## Posts Tagged ‘Fermilab’

### Superconducting test accelerator achieves first electron beam

Monday, March 30th, 2015

Last week the first SRF cavities of Fermilab’s superconducting test accelerator propelled their first electrons. Photo: Reidar Hahn

The newest particle accelerators and those of the future will be built with superconducting radio-frequency (SRF) cavities, and institutions around the world are working hard to develop this technology. Fermilab’s advanced superconducting test accelerator was built to take advantage of SRF technology accelerator research and development.

On Friday, after more than seven years of planning and building by scientists and engineers, the accelerator has delivered its first beam.

The Fermilab superconducting test accelerator is a linear accelerator (linac) with three main components: a photoinjector that includes an RF gun coupled to an ultraviolet-laser system, several cryomodules and a beamline. Electron bunches are produced when an ultraviolet pulse generated by the laser hits a cathode located on the back plate of the gun. Acceleration continues through two SRF cavities inside the cryomodules. After exiting the cryomodules, the bunches travel down a beamline, where researchers can assess them.

Each meter-long cavity consists of nine cells made from high-purity niobium. In order to become superconductive, the cavities sit in a vessel filled with superfluid liquid helium at temperatures close to absolute zero.

As RF power pulses through these cavities, it creates an oscillating electric field that runs through the cells. If the charged particles meet the oscillating waves at the right phase, they are pushed forward and propelled down the accelerator.

The major advantage of using superconductors is that the lack of electrical resistance allows virtually all the energy passing through to be used for accelerating particle beams, ultimately creating more efficient accelerators.

The superconducting test accelerator team celebrates first beam in the operations center at NML. Vladimir Shiltsev, left, is pointing to an image of the beam. Photo: Pavel Juarez, AD

“It’s more bang for the buck,” said Elvin Harms, one of the leaders of the commissioning effort.

The superconducting test accelerator’s photoinjector gun first produced electrons in June 2013. In the current run, electrons are being shot through one single-cavity cryomodule, with a second, upgraded model to be installed in the next few months. Future plans call for accelerating the electron beam through an eight-cavity cryomodule, CM2, which was the first to reach the specifications of the proposed International Linear Collider (ILC).

Fermilab is one of the few facilities that provides space for advanced accelerator research and development. These experiments will help set the stage for future superconducting accelerators such as SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source II, of which Fermilab is one of several partner laboratories.

“The linac is similar to other accelerators that exist, but the ability to use this type of setup to carry out accelerator science experiments and train students is unique,” said Philippe Piot, a physicist at Fermilab and professor at Northern Illinois University leading one of the first experiments at the test accelerator. A Fermilab team has designed and is beginning to construct the Integrable Optics Test Accelerator ring, a storage ring that will be attached to the superconducting test accelerator in the years to come.

“This cements the fact that Fermilab has been building up the infrastructure for mastering SRF technology,” Harms said. “This is the crown jewel of that: saying that we can build the components, put them together, and now we can accelerate a beam.”

Diana Kwon

### The dawn of DUNE

Wednesday, March 25th, 2015

A powerful planned neutrino experiment gains new members, new leaders and a new name. Image: Fermilab

The neutrino experiment formerly known as LBNE has transformed. Since January, its collaboration has gained about 50 new member institutions, elected two new spokespersons and chosen a new name: Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, or DUNE.

The proposed experiment will be the most powerful tool in the world for studying hard-to-catch particles called neutrinos. It will span 800 miles. It will start with a near detector and an intense beam of neutrinos produced at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois. It will end with a 10-kiloton far detector located underground in a laboratory at the Sanford Underground Research Facility in South Dakota. The distance between the two detectors will allow scientists to study how neutrinos change as they zip at close to the speed of light straight through the Earth.

“This will be the flagship experiment for particle physics hosted in the US,” says Jim Siegrist, associate director of high-energy physics for the US Department of Energy’s Office of Science. “It’s an exciting time for neutrino science and particle physics generally.”

In 2014, the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel identified the experiment as a top priority for US particle physics. At the same time, it recommended the collaboration take a few steps back and invite more international participation in the planning process.

Physicist Sergio Bertolucci, director of research and scientific computing at CERN, took the helm of an executive board put together to expand the collaboration and organize the election of new spokespersons.

DUNE now includes scientists from 148 institutions in 23 countries. It will be the first large international project hosted by the US to be jointly overseen by outside agencies.

