. University College London, United Kingdom
38. CIEMAT, Madrid, Spain
39. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts
40. Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan
41. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan
42. University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico
43. Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois
44. The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio
45. Osaka City University, Japan
46. Okayama University, Japan
47. University of Oxford, United Kingdom
48. LPNHE and CNRS-IN2P3 – Paris, France
49. University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
50. University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
51. Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana
52. University of Rochester, Rochester, New York
53. Rockefeller University, New York, New York
54. Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey
55. Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas
56. Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts
57. University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan
58. Waseda University Tokyo, Japan
59. Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan
60. University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin
61. Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

The Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory invites buffalo fans to visit its herd of about 50 buffalo, including 7 young animals born since late March. Visitors may come to Fermilab’s Pine Street entrance and show a driver’s license to enter, then continue down pine road to the buffalo pasture to view the herd. Driving is restricted to selected roads leading to and from the buffalo pasture. Bicyclists currently are allowed access to the site without the need for a pass.

Everybody, especially families with small children, are welcome to come to the pasture where the young buffalo run around under the watchful eyes of “Mom and Dad Buffalo.”

Access is granted from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., seven days a week. There is no fee. For up-to-date site access restrictions and other information call 630-840-3351 during business hours.

To learn more about Fermilab’s buffalo, please visit our Web site at www.fnal.gov/pub/about/campus/ecology/wildlife/bison.html.

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, Illinois—An international collaboration of scientists at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced today (March 30, 2006) the first results of a new neutrino experiment. Sending a high-intensity beam of muon neutrinos from the lab’s site in Batavia, Illinois, to a particle detector in Soudan, Minnesota, scientists observed the disappearance of a significant fraction of these neutrinos. The observation is consistent with an effect known as neutrino oscillation, in which neutrinos change from one kind to another. The Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search (MINOS) experiment found a value of delta m² = 0.0031 eV², a quantity that plays a crucial role in neutrino oscillations and hence the role of neutrinos in the evolution of the universe.

“Only a year ago we launched the MINOS experiment,” said Fermilab Director Pier Oddone. “It is great to see that the experiment is already producing important results, shedding new light on the mysteries of the neutrino.”

Nature provides for three types of neutrinos, yet scientists know very little about these “ghost particles,” which can traverse the entire Earth without interacting with matter. But the abundance of neutrinos in the universe, produced by stars and nuclear processes, may explain how galaxies formed and why antimatter has disappeared. Ultimately, these elusive particles may explain the origin of the neutrons, protons and electrons that make up all the matter in the world around us.

“Using a man-made beam of neutrinos, MINOS is a great tool to study the properties of neutrinos in a laboratory-controlled environment,” said Stanford University professor Stan Wojcicki, spokesperson of the experiment. “Our first result corroborates earlier observations of muon neutrino disappearance, made by the Japanese Super-Kamiokande and K2K experiments. Over the next few years, we will collect about fifteen times more data, yielding more results with higher precision, paving the way to better understanding this phenomenon. Our current results already rival the Super-Kamiokande and K2K results in precision.”

Neutrinos are hard to detect, and most of the neutrinos traveling the 450 miles from Fermilab to Soudan–straight through the earth, no tunnel needed–leave no signal in the MINOS detector. If neutrinos had no mass, the particles would not change as they traverse the Earth and the MINOS detector in Soudan would have recorded 177 +/- 11 muon neutrinos. Instead, the MINOS collaboration found only 92 muon neutrino events–a clear observation of muon neutrino disappearance and hence neutrino mass. The deficit as a function of energy is consistent with the hypothesis of neutrino oscilations and yields a value of delta m², the square of the mass difference between two different types of neutrinos, equal to 0.0031 eV² +/- 0.0006 eV² (statistical uncertainty) +/- 0.0001 eV² (systematic uncertainty). In this scenario, muon neutrinos can transform into electron neutrinos or tau neutrinos, but alternative models–such as neutrino decay and extra dimensions–are not yet excluded. It will take the recording of much more data by the MINOS collaboration to test more precisely the exact nature of the disappearance process.

Details of the current MINOS results will be presented by David Petyt of the University of Minnesota at a special seminar at Fermilab on March 30, 2006, at 4:00 p.m. A day later, the MINOS collaboration will commemorate MINOS co-spokesperson Doug Michael at a memorial service at Fermilab. Michael, senior research associate at Caltech, died at age 45 on December 25, 2005, after a year-long battle with cancer.

