URA 2006-2007 Annual Report

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

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THE INTERNATIONAL LINEAR COLLIDER

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. Fermilab is the natural site for such a facility in the United States. 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 accelerator facility should be the 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. Fermilab is hosting members of the GDE team and supports the ILCWebsite and communications. In February 2007, the GDE published a draft ILC Reference Design Report. This multi-volume document provides the first detailed technical snapshot, defining in detail the technical parameters and components that make up each section of the 31-kilometer long accelerator. The reference design will guide the development of the worldwide R&D program, motivate international industrial studies and serve as the basis for the final engineering design needed to make an official project proposal later this decade. As part of the Reference Design Report, the GDE also produced a preliminary estimate for the cost of the ILC. Fermilab played a significant role in developing the reference design, and the Laboratory’s contributions will continue to grow during the engineering phase of the project.

In collaboration with other laboratories, Fermilab is in the process of building the necessary infrastructure to fabricate, process, treat and test superconducting RF cavities for ILC R&D. The Vertical Test Stand and Horizontal Test Stand will be used to qualify cavities for ILC R&D. In the Cryomodule Assembly Facility, scientists will prepare qualified cavities and string them together in a clean room environment. These strings of cavities then become fully assembled cryomodules. Fermilab is currently in the process of constructing the ILC Test Area, where scientists will test a series of cryomodules with an electron beam. In addition, Fermilab plans to develop a facility for chemically processing and treating superconducting cavities. Once the entire infrastructure is complete, Fermilab will have a full-service superconducting RF facility, where scientists from around the world will be able to process, assemble and test cavities and cryomodules from start to finish. Working with other laboratories, universities and industry, Fermilab is progressing in the development of the electron source for a superconducting linac; the design of a damping ring to “cool” the motion of electrons and positrons, so the beams can be tightly focused; and the development of simulation tools to study beam transport from the damping ring to the interaction point. Fermilab is pursuing a world-class programof ILC detector R&D activities that are integrated with the broader U.S. program. The Laboratory has established the only hadron test beam facility in the U.S. that is capable of adequately supporting ILC detector development.

In 2005, DOE Office of Science officials stated 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 for which Fermilab would be the host laboratory. 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).

ACCELERATOR R&D FOR NEUTRINO PHYSICS AND FOR THE NEXT GENERATION OF COLLIDERS

Very intense neutrino sources are required for the next generation of neutrino experiments. Current accelerator sources at Fermilab produce beams of neutrinos by smashing high-energy protons into stationary targets. To increase the intensity of the proton beam—and hence the resulting neutrino beam—Fermilab is working on possible upgrades to the existing accelerator complex to provide beam power of 1 megawatt (MW). The Laboratory is planning for R&D for a high-intensity neutrino source, a multi-MWsuperconducting RF linac as a new injector into theMain Injector, replacing Fermilab’s aging Linac and Booster accelerators. The neutrino source would use the same superconducting accelerating technology as the ILC, providing a synergistic overlap.

Muons, the short-lived and heavier relatives of electrons, can be used to produce much more intense beams of neutrinos. There is international interest in muon storage ring facilities as a base for a multi-TeV muon collider for the post-ILC era, as well as for a neutrino factory to explore symmetry violation phenomena. However, muon beams are large and diffuse, and they currently are too big to “fit” into an accelerator. Fermilab is home to the MuCool collaboration, which has been formed to pursue the development of ionization cooling technologies for a high luminosity muon collider. MuCool is part of the larger Neutrino Factory andMuon 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. The initial ionization cooling experiment will be at the Rutherford Accelerator Laboratory in the U.K., with a follow-on experiment proposed at Fermilab.

The Fermilab particle astrophysics program is exploring the questions of dark matter, dark energy, and mysterious high energy phenomena in the universe

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 the 15 MeV Photoinjector, 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. Fermilab is designing a program based on merging the Photoinjector with the ILC R&D program. In early 2007, Fermilab established the Accelerator Physics Center to coordinate and conduct accelerator R&D activities aimed at the next generation of accelerator facilities, to provide physics support for existing operational programs, and to increase the Laboratory’s involvement in the education of accelerator scientists and engineers.

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. 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 themwill 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 fourteen institutions in the Cryogenic DarkMatter Search (CDMS). These collaborators have developed very sensitive detectors that can detect the recoils of germaniumor silicon nuclei if they collidewith one of thesemassive particles. Fermilab has had the project management responsibility for the current CDMS II, located in the same Soudan Underground Laboratory that also houses the far MINOS detector. Fermilab is playing a key role in the project management, electronics, data acquisition, computing, and cryogenics systems for CDMS II, which is at present one of the most sensitive dark matter searches in the world. The critical cryogenic system is now in operation, and in 2006 all five detector “towers” were taking data at Soudan. 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, to be located at SNOLAB, the underground laboratory in Sudbury, Ontario. Fermilab is participating in the Chicagoland Observatory for Underground Particle Physics (COUPP) collaboration. The COUPP detector, located underground in the MINOS near detector hall at Fermilab, is demonstrating the advantages of a heavy liquid, room temperature bubble chamber for the direct detection of dark matter particles hitting nuclei.

Fermilab has also been engaged in the international Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) collaboration that aims to find out how matter, both dark and luminous, is distributed. SDSS hasmapped 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 utilized 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.

