Construction on the PIP-II Cryogenic Plant Building began over a year ago in a greenfield site. By September 2021, much of the actual structure of the building is finished. Photo: Steve Dixon
Ground broke on the PIP-II Cryogenic Plant Building in July 2020 and construction began that August. This project is integral to PIP-II’s success, as the building will house cryogenic equipment that will cool the accelerator and mechanical, as well as electric utilities for the linac complex.
A little over a year into construction, the structure of the building is largely complete: In February, the steel was stood up. Since then, precast concrete wall panels and concrete floors have been installed with metal siding and windows underway. Mechanical, electrical, fire protection and other systems continue to be installed and likely will continue through the fall. The lab plans to take authorization for use for possession — which basically means lab employees can work in the building alongside the subcontractor — this fall to begin installing other building systems, including Wi-Fi.
Because construction began well into the pandemic, the lab’s Environment, Safety & Health section and the subcontractor, Barton Malow Builders, were able to navigate shifting needs to maintain safe working conditions and avoid delays, Steve Dixon, the manager for conventional facilities at PIP-II, said. Aside from normal construction issues that come with translating a design into a building, the project has been moving along without a hitch.
“For us, we were pretty fortunate to site PIP-II in an area of the lab that hadn’t been built on in the past. That was an intentional choice so that we had the opportunity to work from a greenfield site to minimize the impact to ongoing lab operations during the construction and commissioning of PIP-II. With the design of the buildings and the tunnels, we always tell our architects and engineering consultants that the exciting stuff goes into the tunnel and the boring stuff goes into the conventional facilities. We try to make the construction as conventional as possible, which makes it easier to build, operate and maintain. … The conventional facilities are pretty straightforward — it’s stuff we’ve been doing here at the lab for 50 years,” Dixon said. “The interesting part will be when we connect to the booster.”
That is years off. Architects and engineers are now designing the connection to the booster, which is one of the most technically challenging parts of the project.
“(It) will cross over not only the Main Ring and the utilities but also the helium lines that feed the Muon Campus and then tie into the booster which hasn’t seen the light of day since the early 1970s,” Dixon said.
It can be difficult to get a sense of scale for how big the linac that will power the world’s most intense neutrino beam will be. The ditch on the site is the approximate location and length of the future linac. (The ditch is actually a borrow pit. The site for the Cryogenic Plant Building had to be raised 3 feet, and that’s where the dirt came from.)
In the near-term, the next phase of sitework, with a bid to be awarded early fall, will involve raising the rest of the PIP-II site 3 feet and starting permanent roads. It will also restore the A-0 pond, which is original to the lab and has been silted in with time, so it can be used for PIP-II and other experiments as part of the lab’s sitewide industrial cooling water system.
As with steps as thrilling as the connection to the booster or mundane as shoring up the banks of a pond, PIP-II project construction affects many divisions across the lab.
Dixon’s goals for the construction and conventional facilities future of the project?
“I hope it’s boring. My goal is it’s very boring,” he said.
Still, excitement surrounds the project’s development. Benjamin Hansen is the head of Fermilab’s Cryogenics Operations Department and the eventual user of the cryoplant building. (His team will install the cryoplant itself in the building.)
“This building not only signifies the beginning of the PIP-II project, but also a new era of discovery at Fermilab,” Hansen said. “Just as the Central Helium Liquefier was to the Tevatron, so will this facility be to PIP-II and LBNF. In my first years at Fermilab, I admired those who designed, built and ran the CHL facility. It now excites me to be a part of this next-gen landmark cryogenic facility at the lab.”
The PIP-II Cryogenic Plant Building with helium tanks on a blue-sky day in September. Photo: Steve Dixon
Fermilab is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science.
Whether he is on the side of a mountain or working at the Fermilab Quantum Institute, Cristián Peña likes to explore the unknown and tackle new challenges. Although he spends most of his time working on quantum communication systems for FIQ, Peña dedicates time to work on the CMS experiment. His work between the two experiments, while different in practice, are conceptually similar. Photo: Cristián Peña
What do you work on at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory?
