From the Cornell Chronicle, September 20, 2021: A collaboration of researchers led by Cornell has been awarded $22.5 million by the NSF to continue research needed to transform the brightness of electron beams. Fermilab scientists Sergei Nagaitsev and Sam Posen are part of the collaboration team working with Cornell to improve the performance and reduce the cost of accelerator technologies that would improve beams for tumor treatment, imaging individual atoms, instruments for wafer metrology, and the Large Hadron Collider.
particle accelerator
From Fraction magazine, September 2021: Former Fermilab artist-in-residence Adam Nadel featured striking photos of an electron beam from a particle accelerator. In a recent issue of this magazine, he used a stream of subatomic electron particles interacting with the silver halide salt found in color photographic paper. The beam was generated on a LINAC electron particle accelerator at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory when Nadel was the resident artist in 2018.
The U.S. Department of Energy awarded Farah Fahim an Early Career Research Award to investigate how deploying neural networks and machine learning on a particle detector can allow data processing at source. Her work could make data processing at detectors more efficient, improving fundamental research at physics facilities like the LHC at CERN.
From IFL Science (United Kingdom), July 5, 2021: In the late 1960’s, Fermilab’s Felicia the ferret helped trouble shoot why the newly completed particle accelerator would not start. Thanks to the innovative thinking of a laboratory worker from Oxford, UK, he sourced Felicia to help identify the accelerator’s stall.
From Department of Energy, June 28, 2021: DOE announces $93 million in funding for 71 research projects that will spur new discoveries in high-energy physics. The projects—housed at 50 colleges and universities across 29 states—are exploring the basics of energy science that underlie technological advancements in medicine, computing, energy technologies, manufacturing, national security and more.
From University of Chicago News, June 18, 2021: Fermilab’s muon g-2 result announced in April has theorists scratching their heads about muons behaving slightly differently than predicted in their giant accelerator.
From U.S. News and World Report, April 24, 2021: A team of University of Kentucky professors were part of a large-scale physics experiment at Fermilab showing results that point to a potential gap in the Standard Model of physics.
From Smithsonian Magazine, April 9, 2021: Results from two particle physics experiments have come tantalizingly close to discovering a gap in the Standard Model.
From Nature, March 30, 2021: The long-awaited Muon g-2 experiment results will be revealed in next week’s announcement that could reveal the existence of new elementary particles and upend fundamental physics.