This month, the collaboration elected two new spokespersons: André Rubbia, a professor of physics at ETH Zurich, and Mark Thomson, a professor of physics at the University of Cambridge. One will serve as spokesperson for two years and the other for three to provide continuity in leadership.

Rubbia got started with neutrino research as a member of the NOMAD experiment at CERN in the ’90s. More recently he was a part of LAGUNA-LBNO, a collaboration that was working toward a long-baseline experiment in Europe. Thomson has a long-term involvement in US-based underground and neutrino physics. He is the DUNE principle investigator for the UK.

Scientists are coming together to study neutrinos, rarely interacting particles that constantly stream through the Earth but are not well understood. They come in three types and oscillate, or change from type to type, as they travel long distances. They have tiny, unexplained masses. Neutrinos could hold clues about how the universe began and why matter greatly outnumbers antimatter, allowing us to exist.

“The science is what drives us,” Rubbia says. “We’re at the point where the next generation of experiments is going to address the mystery of neutrino oscillations. It’s a unique moment.”

Scientists hope to begin installation of the DUNE far detector by 2021. “Everybody involved is pushing hard to see this project happen as soon as possible,” Thomson says.

Jennifer Huber and Kathryn Jepsen

Image: Fermilab

### Expanding the cosmic search

Friday, March 20th, 2015

The South Pole Telescope scans the skies during a South Pole winter. Photo: Jason Gallicchio, University of Chicago

Down at the South Pole, where temperatures drop below negative 100 degrees Fahrenheit and darkness blankets the land for six months at a time, the South Pole Telescope (SPT) searches the skies for answers to the mysteries of our universe.

This mighty scavenger is about to get a major upgrade — a new camera that will help scientists further understand neutrinos, the ghost-like particles without electric charge that rarely interact with matter.

The 10-meter SPT is the largest telescope ever to make its way to the South Pole. It stands atop a two-mile thick plateau of ice, mapping the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the light left over from the big bang. Astrophysicists use these observations to understand the composition and evolution of the universe, all the way back to the first fraction of a second after the big bang, when scientists believe the universe quickly expanded during a period called inflation.

One of the goals of the SPT is to determine the masses of the neutrinos, which were produced in great abundance soon after the big bang. Though nearly massless, because neutrinos exist in huge numbers, they contribute to the total mass of the universe and affect its expansion. By mapping out the mass density of the universe through measurements of CMB lensing, the bending of light caused by immense objects such as large galaxies, astrophysicists are trying to determine the masses of these elusive particles.

A wafer of detectors for the SPT-3G camera undergoes inspection at Fermilab. Photo: Bradford Benson, University of Chicago

To conduct these extremely precise measurements, scientists are installing a bigger, more sensitive camera on the telescope. This new camera, SPT-3G, will be four times heavier and have a factor of about 10 more detectors than the current camera. Its higher level of sensitivity will allow researchers to make extremely precise measurements of the CMB that will hopefully make it possible to cosmologically detect neutrino mass.

This photo shows an up-close look at a single SPT-3G detector. Photo: Volodymyr Yefremenko, Argonne National Laboratory

“In the next several years, we should be able to get to the sensitivity level where we can measure the number of neutrinos and derive their mass, which will tell us how they contribute to the overall density of the universe,” explained Bradford Benson, the head of the CMB Group at Fermilab. “This measurement will also enable even more sensitive constraints on inflation and has the potential to measure the energy scale of the associated physics that caused it.”

SPT-3G is being completed by a collaboration of scientists spanning the DOE national laboratories, including Fermilab and Argonne, and universities including the University of Chicago and University of California, Berkeley. The national laboratories provide the resources needed for the bigger camera and larger detector array while the universities bring years of expertise in CMB research.

“The national labs are getting involved because we need to scale up our infrastructure to support the big experiments the field needs for the next generation of science goals,” Benson said. Fermilab’s main role is the initial construction and assembly of the camera, as well as its integration with the detectors. This upgrade is being supported mainly by the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, which also supports the operations of the experiment at the South Pole.

Once the camera is complete, scientists will bring it to the South Pole, where conditions are optimal for these experiments. The extreme cold prevents the air from holding much water vapor, which can absorb microwave signals, and the sun, another source of microwaves, does not rise between March and September.

The South Pole is accessible only for about three months during the year, starting in November. This fall, about 20 to 30 scientists will head down to the South Pole to assemble the camera on the telescope and make sure everything works before leaving in mid-February. Once installed, scientists will use it to observe the sky over four years.