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. A follow-on survey, SDSS-II, with funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, NSF, and DOE, will be completed in July 2008. 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 second part of SDSS-II, the Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration (SEGUE), is 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. In 2006, for the third consecutive year, the SDSS program had the largest fraction of the most cited astronomy papers of any ground or spaced-based observatory.

Looking beyond SDSS, scientists in Fermilab’s Experimental Astrophysics Group are playing a leading role in the Dark Energy Survey (DES), which will use four independent methods to study the nature of dark energy. The DES collaboration will conduct a five-year survey, beginning as early as 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. In the longer term, the Experimental Astrophysics Group is positioned to make significant contributions to the Super Nova 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.

As a member of an international collaboration of about 300 scientists from 17 countries, Fermilab is playing a major role in the Pierre Auger Observatory Project, which is exploring the properties and mysterious origins of very-high-energy cosmic rays. (See Separate Section on Pierre Auger Observatory Project.)

COMPUTING

Fermilab is at the forefront of the development and use of ultra-fast data processing and data transfer technology for its diverse scientific user community. Run II at Fermilab has 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.

The Laboratory’s Computing Division is actively participating in the development and deployment of grid technology for high energy physics research

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.

In 2006, DOE and NSF provided a five-year, $30 million award to the Open Science Grid Consortium (OSG), in which Fermilab plays a leading role. Scientists frommany fields use the OSG infrastructure. In particular, the members of the international ATLAS and CMS detector collaborations at the LHC will rely on OSG to participate fully in these experiments.

PUBLICATIONS

During 2006, the various collaborations of experimenters and theorists at Fermilab produced about 170 publications and made some 320 conference presentations. The results included the most precise measurement of the top quark mass, observation of quantum oscillations between particles containing bottom quarks and their antiparticles, and new limits on the size of extra dimensions and the mass of new particles proposed by theoretical models such as supersymmetry. In addition, during 2006-07 some 88 Ph.D. candidates completed theses based on accelerator- based research they carried out at Fermilab, and another 31 completed theses based on the Laboratory’s astrophysics activities. These students go on to promising careers in particle physics, in related fields such as astronomy, computer sciences, and engineering, as well as careers in industry and commerce.

The Leon M. Lederman Science Education Center, drew attendance in 2006 of over 26,000 students

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 real-world 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 Fermilab Education Office and its Leon M. Lederman Science Education Center, dedicated in 1992, drew attendance in 2006 of over 26,000 students and 2,400 teachers in K-12 education programs. The Laboratory offers some 30 programs: teacher enhancement workshops and institutes, opportunities for research participation, development and distribution of instructionalmaterials, a collection of teachers’ resources, Laboratory tours, special events, class field trips, and science shows. The Education Office 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 2006, the Center’s education webserver received nearly 16 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 (IPM) summer program is aimed at outstanding college physics students who desire an opportunity to experience a working scientific environment. The IPM program is open to students in the U.S. and abroad. Students also participate in the IPM 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.

In 2007, the Laboratory established an International Fellows Program for Ph.D. students, post-doctoral researchers, and senior researchers from non-U.S. institutions. Initially, these fellowships will be available to physicists who are interested in working on the Tevatron collider experiments, and to scientists and engineers who are interested in developing accelerator and detector technology and test facilities for the ILC. In future years, the program could extend to other areas of activity at the Laboratory.

Fermilab is a leader in implementing energy conservation, recycling and waste reduction programs

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 has also provided 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 more than 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 continued to make progress in minimizing waste prior to generation and in reducing pollution, and in 2006 received several awards for efforts in managing excess electronic equipment. Specifically, Fermilab won DOE’s Pollution Prevention Star Award and DOE’s Best-in-Class Award for its efforts toward electronics management. Upon receiving the Best-in-Class Award, the Laboratory was notified of also being in the running for the White House Closing of the Circle Award. Additionally, the DOE participated in and won the Federal Electronics Reuse and Recycling Challenge sponsored by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and Fermilab was recognized as being a major contributor to DOE receiving that distinction.

In 2007, following a rigorous external audit, Fermilab received formal recognition for its environmental management and protection practices from the International Organization of Standards (ISO), an international body of technical standards for various industries. The so-called ISO 14001 standard provides a framework for environmental impact measurement and management into an Environmental Management System (EMS). In order to receive ISO 14001 recognition, an organization is required to demonstrate a commitment to compliance with environmental laws and other requirements, pollution prevention and continual improvement. The external audit capped an intense effort by Fermilab’s environmental protection staff and Laboratory management that began with a prior review of Fermilab’s EMS in October 2006. The audit teamwas very complimentary of many of Fermilab’s practices, including the open policy Fermilab exhibits towards its neighbors, and the many preventive actions that are incorporated into the Laboratory’s work planning.

TECHNOLOGY 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.

More than 3,100 patients with cancer have received treatment at Fermilab’s Neutron Therapy Facility

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 radio-resistant 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.

Fermilab sponsors cultural and other activities to which the public is invited

COMMUNITY 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 staffmembers 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, the Fermilab implemented a new site security plan, which places principal security attention to 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. The Fermilab Community Task Force currently meets on an occasional basis as issues arise.

Fermilab maintains strong governmental, associate laboratory and community relationships

In early 2007, the Laboratory established the twentyfour member ILC Citizens’ Task Force, which provides guidance and advice to Fermilab to ensure that community concerns and ideas are included in all public aspects of ILC planning and design. Several members of the Community Task Force also serve as members of the ILC Citizen’s Task Force.

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 as director from 1999 to 2005. 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

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