URA 2005 Annual Report

Computing

Fermilab is at the forefront of the development and use of ultra-fast data processing and data transfer technology. Run II at Fermilab is well underway with over a thousand participating physicists around the world. The upcoming LHC experiments at CERN involve collaborations larger than their predecessors, with more widely distributed analysis work. The data collected from experiments are becoming orders of magnitude more voluminous; petabytes (millions of gigabytes) per year are expected. To satisfy these and other emerging IT needs in the scientific, industrial, governmental and commercial arenas, grid computing has been conceived as an expansion of distributed computing. The term grid arose in the late 1990s to describe a computing infrastructure that allows dynamic, distributed collaborations to share resources. Grid computing involves the distribution of computing resources among geographically separated sites (creating a “grid” of resources), all of which are configured with specialized software for routing jobs, authenticating users, monitoring resources, and so on.

Fermilab is actively participating in the development and deployment of grid technology for high energy physics research. The Laboratory's Computing Division is involved in a variety of grid projects, some involving CDF and DZero Run II data handling and other current research projects at Fermilab, others looking forward to and preparing for physics that will be coming from the LHC at CERN in a few years. These grid projects are collaborations of scientific and computer professionals from a number of participating laboratories, universities and other organizations throughout the U.S., Europe and Asia. Fermilab is among the first users of DOE's UltraScience Net, a new network for high-speed and high-capacity science applications.

The Advanced Accelerator Modeling Team in the Computing Division, working in close collaboration with Laboratory's Accelerator Division, has developed Synergia, software that simulates the behavior of particles in an accelerator. The first version of this innovative software package was released to the general scientific community in 2005.

Astrophysics

Fermilab's astrophysics program addresses fundamental scientific issues in the intersecting domains of particle physics and cosmology, the study of the origin and structure of the physical universe. The Fermilab Particle Astrophysics Center on the 6th and 7th floors of Wilson Hall was established in November 2004, unifying the Laboratory's existing and proposed experimental and theoretical astrophysics activities. The Center Director is renowned Fermilab and University of Chicago astrophysicist Edward “Rocky” Kolb.

All of the proposals for extending the validity of the Standard Model of particle interactions predict new particles. If these particles are stable, then large numbers of them will have survived the moment of creation and will still be present. Should that be the case, they could make up a significant fraction of the mass of the universe. Searches for such particles of “cold dark matter” are underway. Fermilab is a member of the collaboration of twelve institutions in the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS). These collaborators have developed very sensitive detectors that can detect the recoils of germanium or silicon nuclei if they collide with one of the massive dark matter particles. Several years ago the CDMS collaboration made public the most sensitive limits on the detection of such dark matter, on the basis of the preliminary experiment at a shallow underground site on the Stanford University campus.

Fermilab has the project management responsibility for building the larger and more sensitive experiment, CDMS II, in the same Soudan Underground Laboratory that also houses the far MINOS detector. Fermilab is playing a key role in the electronics, data acquisition, and cryogenics systems for CDMS II. The critical cryogenic system is now in operation, and the first two detector “towers” are taking data at Soudan. A third detector tower is undergoing final testing at Case Western Reserve University, and the remaining two towers are under construction at Stanford University. In 2005, the CDMS II collaboration published results from its first two tower run, with data at significantly greater sensitivity than ever before in the realm of dark matter particles. Fermilab scientists are also involved in R&D work for the SuperCDMS, a phased enlargement of CDMS culminating in a detector system with roughly 1,000 times the sensitivity of the current one.

Fermilab has also been engaged in a collaboration that aims to find out how matter, both dark and luminous, is distributed. This project, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) has mapped in detail one-quarter of the entire sky, determining the positions, absolute brightnesses, and red shifts of nearly 200 million celestial objects, including more than a million galaxies and two hundred thousand quasars. The SDSS collaboration built and utilizes a 2.5-meter telescope and the associated instruments at Apache Point, New Mexico. Among Fermilab's many contributions to this project has been the construction of the data acquisition system and the software and hardware to process the expected 10 to 20 terabytes of data that were accumulated during the roughly five-year duration of the survey. On July 1, 2003, Richard Kron, a senior scientist in the Laboratory's Experimental Astrophysics Group, succeeded Fermilab Director Emeritus John Peoples as SDSS Director.