“For every project I’ve worked on, it’s that beginning — when everyone is so excited not knowing what we’re going to find, then seeing things you’ve been dreaming about start to show up on the computer screen in front of you — that I find really exciting,” said University of Chicago’s John Carlstrom, the principal investigator for the SPT-3G project.

Diana Kwon

### Scientists find rare dwarf satellite galaxy candidates in Dark Energy Survey data

Tuesday, March 10th, 2015

This Fermilab press release came out on March 10, 2015.

Scientists on two continents have independently discovered a set of celestial objects that seem to belong to the rare category of dwarf satellite galaxies orbiting our home galaxy, the Milky Way.

Dwarf galaxies are the smallest known galaxies, and they could hold the key to understanding dark matter and the process by which larger galaxies form.

A team of researchers with the Dark Energy Survey, headquartered at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and an independent group from the University of Cambridge jointly announced their findings today. Both teams used data taken during the first year of the Dark Energy Survey, all of which is publicly available, to carry out their analysis.

“The large dark matter content of Milky Way satellite galaxies makes this a significant result for both astronomy and physics,” said Alex Drlica-Wagner of Fermilab, one of the leaders of the Dark Energy Survey analysis.

Satellite galaxies are small celestial objects that orbit larger galaxies, such as our own Milky Way. Dwarf galaxies can be found with fewer than 100 stars and are remarkably faint and difficult to spot. (By contrast, the Milky Way, an average-sized galaxy, contains billions of stars.)

These newly discovered objects are a billion times dimmer than the Milky Way and a million times less massive. The closest of them is about 100,000 light-years away.

“The discovery of so many satellites in such a small area of the sky was completely unexpected,” said Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy’s Sergey Koposov, the Cambridge study’s lead author. “I could not believe my eyes.”

Scientists have previously found more than two dozen of these satellite galaxies around our Milky Way. About half of them were discovered in 2005 and 2006 by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the precursor to the Dark Energy Survey. After that initial explosion of discoveries, the rate fell to a trickle and dropped off entirely over the past five years.

The Dark Energy Survey is looking at a new portion of the southern hemisphere, covering a different area of sky than the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. The galaxies announced today were discovered in a search of only the first of the planned five years of Dark Energy Survey data, covering roughly one-third of the portion of sky that DES will study. Scientists expect that the full Dark Energy Survey will find up to 30 of these satellite galaxies within its area of study.

This illustration maps out the previously discovered dwarf satellite galaxies (in blue) and the newly discovered candidates (in red) as they sit outside the Milky Way. Image: Yao-Yuan Mao, Ralf Kaehler, Risa Wechsler (KIPAC/SLAC).

Atlas image obtained as part of the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), a joint project of the University of Massachusetts and the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center/California Institute of Technology, funded by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation.

While more analysis is required to confirm any of the observed celestial objects as satellite galaxies, researchers note their size, low surface brightness and significant distance from the center of the Milky Way as evidence that they are excellent candidates. Further tests are ongoing, and data collected during the second year of the Dark Energy Survey could yield more of these potential dwarf galaxies to study.

Newly discovered galaxies would also present scientists with more opportunities to search for signatures of dark matter. Dwarf satellite galaxies are dark matter-dominated, meaning they have much more mass in unseen matter than in stars. The nature of this dark matter remains unknown but might consist of particles that annihilate each other and release gamma rays. Because dwarf galaxies do not host other gamma ray sources, they make ideal laboratories to search for signs of dark matter annihilation. Scientists are confident that further study of these objects will lead to even more sensitive searches for dark matter.

In a separate result also announced today, the Large Area Telescope Collaboration for NASA’s Fermi Gamma-Ray Telescope mission reported that they did not see any significant excess of gamma ray emission associated with the new Dark Energy Survey objects. This result demonstrates that new discoveries from optical telescopes can be quickly translated into tests of fundamental physics.

“We did not detect significant emission with the LAT, but the dwarf galaxies that DES has and will discover are extremely important targets for the dark matter search,” said Peter Michelson, spokesperson for the LAT collaboration. “If not leading to an identification of particle dark matter, they will certainly be useful to constrain its properties.”