The MINOS experiment includes about 150 scientists, engineers, technical specialists and students from 32 institutions in 6 countries, including Brazil, France, Greece, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States. The institutions include universities as well as national laboratories. The U.S. Department of Energy provides the major share of the funding, with additional funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation and from the United Kingdom’s Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council.

“The MINOS experiment is a hugely important step in our quest to understand neutrinos–we have created neutrinos in the controlled environment of an accelerator and watched how they behave over very long distances,” said Professor Keith Mason, CEO of PPARC. “This has told us that they are not totally massless as was once thought, and opens the way for a detailed study of their properties. UK scientists have taken key roles in developing the experiment and in exploiting the data from it, the results of which will shape the future of this branch of physics.”

The Fermilab side of the MINOS experiment consists of a beam line in a 4,000-foot-long tunnel pointing from Fermilab to Soudan. The tunnel holds the carbon target and beam focusing elements that generate the neutrinos from protons accelerated by Fermilab’s Main Injector accelerator. A neutrino detector, the MINOS “near detector” located 350 feet below the surface of the Fermilab site, measures the composition and intensity of the neutrino beam as it leaves the lab. The Soudan side of the experiment features a huge 6,000-ton particle detector that measures the properties of the neutrinos after their 450-mile trip to northern Minnesota. The cavern housing the detector is located half a mile underground in a former iron mine.

The MINOS neutrino experiment follows up on the K2K long-baseline neutrino experiment in Japan. From 1999-2001 and 2003-2004, the K2K experiment in Japan sent neutrinos from an accelerator at the KEK laboratory to a particle detector in Kamioka, a distance of about 150 miles. Compared to K2K, the MINOS experiment uses a three times longer distance, and the intensity and the energy of the MINOS neutrino beam are higher than the K2K beam. These advantages have enabled the MINOS experiment to observe in less than one year about three times more neutrinos than the K2K experiment did in about four years.

“It is a great gift for me to hear this news,” said Yoji Totsuka, former spokesperson of the Super-Kamiokande experiment and now Director General of KEK. “Neutrino oscillation was first established in 1998, with cosmic-ray data taken by Super-Kamiokande. The phenomenon was then corroborated by the K2K experiment with a neutrino beam from KEK. Now MINOS gives firm results in a totally independent experiment. I really congratulate their great effort to obtain the first result in such a short time scale.”

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, founded in 1967, is a Department of Energy National Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, about 40 miles west of Chicago. Fermilab operates the world’s highest-energy particle accelerator, the Tevatron, on its 6,800-acre campus. About 2,300 physicists from universities and laboratories around the world conduct physics experiments using Fermilab’s accelerators to discover what the universe is made of and how it works. Discoveries at Fermilab have resulted in remarkable new insights into the nature of the world around us. Fermilab is operated by Universities Research Association, Inc., a consortium of 90 research universities, for the United States Department of Energy, which owns the laboratory.

More information on the MINOS experiment is at www-numi.fnal.gov

A 12-minute streaming video on the MINOS experiment is at http://vmsstreamer1.fnal.gov/VMS_Site_02/VMS/MINOS/MINOS.htm

MINOS Institutions:

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

Oxford University (U.K.)University of Pittsburgh IHEP-Protvino Rutherford Appleton Lab (U.K.) University of Sao Paulo (Brazil) Soudan Underground Laboratory 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, Illinois – Scientists of the DZero collider detector collaboration at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory have announced that their data on the properties of a subatomic particle, the B_s meson (“B sub s”), suggest that the particle oscillates between matter and antimatter in one of nature’s fastest rapid-fire processes-more than 17 trillion times per second. Their findings may affect the current view of matter-antimatter asymmetry, and might also offer a first glimpse of the contributions of new physics, such as supersymmetry, to particle physics.

The DZero result, suggesting a preferred oscillation frequency between 17 and 21 times per picosecond (trillionth of a second), is described in a paper submitted to the journal, Physical Review Letters. The result, a measure of the oscillation or “mixing” frequency of the particle, has a confidence level of 90 percent, and so does not qualify as a discovery. Physicists have agreed that claims of a discovery must have a confidence level of 99.99995 percent, indicating a 99.99995 percent chance that the result can be reproduced. The data for the DZero result were culled from one inverse femtobarn of total collision data, or more than one billion events from Fermilab’s Tevatron particle accelerator — a milestone capitalizing on the significant luminosity improvements in the Tevatron. The DZero result also sets the stage for future results. Within the next month or so, the CDF collider detector collaboration at Fermilab expects to have a result with greater precision than the DZero result.