In July 2004, SDSS scientists announced that their extensive investigation of the distribution of material in the largest, most detailed map of the universe strongly confirms that 70% of the universe is composed of dark energy. In January 2005, a group of SDSS scientists announced results on the clustering of nearby galaxies, with important implications for the geometry of the universe. Later in 2005, SDSS published the collaboration's fourth data release, containing imaging data from 6670 square degrees of the sky and information on roughly 180 million objects. In June 2005, a follow-on survey, SDSS-II, was announced, with funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, NSF, and DOE. The SDSS-II collaboration has grown to include 23 member institutions around the world. SDSS-II has three components. The first, called LEGACY, will complete the SDSS survey of the extragalactic universe, obtaining images and distances of nearly a million galaxies and quasars over a continuous swath of sky in the Northern Hemisphere. The new funding inaugurates the second part of SDSS-II, the Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration (SEGUE), mapping the structure and stellar makeup of the Milky Way Galaxy, and gathering data on how the Milky Way formed and evolved. Identifying the oldest stars will help scientists understand how the elements of the periodic table were formed inside of stars. The third component of SDSS-II includes an intensive study of supernovae, sweeping the sky to find these remnants of gigantic explosions from dying stars. Scientists can precisely measure the distances of distant supernovae, using them to map the rate of expansion of the universe, a direct measurement of the effects of dark energy on the geometry of the universe as a whole.

Looking beyond SDSS, the Experimental Astrophysics Group has joined a collaboration of institutions in a space-based mission to probe the nature of dark energy and the accelerating expansion of the universe. The SuperNova Acceleration Probe (SNAP) satellite experiment, a proposal for the NASA-DOE Joint Dark Energy Mission, would detect and monitor several thousand “Type Ia” supernovae to determine the properties of dark energy. Scientists in the Experimental Astrophysics Group are also part of a collaboration that is proposing a five-year Dark Energy Survey to begin in 2009, using a new wide-field camera to be built for the existing 4-meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Fermilab scientists are leading the construction of the camera and optics.

As a member of an international collaboration of 15 countries, Fermilab is playing a major role in the Pierre Auger Observatory Project, which will explore the properties and mysterious origins of very-high-energy cosmic rays. (See Separate Section on Pierre Auger Observatory Project.)

Future Collider Facilities

While scientists await new discoveries at the high-energy frontier from Collider Run II at Fermilab, and later in the decade from the LHC at CERN, they must also plan how to advance the field in the future. For this it is necessary to perform R&D for the next generation of major accelerator facilities. Many in the community believe that Fermilab is the natural site for such a facility. As the largest U.S. laboratory for particle physics, Fermilab would provide a strong base of talent and infrastructure on which to build new facilities both on and near the present site.

There is a consensus in the worldwide particle physics community that the next large facility should be an International Linear Collider (ILC). The ILC would create high-energy (500-1000 GeV) particle collisions between electrons and positrons, their antimatter counterparts. Together with the LHC, the ILC would provide a tool for scientists to address many of the 21st century questions about the fundamental nature of matter, energy, space and time, including dark matter, dark energy, and extra dimensions. From its inception, the ILC would be designed, funded, managed, and operated as an international scientific laboratory.

With the endorsement of the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA) in 2004, the particle physics community has chosen an accelerator technology for the ILC, opening the way for the world community to unite and concentrate resources on the design of a linear collider using superconducting radiofrequency (rf) technology for the accelerating structures of the ILC. In 2005, ICFA established the international Global Design Effort (GDE). An international group of about 50 people forms the GDE team for the ILC, headed by Barry Barish, professor of physics at California Institute of Technology and former director of the LIGO laboratory, a major NSF-funded observatory for the detection of gravity waves. The GDE team sets the strategy and priorities for the work of hundreds of scientists and engineers at universities and laboratories around the world. The GDE goal is to produce an ILC Conceptual Design Report by the end of 2006 and an ILC Technical Design Report by the end of 2008. Physicists and policy-makers will use the reports to decide the future of the project. Fermilab is hosting members of the GDE team on the 13th floor of Wilson Hall and supports the ILC Website and communications.

Fermilab has assumed a leading role in building a proposed engineering test facility for major ILC linac systems, In 2005, DOE Office of Science officials indicated that if the U.S. were chosen by the international community to host the ILC, the collider would be sited near Fermilab. In response, Fermilab has initiated site studies for a proposed ILC located in Northern Illinois, for which Fermilab would be the host laboratory.