The Dark Energy Survey is a five-year effort to photograph a large portion of the southern sky in unprecedented detail. Its primary instrument is the Dark Energy Camera, which – at 570 megapixels – is the most powerful digital camera in the world, able to see galaxies up to 8 billion light-years from Earth. Built and tested at Fermilab, the camera is now mounted on the 4-meter Victor M. Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in the Andes Mountains in Chile.

The survey’s five-year mission is to discover clues about the nature of dark energy, the mysterious force that makes up about 70 percent of all matter and energy in the universe. Scientists believe that dark energy may be the key to understanding why the expansion of the universe is accelerating.

“The Dark Energy Camera is a perfect instrument for discovering small satellite galaxies,” said Keith Bechtol of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, who helped lead the Dark Energy Survey analysis. “It has a very large field of view to quickly map the sky and great sensitivity, enabling us to look at very faint stars. These results show just how powerful the camera is and how significant the data it collects will be for many years to come.”

The Dark Energy Survey analysis is available here. The University of Cambridge analysis is available here.

The Dark Energy Survey is a collaboration of more than 300 scientists from 25 institutions in six countries. For more information about the survey, please visit the experiment’s website.

Funding for the DES Projects has been provided by the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Science and Education of Spain, the Science and Technology Facilities Council of the United Kingdom, the Higher Education Funding Council for England, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Kavli Institute of Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago, Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos, Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico and the Ministério da Ciência e Tecnologia, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft and the collaborating institutions in the Dark Energy Survey. The DES participants from Spanish institutions are partially supported by MINECO under grants AYA2012-39559, ESP2013-48274, FPA2013-47986 and Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa SEV-2012-0234, some of which include ERDF funds from the European Union.

Fermilab is America’s premier national laboratory for particle physics and accelerator research. A U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science laboratory, Fermilab is located near Chicago, Illinois, and operated under contract by the Fermi Research Alliance, LLC. Visit Fermilab’s website at www.fnal.gov and follow us on Twitter at @Fermilab.

The DOE 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 .

The mission of the University of Cambridge is to contribute to society through the pursuit of education, learning and research at the highest international levels of excellence. To date, 90 affiliates of the university have won the Nobel Prize. Founded in 1209, the university comprises 31 autonomous colleges, which admit undergraduates and provide small-group tuition, and 150 departments, faculties and institutions. Cambridge is a global university. Its 19,000 student body includes 3,700 international students from 120 countries. Cambridge researchers collaborate with colleagues worldwide, and the university has established larger-scale partnerships in Asia, Africa and America. The university sits at the heart of one of the world’s largest technology clusters. The ‘Cambridge Phenomenon’ has created 1,500 hi-tech companies, 14 of them valued at over US$1 billion and two at over US$10 billion. Cambridge promotes the interface between academia and business and has a global reputation for innovation. www.cam.ac.uk .

### Detecting something with nothing

Tuesday, March 3rd, 2015

From left: Jason Bono (Rice University), Dan Ambrose (University of Minnesota) and Richie Bonventre (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) work on the Mu2e straw chamber tracker unit at Lab 3. Photo: Reidar Hahn

Researchers are one step closer to finding new physics with the completion of a harp-shaped prototype detector element for the Mu2e experiment.

Mu2e will look for the conversion of a muon to only an electron (with no other particles emitted) — something predicted but never before seen. This experiment will help scientists better understand how these heavy cousins of the electron decay. A successful sighting would bring us nearer to a unifying theory of the four forces of nature.

The experiment will be 10,000 times as sensitive as other experiments looking for this conversion, and a crucial part is the detector that will track the whizzing electrons. Researchers want to find one whose sole signature is its energy of 105 MeV, indicating that it is the product of the elusive muon decay.

In order to measure the electron, scientists track the helical path it takes through the detector. But there’s a catch. Every interaction with detector material skews the path of the electron slightly, disturbing the measurement. The challenge for Mu2e designers is thus to make a detector with as little material as possible, says Mu2e scientist Vadim Rusu.

“You want to detect the electron with nothing — and this is as close to nothing as we can get,” he said.

So how to detect the invisible using as little as possible? That’s where the Mu2e tracker design comes in. Panels made of thin straws of metalized Mylar, each only 15 microns thick, will sit inside a cylindrical magnet. Rusu says that these are the thinnest straws that people have ever used in a particle physics experiment.

These straws, filled with a combination of argon and carbon dioxide gas and threaded with a thin wire, will wait in vacuum for the electrons. Circuit boards placed on both ends of the straws will gather the electrical signal produced when electrons hit the gas inside the straw. Scientists will measure the arrival times at each end of the wire to help accurately plot the electron’s overall trajectory.

