particle accelerator

For the Muon g-2 experiment, researchers create billions of muons to study their surprising properties.

From World Nuclear News, December 7, 2021: A neutrino detection kit has been installed in the containment of Argentina’s Atucha 2 reactor in support of a US-Argentine experiment to learn more about the mysterious particles. Scientists of the vIOLETTA Project are using sensitive Skipper CCD equipment designed and prepared by Fermilab and Berkeley labs. It will be able to detect interactions between neutrinos and a silicon matrix. The experimental arrangement will give them insights on neutrinos at previously unexplored low energy ranges.

From New Atlas, December 1, 2021: Neutrino research and other experiments may have new magnets to use in the future. Physicists at Fermilab have developed a superconducting magnet that can perform at high temperatures and higher field strength. Read more about the work of Vladimir Shiltsev and Alexander Zlobin.

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.

Fermilab signed three international arrangements in June with the National Institute for Nuclear Physics, known as INFN. The three arrangements are related to Fermilab’s Short Baseline Neutrino Program, the PIP-II particle accelerator and the EuPRAXIA advanced accelerator project.

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.