The CDF and DZero collaborations at Fermilab announced the discovery of the top quark in 1995, the final undiscovered quark of the six predicted by theory. The biannual prize is given for an outstanding contribution to high-energy and particle physics.
Physicists often find thrifty, ingenious ways to reuse equipment and resources. What do you do about an 800-ton magnet originally used to discover new particles? Send it off on a months-long journey via truck, train and ship halfway across the world to detect oscillating particles called neutrinos, of course. It’s all part of the vast recycling network of the physics community.
Measuring a certain parameter of particles emerging from Tevatron collisions helps us better understand how the unified electromagnetic and weak forces broke into separate distinct entities in the universe’s early moments.
From The New York Times, May 28, 2018: At CERN in Switzerland and Fermilab in Illinois, there is always a sense of discovery — about the past, present and future.
Fermilab has placed a capstone on its study of the forward-backward asymmetry, and the measurements and theory now agree.
DZero measures the weak mixing angle using the decay of a Z boson into two muons.
Mourning doves patrol the DZero building.
Antimatter in the universe is extremely rare; the universe is made pretty much entirely out of matter. DZero digs deeper into a previous, unusual result measuring the difference between matter and antimatter.
DZero measured the average direction of spins in top pairs produced at the Tevatron using its full data set.
The reunion was a chance not only to talk about the Tevatron’s achievements, but also to present new results from the full data set.