“This is another tricky thing that very few have attempted in the past,” Rusu said.

The group working on the Mu2e tracker electronics have also created the tiny, low-power circuit boards that will sit at the end of each straw. With limited space to run cooling lines, necessary features that whisk away heat that would otherwise sit in the vacuum, the electronics needed to be as cool and small as possible.

“We actually spent a lot of time designing very low-power electronics,” Rusu said.

This first prototype, which researchers began putting together in October, gives scientists a chance to work out kinks, improve design and assembly procedures, and develop the necessary components.

One lesson already learned? Machining curved metal with elongated holes that can properly hold the straws is difficult and expensive. The solution? Using 3-D printing to make a high-tech, transparent plastic version instead.

Researchers also came up with a system to properly stretch the straws into place. While running a current through the straw, they use a magnet to pluck the straw — just like strumming a guitar string — and measure the vibration. This lets them set the proper tension that will keep the straw straight throughout the lifetime of the experiment.

Although the first prototype of the tracker is complete, scientists are already hard at work on a second version (using the 3D-printed plastic), which should be ready in June or July. The prototype will then be tested for leaks and to see if the electronics pick up and transmit signals properly.

A recent review of Mu2e went well, and Rusu expects work on the tracker construction to begin in 2016.

Lauren Biron

### Fermilab contributes to SLAC LCLS-II with cutting-edge technology and expertise

Wednesday, February 11th, 2015

Fermilab is developing superconducting accelerating cavities similar to this one for SLAC’s Linac Coherent Light Source II. Photo: Reidar Hahn

Now one year into its five-year construction plan, the Linac Coherent Light Source II, an electron accelerator project at SLAC, will produce a high-power free-electron laser for cutting-edge scientific explorations ranging from refined observations of molecules and cellular interactions to innovative materials engineering. Cornell University as well as Argonne National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Fermilab and Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility are partners in the SLAC-directed project.

“We at the laboratories are all developing close ties,” said Richard Stanek, Fermilab LCLS-II team leader. “The DOE science lab complex will be stronger for this collaboration.”

In 2015, Fermilab will intensify its LCLS-II contribution in the overlapping areas of superconducting radio-frequency (SRF) accelerator technology and cryogenics, critical components that distinguish LCLS-II from SLAC’s current LCLS facility, whose laser production has enabled noted scientific investigations in cancer treatment and other important areas.

SLAC physicist Marc Ross, LCLS-II cryogenics systems manager, said LCLS cannot keep up with scientists’ requests for use. The existing LCLS facility and LCLS-II combined will offer researchers laser X-rays with a wide range of properties.

“This new approach will transform the repetition rate of LCLS — from 120 pulses per second to up to 1 million per second,” Ross said. “This will allow a completely new class of experiments and, eventually, a much larger number of experimental stations operated in parallel.”

Fermilab Technical Division physicists Hasan Padamsee, division head, and Anna Grassellino and their team are working on SRF technology for LCLS-II, in particular on implementing Fermilab’s two recent findings to reduce the needed cryogenic power. In one innovation, known as nitrogen doping, Grassellino found that infusing a small amount of nitrogen gas when preparing the superconducting cavities — the structures through which beam is accelerated — reduces two main causes of the usually expected resistance to radio-frequency currents.

“It is exciting to see our discovery becoming an enabling technology for LCLS-II,” Grassellino said.

Grassellino’s high-Q team has also found that the cavities’ cooling dynamics significantly helps expel magnetic flux, another major source of cavity power dissipation. The Fermilab high-Q team, together with Cornell University and Jefferson Lab, are currently working on calibrating the cooling thermogradient for LCLS-II.

Stanek said Fermilab is advancing its SRF work with its LCLS-II participation.

“I see this project taking us from an R&D phase of SRF technology, which is where we have been the past six to eight years, and moving our expertise into production,” Stanek said. “This is a big step forward.”

Fermilab and Jefferson Lab are working closely together on the cooling systems that enable the cavities’ superconductivity. Fermilab scientist Camille Ginsburg leads LCLS-II cryomodule production at Fermilab, and Fermilab engineer Arkadiy Klebaner manages the LCLS-II cryomodules distribution system.