In collaboration with other laboratories, universities and industry, Fermilab is progressing in the development of the electron source for a superconducting linac; design of a damping ring to “cool” the motion of electrons and positrons, so the beams can be tightly focused; development of simulation tools to study beam transport from the damping ring to the interaction point; and design, production and testing of a superconducting niobium accelerating cavity and its power input devices. In his role as Fermilab Director, Pier Oddone is a member of both the International Linear Collider Steering Committee (ILCSC) under ICFA, and the regional Linear Collider Group of the Americas (formerly the U.S. Linear Collider Steering Group)

Future Accelerators for Neutrino Expirements

With interest high in neutrino physics, very intense neutrino sources are required for the next generation of experiments. Current accelerator sources at Fermilab produce secondary beams of neutrinos from collisions of high energy protons on stationary targets. To increase proton intensity, Fermilab has developed concepts for a new 8 GeV proton source facility, called the Proton Driver, to replace Fermilab's aging Linac and Booster accelerators. With its enhanced performance, the Proton Driver would solve the associated problems of decreasing Booster reliability and the need for increased proton intensity for simultaneous operation of the MiniBooNE and NuMI/MINOS neutrino experiments. In light of the selection of superconducting acceleration technology for the ILC, Fermilab has chosen to develop the same technology for the Proton Driver. Because of the synergistic overlap, the Laboratory is pursuing R&D for both the ILC and the Proton Driver in parallel. In collaboration with a number of other institutions involved in the development of superconducting rf technology, Fermilab is establishing an ILC Test Area and a Proton Test Area.

Muons, the short-lived and heavier relatives of electrons, can be used to produce much more intense beams of neutrinos. However, muon beams are large and diffuse, and they currently are too big to “fit” into an accelerator. Fermilab's MuCool project is part of the Neutrino Factory and Muon Collider collaboration, which includes particle and accelerator physicists from U.S., Japanese and European laboratories and universities. With the goal of creating compact muon beams, MuCool physicists will soon be testing accelerating capabilities of new rf cavities, developed by groups at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility.

Fermilab is also collaborating with several regional universities that have initiated accelerator R&D efforts, including Illinois Institute of Technology, Northern Illinois University, Northwestern University, University of Chicago and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The Northern Illinois Center for Accelerator and Detector Development (NICADD) began operations in 2002 at Northern Illinois University's DeKalb campus. NICADD projects envisioned for collaboration with Fermilab include creation of a particle detector research facility, establishment of a separate facility for development of the next generation of linear colliders, and joint operation a laser-driven, electron beam research facility at Fermilab. Seven participating institutions are using the facility, with its superconducting rf technology, for experiments on plasma and laser acceleration techniques, and for several investigations that could have an impact on linear collider design considerations.

Education, Training and Fellowship Programs

Fermilab's history of achievement in science education and teacher training programs is a tribute to physicists' love of learning and to students' responsiveness to realworld situations. Spearheaded by Fermilab Director Emeritus and Nobel laureate Leon Lederman, the education program gives special emphasis throughout to strengthening science education for under-represented groups.

The Leon M. Lederman Science Education Center, dedicated in 1992, drew attendance in 2005 of over 25,000 students and 2,400 teachers in K-12 education programs. The Center offers some 32 programs: teacher enhancement workshops and institutes, opportunities for research participation, development and distribution of instructional materials, a collection of teachers' resources, Laboratory tours, special events, class field trips, and science shows. The Center is a leader in QuarkNet, the DOE- and NSF-funded program that reaches 500 high school teachers across the country, bringing the world of particle physics to their students. In 2005, the Center's education webserver received nearly 17 million hits. Currently, 50 percent of the Center's funding, including QuarkNet, is provided by Fermilab, and 50 percent comes from other federal, state and private sources.

The Internships for Physics Majors (IMP) summer program is aimed at outstanding college physics students who desire an opportunity to experience a working scientific environment. The IMP program is open to students in the U.S. and abroad. Students also participate in the IMP program through DOE's Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship program, which is open to all science undergraduates. TARGET is a program for academically talented high school students who are members of minority groups and who have expressed an interest in science. TARGET students come to the Laboratory each morning in the summer to work with an advisor and then attend three classes every afternoon at nearby Naperville High School. The Summer Internships in Science and Technology (SIST) program provides summer internships at Fermilab in physics, engineering and computer science to an average of 20 undergraduate students per year from minority groups traditionally underrepresented in the fields of science and engineering. Fermilab has sponsored the SIST program for 35 years. SIST has the distinction of being the oldest operating program of its type in the U.S. and has served as a model for other laboratories and private industry.