“Not only is this an exciting result, but the analysis of a one-inverse-femtobarn data set represents a major milestone for DZero.” said DZero cospokesperson Jerry Blazey of Northern Illinois University. “Next, the Tevatron experiments can focus on obtaining a precise measurement of B_s mixing, which will tell us even more about the curious subatomic world where particles can spontaneously turn into their own antiparticles and back again.”

One of the greatest mysteries of the universe is its apparent composition of only matter, and not antimatter. If matter and antimatter were created equally at the time of the Big Bang, matter and antimatter should have annihilated into pure energy. Clearly, this did not happen. How did our universe of matter survive? Laboratory experiments make it possible to observe some forms of matter oscillating into anti-matter and back. Studying such processes can help solve the mystery of the preponderance of matter in the universe, and DZero has made important progress in this direction.

“We congratulate DZero on this step,” said CDF cospokesperson Rob Roser of Fermilab. “We at CDF are looking forward to our result on a similar size data sample where, given our sensitivity, we expect to get even closer to a discovery.”

Much can be learned about nature by studying matter-antimatter oscillations. In a landmark experiment in the mid 1980’s, a different type of meson (neutral B_d mesons, a b-antiquark and d-quark pair) was observed to oscillate at a much higher rate than theoretical predictions of the day. It was soon realized that this was evidence of the existence of the top quark at a much higher mass than had been expected – as was subsequently confirmed by its discovery at the Tevatron in 1995 by the DZero and CDF collaborations. The DZero limit on B_s oscillation is nearly forty times faster than the oscillation of the B_d meson. Theorists believe the B_s may show sensitivities to massive supersymmetric particles, much as the B_d showed sensitivities to the massive top quark, although this result appears to be inconclusive.

“Many theoretical models of supersymmetry predict a much faster oscillation of B_s mesons than has been reported by DZero, and are therefore disfavored by the new data,” said Fermilab theorist Joseph Lykken, who is not a member of the experiment. “Other approaches to supersymmetry suggest smaller effects; these may be observed with more data, combined with improved searches by DZero and CDF for rare decays of B_s mesons.”

The probe of B_s mixing is one of many ongoing quests for Fermilab scientists during Collider Run II of the Tevatron. Others include the Higgs boson, postulated as the source of mass in the universe; single top quark production, isolating the most massive of quarks, which so far has only been seen to exist in pairs; and New Phenomena, such as new dimensions or supersymmetry.

A meson, such as the B_s, is an unusual particle made up of both matter and antimatter-one quark and one antiquark. The neutral B_s meson is composed of a bottom (or “B”) antiquark and a strange (“s”) quark. The annihilation of matter and antimatter is not a universal event; annihilation occurs when a particle meets its corresponding antiparticle, and both disappear.

While it has been known that the neutral B_s meson (b-antiquark and s-quark) oscillates between matter and antimatter, it has proven difficult to pin down the details. The current theory of matter suggests that B_s mesons oscillate much faster than B_d mesons (anti-bottom quark plus a down quark); consequently, their oscillations are very difficult to detect. Almost all B_s mesons turn into anti-mesons in a fraction of a trillionth of a second. Measuring the frequency of oscillation is of utmost importance, since a deviation from predictions could point to some unexpected new force or interaction lurking around the corner. The DZero experiment has now made an important contribution to this quest and to understanding matter oscillation, by setting the first direct confidence interval on the frequency of the B_s meson oscillations to anti-matter.

DZero is an international experiment of 700 physicists from 90 institutions and 20 countries. Fermilab is a Department of Energy Office of Science national laboratory operated under contract by Universities Research Association, Inc.

 

The record-breaking performance of the Tevatron collider at the Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is pushing the search for dark matter, supersymmetric particles and extra dimensions to new limits. Repeatedly smashing peak luminosity records, the Tevatron has created record numbers of proton-antiproton collisions that provide the means to unveil the secrets of the universe. Accelerator experts at the lab announced today (March 2) that in only 14 months the Tevatron collider has produced almost five times the data sample collected during four years of Collider Run I (1992-1996), which led to the discovery of the top quark at Fermilab.