“To build a high-energy beam using SRF technology, LCLS-II needed expertise in cryogenics,” Klebaner said. “So Jefferson Lab and Fermilab, who both have special expertise in this, were ready to help out.”

A cryogenic plant generating the refrigeration, a cryogenic distribution system for transporting the refrigeration into cryomodules and the cryomodules themselves make up the LCLS-II cryogenics. Jefferson Lab will provide the cryogenic plant, and Fermilab is in charge of developing the cryogenic distribution system. Jefferson Lab and Fermilab are jointly developing LCLS-II’s 35 cryomodules, each one about 10 meters long.

Fermilab’s contribution draws on the Tevatron’s cryogenics and on SRF research begun for the proposed International Linear Collider. The lab’s LCLS-II experience will also help with developing its planned PIP-II accelerator.

“So when we build the next accelerator for Fermilab, PIP-II, then we will have already gotten a lap around the production race course,” Padamsee said.

All labs have something special to contribute to LCLS-II, Ross said.

“The Fermilab team have figured out a way to make this kind of accelerator much better operating in the cold temperature that superconducting technology requires,” Ross said. “It is worthy of special recognition.”

Rich Blaustein

### ELBNF is born

Tuesday, February 3rd, 2015

The proposed experiment at the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility would send neutrinos through the Earth’s mantle from Batavia, Illinois, to Lead, South Dakota. Image: symmetry

At approximately 6:15 p.m. CST on Jan. 22, 2015, the largest and most ambitious experimental collaboration for neutrino science was born.

It was inspired by a confluence of scientific mysteries and technological advances, engendered by the P5 report and the European Strategy update, and midwifed by firm tugs from Fermilab, CERN and Brookhaven Lab. Going by the placeholder name ELBNF (Experiment at the Long-Baseline Neutrino Facility), the newborn had the impressive heft of 145 institutions from 23 countries.

The new Institutional Board (IB), convened by interim chair Sergio Bertolucci, unanimously approved a Memorandum of Collaboration that launches the election of spokespeople and a process to develop bylaws. The IB also endorsed an international governance plan for oversight of ELBNF detector projects, in concert with the construction of the LBNF facility hosted by Fermilab.

The goal of this international collaboration is crystal clear: a 40-kiloton modular liquid-argon detector deep underground at the Sanford Underground Research Facility exposed to a megawatt-class neutrino beam from Fermilab with the first 10 kilotons in place by 2021. This goal will enable a comprehensive investigation of neutrino oscillations that can establish the presence of CP violation for leptons, unequivocally determine the neutrino mass ordering and strongly test our current neutrino paradigm. A high-resolution near detector on the Fermilab site will have its own rich physics program, and the underground far detector will open exciting windows on nucleon decay, atmospheric neutrinos and neutrino bursts from supernova detonations.

Unlike most births, this one took place at an international meeting hosted by Fermilab; there was room for nearly all the friends and family of accelerator-based neutrino experiments. One of the critical items flagged at this meeting is to find a better name for the new collaboration. Here are a few of my unsolicited attempts:

nuLAND = neutrino Liquid ArgoN Detector

GOLDEN = Giant OsciLlation Detector Experiment for Neutrinos

Think you can do better? Go ahead. My older son, a high-priced management consultant, offered another one pro bono: NEutrino Research DetectorS.

I am too young to have been in the room when ATLAS and CMS (or for that matter CDF and DZero) came into being, but last week I had the thrill of being part of something that had the solid vibe of history being made. The meeting website is here.

Joe Lykken, Fermilab deputy director

### How to make a neutrino beam

Friday, December 12th, 2014

Ingredients for a neutrino beam: speedy protons, target, magnetic horn, decay pipe, absorbers. Image adapted from Fermilab

Fermilab is in the middle of expanding its neutrino program and is developing new detectors to study these ghostly particles. With its exquisite particle accelerator complex, Fermilab is capable of creating very intense beams of neutrinos.

Our neutrino recipe starts with a tank of hydrogen. The hydrogen atoms are fed an extra electron to make them negatively charged, allowing them to be accelerated. Once the charged atoms are accelerated, all of the electrons are ripped off, leaving a beam of positive protons. The protons are extracted into either the Booster Neutrino Beamline (BNB) or are further accelerated and extracted into the Neutrino Main Injector beamline (NuMI). Fermilab is the only laboratory with two neutrino beams. Our two beams have different energies, which allows us to study different properties of the neutrinos.