I am with the Fermilab Quantum Institute. I work on various aspects of high-energy physics and quantum information science. I work on what we call quantum communication systems; that’s using the properties of quantum entanglement to distribute information.
On the other side, I also work for the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment. In CMS, I work on precision-timing detectors, and I also look for new physics in what we call long-lived particles.
How did Fermilab become part of your career path?
I was an electrical engineer as an undergrad in Chile until I switched to physics at some point close to finishing my undergrad degree. Then I came to Fermilab as an undergrad from Chile to work on neutrino physics.
In the U.S., I applied to graduate school and got into Caltech. There, I did my Ph.D. in particle physics with the CMS experiment. I applied for a postdoc at many places and decided to join Fermilab as a Lederman Fellow.
As a Lederman Fellow, you have the freedom to choose what you do, which is great. I decided to work partly on the CMS, and in parallel, develop a new program to perform quantum communication experiments, which at the time was quantum teleportation. Now, the novel experiment that we are running at the Fermi Quantum Institute is called entanglement swapping.
How does your work overlap between the Fermi Quantum Institute and CMS?
I tend to think of ways to connect the dots. For example, ultra-precision timing is something that we’ve worked on extensively in CMS, and it also turns out that it underpins our quantum communications projects. Ultra-precision timing detectors are key to achieving our ambitions scientific goals, as well as electronics systems that can read out timing information with high accuracy. These are all aspects in which Fermilab is a leader in the field, which makes it very rewarding to be involved in such a vibrant community.
For example, recording the time of arrival of a long-lived particle in the CMS detector and the time of arrival of a photon in quantum teleportation or entanglement swapping experiments both need very precise time measurements. It’s not the same detector that we use, but it is the same concept. There’s a lot of information encoded in the time of arrival of a particle, and measuring it as accurately as possible enables us to conduct our experiments. By working at the frontier of time-precision detectors, I can transfer knowledge from one community to the other and run experiments seamlessly between the two.
How do outside collaborations play a role in your experience as a Fermilab scientist?
As a Fermilab scientist, I have the opportunity to interact with experts from different fields who come here to use our expertise. We have very fruitful and active collaborations that are really pushing the envelope.
People from all backgrounds come here. We have students, postdoctoral fellows and professors who set up their experiments at Fermilab. We have a very fluid collaboration with them so that’s something that I enjoy a lot.
It also feels like you’re not always grinding the same thing over and over again. There’s always something new, something unique, and there’s always a new challenge. It’s refreshing to have new students, to train new people, and to learn from them as well. So it’s very, very unique.
“As a Fermilab scientist, I have the opportunity to interact with experts from different fields who come here to use our expertise. We have very fruitful and active collaborations that are really pushing the envelope.”
Can you tell me about specific projects you are working on that require collaboration?
The Illinois Express Quantum Network is an experiment where we collaborate closely with Northwestern University, Argonne National Lab and Caltech. The project is to communicate or connect, through the use of optical fiber and single photons, various quantum nodes across the Chicagoland area with Argonne and Northwestern. For the Fermilab Quantum Network (FQNET), although it has the name “Fermilab” in it, we collaborate very closely with Caltech. This original collaboration was the seeding experiment for the more complex Illinois Express Quantum Network.
What do you like to do when you are not at work?
I grew up next to the Andes mountains. In physics, you explore new things as much as possible, and that’s what mountains give you. There’s this sense of exploration of new things and challenges. Now that I have kids, my free time is more family-focused, but mountains are always a part of our family trips.
The Fermilab Quantum Institute is supported by the DOE Office of Science.
Fermilab is the host laboratory in the United States that facilitates participation of hundreds of U.S. physicists from more than 50 institutions in the CMS experiment at CERN. Fermilab CMS plays a leading role in detector construction and operations, computing and software, and data analysis.
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit science.energy.gov.