Since restarting the Tevatron collider after a scheduled shutdown in December 2004, the collider has produced an integrated luminosity of 872 inverse picobarns-a measure for the number of collisions achieved. Two collider experiments, CDF and DZero, will present new results based on these datasets in the upcoming months.

“High luminosity is the name of the game for particle accelerators,” said DZero co-spokesperson Terry Wyatt, University of Manchester. “We are in a great position to make some exciting discoveries with the data we have. With the prospect of doubling the dataset in 2006 and again in 2007, and with 8,000 inverse picobarns expected by the end of Collider Run II, there is huge future potential.”

Following extensive upgrades, the high-energy Tevatron collider racked up a series of records in 2005 (see footnote), doubling the average peak luminosity-or beam brightness-and raising the world record for peak luminosity at a hadron collider to 17×10³¹ inverse centimeter square per second. A scheduled shutdown, from the end of February to the middle of June, 2006, is expected to boost the Tevatron performance even further.

Particle physics at colliders is strikingly similar to shooting pool (a.k.a. pocket billiards): the greater the number of collisions created, the greater the likelihood of success. But while one billiard ball classically colliding with another billiard ball always adds up to two billiard balls, the near-light-speed quantum environment of E=mc² changes the picture completely for particle collisions.

“Imagine a car crash,” said Steve Holmes, Associate Director for Accelerators at Fermilab. “Two 2,500-pound Minis run into each other and, instead of a fender rattling to the pavement, a 6,500-pound Hummer pops out. The more collisions we produce, the better the chance we have of finding something rare.”

The Tevatron uses superconducting magnets to steer protons and antiprotons around a 4-mile ring, creating collisions at the world record energy of close to 2 trillion electron volts (TeV). The challenge in creating the largest possible number of collisions is to produce as many antiprotons as possible and to squeeze them across the smallest achievable area over the longest possible span of time.

Tevatron luminosity depends on having roughly equal numbers of protons and antiprotons in the colliding beams. Producing protons is easy, by particle physics standards: remove the electrons from hydrogen molecules, and you have single protons. Producing antiprotons is not easy, by any standard: colliding beams of protons with a fixed target made of nickel, with every million collisions producing about 18 antiprotons. Ultimately, Tevatron luminosity depends on the number of antiprotons available for collisions.

“In the past 14 months, the peak production rate for antiprotons has increased substantially, from 150 billion antiprotons per hour to 200 billion,” said Roger Dixon, head of the Fermilab Accelerator Division. “We fully integrated the Recycler antiproton storage ring into our accelerator operations, and we greatly increased the antiproton beam density by implementing electron cooling.”

Fermilab spent four years and $260 million to upgrade its accelerators and detectors, from 1996 to 2000. When the lab started Tevatron Collider Run II in March 2001, the progress on luminosity was sluggish. To improve the performance, accelerator experts focused on increasing the antiproton production rate; providing a third stage of antiproton cooling (concentrating the beam using the new Recycler storage ring); and increasing the transfer efficiency of antiprotons to the Tevatron. The result of these steps: more collisions than ever before, and the best prospects for scientific discoveries.

There is no time like the present for Fermilab to make big news with its luminosity improvements. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European laboratory CERN will be turning on in 2007, with collisions at an energy seven times higher than the Tevatron can produce. Boosting the Tevatron luminosity enhances Fermilab’s chances for discoveries before the LHC creates a significant number of collisions.

“We know that the LHC will assume the high-energy frontier once it is operational, but we also know that discoveries are the best way to position ourselves at the forefront of the field and help us to secure future projects,” says Fermilab Director Pier Oddone. “The Fermilab luminosity upgrades will take us there.”

Details on the luminosity upgrades as well as information on the scientific goals of Collider Run II are available online at: http://www.fnal.gov/pub/today/luminosityseries/index.html

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

Footnote: Between December 2004 and February 2006, the average peak luminosity of the Tevatron collider doubled from 7×10³¹ cm^-2sec^-1 to 14×10³¹ cm^-2sec^-1. Two charts illustrating the series of luminosity records set during this time period can be found at: http://www.fnal.gov/pub/now/tevlum.html