In the BNB, these protons smash into a target to break up the strong bonds of the quarks inside the proton. These collisions are so violent that they produce new quarks from their excess energy. These quarks immediately form together again into lighter composite short-lived particles called pions and kaons.

Since the pions and kaons emerge at different directions and speeds, they need to be herded together. As a bugle tunes your breath into musical notes, a horn of a different type rounds up and focuses the pions and kaons. The BNB horn looks roughly like the bell of a six-foot long bugle. It produces an electric field that in turn generates a funnel-like magnetic field, which directs all of the dispersed pions and kaons of positive electric charge straight ahead. Particles with negative charges get defocused. By switching the direction of the electric field, we can focus the negatively charged particles while defocusing the positive charges.

The focused particles in the BNB beam travel through a 50-meter long tunnel. This is where the magic happens. In this empty tunnel, the pions and kaons decay in flight into neutrinos, electrons and muons. At the end of the decay tunnel is a wall of steel and concrete to stop and absorb any particle that is not a neutrino. Because neutrinos interact so rarely, they easily whiz through the absorbers and on towards the experiments. And that’s the basic formula to make a beam of neutrinos!

A single neutrino beamline can support many experiments because the neutrinos interact too rarely to get “used up.” The BNB feeds neutrinos to MicroBooNE, and most of them go on through to the other side towards the MiniBooNE detector. Similarly, most of those go on through the other side as well and continue traveling to infinity and beyond. Detectors located in this beam measure neutrino oscillations and their interactions.

The NuMI beamline is designed similarly, but uses a different target material, two focusing horns, and a 675-meter decay pipe. The spacing between the two NuMI horns is adjustable, allowing fine-tuning of the neutrino beam energy. The NuMI beamline has higher-energy neutrinos than the BNB and thus studies different properties of neutrino oscillations.

The NuMI beamline feeds neutrinos to the MINERvA experiment and on through to the MINOS near detector. The NuMI beamline then continues about 450 miles through Earth on toward the MINOS far detector in the Soudan mine in Minnesota. By the time the beam reaches the far detector, it is about 20 miles in diameter! By having a near and far detector, we are able to observe neutrino flavor oscillations by measuring how much of the beam is electron neutrino flavor and muon neutrino flavor at each of these two detectors.

The last of the big Fermilab neutrino experiments is NOvA. Its near detector is off to the side of the NuMI beam and measures neutrinos only with a specific range of direction and energy. The NOvA far detector is positioned to measure the neutrinos with the same properties at a greater distance, about 500 miles away in Ash River, Minnesota. By placing the NOvA detectors 3 degrees to the side of the beam’s center, NOvA will get to make more precise oscillation measurements for a range of neutrino energies.

As more experiments are designed with more demanding requirements, Fermilab may expect to see more neutrino beamline R&D and the construction of new beamlines.

Tia Miceli

### Scintillator extruded at Fermilab detects particles around the globe

Wednesday, November 26th, 2014

The plastic scintillator extrusion line, shown here, produces detector material for export to experiments around the world. Photo: Reidar Hahn

Small, clear pellets of polystyrene can do a lot. They can help measure cosmic muons at the Pierre Auger Observatory, search for CP violation at KEK in Japan or observe neutrino oscillation at Fermilab. But in order to do any of these they have to go through Lab 5, located in the Fermilab Village, where the Scintillation Detector Development Group, in collaboration with the Northern Illinois Center for Accelerator and Detector Design (NICADD), manufactures the exclusive source of extruded plastic scintillator.

Like vinyl siding on a house, long thin blocks of plastic scintillator cover the surfaces of certain particle detectors. The plastic absorbs energy from collisions and releases it as measurable flashes of light. Fermilab’s Alan Bross and Anna Pla-Dalmau first partnered with local vendors to develop the concept and produce cost-effective scintillator material for the MINOS neutrino oscillation experiment. Later, with NIU’s Gerald Blazey, they built the in-house facility that has now exported high-quality extruded scintillator to experiments worldwide.

“It was clear that extruded scintillator would have a big impact on large neutrino detectors,” Bross said, “but its widespread application was not foreseen.”

Industrially manufactured polystyrene scintillators can be costly — requiring a labor-intensive process of casting purified materials individually in molds that have to be cleaned constantly. Producing the number of pieces needed for large-scale projects such as MINOS through casting would have been prohibitively expensive.