Fermilab sponsors the Lederman, Peoples and Wilson postdoctoral fellowships at the Laboratory, and participates in a Joint University-Fermilab Doctoral Program in Accelerator Physics. In 2005, Fermilab initiated the John Bardeen Engineering Fellowship to bring to the Laboratory each year one or two of the most talented masters or doctoral recipients in engineering. In collaboration with other laboratories and U.S. universities, Fermilab serves as home of the U.S. Particle Accelerator School. The Laboratory also supports university faculty members in residence at the Laboratory through a guest scientist program.

URA sponsors two annual awards at the Laboratory. The Fermilab / URA Graduate Thesis Award honors the outstanding doctoral thesis written on research conducted at Fermilab or in collaboration with Fermilab scientists. The Tollestrup Award for Postdoctoral Research honors outstanding work conducted by a postdoctoral researcher at Fermilab or in collaboration with Fermilab scientists. URA also supports the awards for outstanding poster presentations at the annual New Perspectives Conference, organized each year by Fermilab's Graduate Student Association on behalf of young scientists at the undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral levels.

URA also provides financial support for graduate courses at Fermilab. Graduate students often have difficulty taking classes at their home institutions because they spend so much time at Fermilab participating in experiments. In 2005, Fermilab's Theoretical Physics Department began an academic lecture series aimed at graduate students and young postdocs.

Environmental and Conservation Activities

In addition to its research mission in high-energy physics, Fermilab has been designated a National Environmental Research Park by DOE. The Laboratory diligently oversees restoration and preservation of the site's ecosystems. Over the years, the Laboratory has restored more than a thousand acres of the native tallgrass prairie that once covered the Fermilab site. The prairie is actively managed, including annual prairie burns to help maintain the system's natural cycles. In 1998, Fermilab became a member of Chicago Wilderness, a consortium of nearly one hundred public and private landholders in the Chicago area committed to careful and responsible management of the remaining habitat in the region.

Fermilab is a leader in implementing energy conservation, recycling and waste reduction programs, and has won a number of awards over the past few years. The Laboratory received two 2003 Pollution Prevention and Environmental Stewardship Awards from the DOE Office of Science. The first award recognized the Laboratory for its implementation of the Fermilab Alternative Fuel Initiative. Through the use of 63 alternative fuel vehicles on site, the Laboratory reduced its use of petroleum fuel by 20 percent during FY2003, accomplishing the DOE's goal of fuel reduction two fiscal years ahead of schedule. The Laboratory received the second award for implementing a Scintillator Plastic Recycling Program. In June 2005, Fermilab won another DOE Stewardship award for its implementation of an Emergency Light Battery Removal and Relocation Program, a multi-year activity to remove emergency light batteries from over six miles of accelerator and fixed-target beamline enclosures. Although proper disposal of batteries is always important, the presence of the batteries in areas subject to radiation presented the Laboratory with a mixedwaste disposal problem. An Accelerator Division team replaced some emergency lighting systems with uninterruptible power supplies and relocated other batteries to areas not subject to radiation. As a result, one source of mixed-waste was eliminated and Laboratory safety was improved.

Fermilab recycles about 90,000 pounds of electronic equipment per year. Because such equipment often contains lead and other hazardous materials that make traditional disposal or recycling methods difficult and costly, the Laboratory has an “e-cycling” program, in which a contractor breaks down the equipment into components that can be individually recycled.

In May 2004, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency presented Fermilab with a 2003 Conservation and Native Landscaping Award, citing the Laboratory's achievement in using native plants in the Main Injector Wetland Mitigation Project. In October 2004, Fermilab was one of 15 Illinois companies and organizations to receive a Governor's Pollution Prevention Award for implementing a new liquid nitrogen recovery system that reduces exhaust and conserves energy. Fermilab also received an FY2004 Federal Energy and Water Management Award for the Laboratory's Condensation Control on the Rings Project, which added dehumidifiers in the Tevatron enclosure.

In 2005 Fermilab successfully implemented its Environmental Management System (EMS), a set of problem identification and solving tools. Fermilab's EMS is analogous to the Laboratory's successful Integrated Safety Management System (ISMS).