Extrusion, in contrast, presses melted plastic pellets through a die to create a continuous noodle of scintillator (typically about four centimeters wide by two centimeters tall) at a much lower cost. The first step in the production line mixes into the melted plastic two additives that enhance polystyrene’s natural scintillating property. As the material reaches the die, it receives a white, highly reflective coating that holds in scintillation light. Two cold water tanks respectively bathe and shower the scintillator strip before it is cool enough to handle. A puller controls its speed, and a robotic saw finally cuts it to length. The final product contains either a groove or a hole meant for a wavelength-shifting fiber that captures the scintillation light and sends the signal to electronics in the most useful form possible.

Bross had been working on various aspects of the scintillator cost problem since 1989, and he and Pla-Dalmau successfully extruded experiment-quality plastic scintillator with their vendors just in time to make MINOS a reality. In 2003, NICADD purchased and located at Lab 5 many of the machines needed to form an in-house production line.

“The investment made by Blazey and NICADD opened extruded scintillators to numerous experiments,” Pla-Dalmau said. “Without this contribution from NIU, who knows if this equipment would have ever been available to Fermilab and the rest of the physics community?”

Blazey agreed that collaboration was an important part of the plastic scintillator development.

“Together the two institutions had the capacity to build the resources necessary to develop state-of-the-art scintillator detector elements for numerous experiments inside and outside high-energy physics,” Blazey said. “The two institutions remain strong collaborators.”

Between their other responsibilities at Fermilab, the SDD group continues to study ways to make their scintillator more efficient. One task ahead, according to Bross, is to work modern, glass wavelength-shifting fibers into their final product.

“Incorporation of the fibers into the extrusions has always been a tedious part of the process,” he said. “We would like to change that.”

Troy Rummler

### Neutrinos, claymation and ‘Doctor Who’ at this year’s physics slam

Monday, November 24th, 2014

Wes Ketchum of the MicroBooNE collaboration is the Physics Slam III champion. Ketchum’s slam was on the detection of particles using liquid argon. Photo: Cindy Arnold

On Nov. 21, for the third year in a row, the Fermilab Lecture Series invited five scientists to battle it out in an event called a physics slam. And for the third year in a row, the slam proved wildly popular, selling out Ramsey Auditorium more than a month in advance.

More than 800 people braved the cold to watch this year’s contest, in which the participants took on large and intricate concepts such as dark energy, exploding supernovae, neutrino detection and the overwhelming tide of big data. Each scientist was given 10 minutes to discuss a chosen topic in the most engaging and entertaining way possible, with the winner decided by audience applause.

Michael Hildreth of the University of Notre Dame kicked things off by humorously illustrating the importance of preserving data — not just the results of experiments, but the processes used to obtain those results. Marcelle Soares-Santos of the Fermilab Center for Particle Astrophysics took the stage dressed as the Doctor from “Doctor Who,” complete with a sonic screwdriver and a model TARDIS, to explore the effects of dark energy through time.

Joseph Zennamo of the University of Chicago brought the audience along on a high-energy journey through the “Weird and Wonderful World of Neutrinos,” as his talk was called. And Vic Gehman of Los Alamos National Laboratory blew minds with a presentation about supernova bursts and the creation of everything and everyone in the universe.

The slammers at this year’s Fermilab Physics Slam were, Michael Hildreth, University of Notre Dame (far left); Marcelle Soares-Santos, Fermilab (second from left); Vic Gehman, Los Alamos National Laboratory (third from left); Wes Ketchum, Fermilab (second from right); Joseph Zennamo, University of Chicago. Fermilab Director Nigel Lockyer (third from right) congratulated all the participants. Photo: Cindy Arnold

The winner was Fermilab’s Wes Ketchum, a member of the MicroBooNE collaboration. Ketchum’s work-intensive presentation used claymation to show how different particles interact inside a liquid-argon particle detector, depicting them as multicolored monsters bumping into one another and creating electrons for the detector’s sensors to pick up. Audience members won’t soon forget the sight of a large oxygen monster eating red-blob electrons.

After the slam, the five scientists took questions from the audience, including one about dark matter and neutrinos from an eight-year-old boy, sparking much discussion. Chris Miller, speech professor at the College of DuPage, made his third appearance as master of ceremonies for the Physics Slam, and thanked the audience — particularly the younger attendees — for making the trek to Fermilab on a Friday night to learn more about science.

Video of this year’s Physics Slam is available on Fermilab’s YouTube channel.

Andre Salles