Technlogy Transfer

While Fermilab is dedicated to basic physics research, the Laboratory is eager to share its science, technology and know-how by working cooperatively with U.S. industry to encourage economic development. Fermilab has unique capabilities in designing and operating accelerators, managing very large cryogenic systems, developing and operating fast electronics, creating hardware architectures and software for massively parallel computing systems and operating industrial-scale applications of superconducting technology. Sometimes advances in these technologies at the Laboratory have applications beyond high-energy physics research, and Fermilab can transfer new technology to industry to foster economic development. Fermilab's Directorate-level Office of Research and Technology Applications (ORTA) facilitates the transfer of technologies developed at the Laboratory.

Accelerators in Medicine

Between 1976 and 1985, the National Cancer Institute funded clinical trials at Fermilab to explore the effectiveness of fast neutrons versus photon therapy in the management of radioresistant tumors. Since then, working with hospitals in the Fermilab region, more than 3,100 patients with cancer have received treatment at Fermilab's Neutron Therapy Facility (NTF). About 25 percent of these patients reside outside Illinois, including individuals from Canada, Greece, Haiti, Mexico, Pakistan, and the Philippines. From 1995 to 2003, the NTF was operated under contract with Provena Saint Joseph Hospital of Elgin, Illinois. In December 2004, Northern Illinois University announced the formation of the NIU Institute for Neutron Therapy at Fermilab, partnering with the Laboratory to continue the NTF program of providing such therapy to patients and to conduct extensive research on this treatment.

Beyond the borders of Illinois, the NTF has served as a model for more recently built neutron therapy facilities in Michigan, South Africa, and France. Fermilab also built a 250 MeV proton accelerator for the hospital of Loma Linda University Medical Center in California, which began treating patients in October 1990.

Comunity Programs

Fermilab's role as a key element of the Illinois High Technology Corridor is complemented by its sponsorship of cultural activities to which the public is invited. Laboratory staff members volunteer in supporting an arts series, physics colloquia, films and an art gallery. Fermilab also conducts public tours for visitors and briefings for local citizens on Laboratory initiatives. With the cooperation of DOE security officials, the Laboratory has been pleased to be able to continue most of its public events and guided tours in the wake of post - 9/11 security concerns at Federal facilities. In January 2005, Fermilab implemented a new site security plan, which places principal security attention on a number of Property Protection Areas. For the remainder of the site, the Laboratory provides open access during normal business hours. As a result of the new security program, Fermilab maintains the strong connection with the surrounding communities that it has historically enjoyed.

In March 2004, the Laboratory formed the Fermilab Community Task Force on Public Participation to develop a set of mutual expectations for how Fermilab will interact with the community on issues that affect them both. The 20-member Task Force consists of individuals with diverse interests from the surrounding communities. The Laboratory asked the Task Force to provide recommendations on how the Laboratory and the community should work together on issues of mutual interest and concern. The Task Force submitted its final recommendations to Laboratory management in December 2004. Fermilab is using these recommendations to develop a comprehensive policy for public participation, incorporating community desires and concerns to the maximum extent possible. In November 2005, the Task Force's ILC Subcommittee met at the Laboratory to discuss goals and objectives for community involvement in the possible siting of the ILC in Northern Illinois, near Fermilab.

Laboratory Directors

On July 1, 2005, Piermaria Oddone became Fermilab's fifth Director. Dr. Oddone comes to Fermilab from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he was Deputy Director for the previous fifteen years. Dr. Oddone succeeds Michael Witherell, who served with distinction as Director since July 1999. Dr. Witherell has returned to the University of California at Santa Barbara, where he now serves as Vice Chancellor for Research. John Peoples Jr. led the Laboratory from 1989 to 1999. Dr. Peoples is currently a senior scientist in Fermilab's Experimental Astrophysics Program, where he served from 1999 to 2003 as Director of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Leon M. Lederman, a 1988 Nobel laureate, directed the Laboratory from 1979 to 1989 and is a member of the URA Board of Trustees. Dr. Lederman is currently Resident Scholar at the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy; his contributions to science education are known worldwide. Fermilab's founding Director, the late Robert R. Wilson, served from 1968 to 1978, and subsequently served as a member of URA's Fermilab Board of Overseers. Dr. Wilson provided enduring guidance for the aesthetics of buildings and grounds, including sculpture that he created.

For further information about Fermilab, visit the Laboratory's website at http://www.fnal.gov.