Fermilab Budget Woes Continue

While most labs managed to dodge a bullet (what really looked like a giant bomb) in the 2011 budget. There is still many problems coming. Announced Thursday and reported on the Courier News and this blog that Fermilab will seek to reduce its staff by 5% through a voluntary program.

With the ending of the Tevatron program in September this doesn't come as too much of a surprise, however it doesn't do much to boost moral around the lab. In fact, even though much of the talk is on the future experiments like Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE), Mu2e (website), and the future of Project X (website) there can't help but be a sense of loss for many scientist working there.

For me, trying desperately to finish my thesis on work at CDF and looking for post-docs that might keep me in the Chicago land area, pieces of news about the shrinking of the lab only causes me to take pause and check to see if going down this path is the best for me.

The little support and almost no excitement coming from a budget strapped government towards science makes it hard for a young researcher to keep a stiff upper lip and look to the future with too much optimism .

Oh well, more focus on thesis and hopefully when I lift my head there will be a good position on an interesting and well funded experiment to work on.

DZero Doesn't see the same excess as CDF!

So the physics world is all a buzz with the reported excess in the W+2 Jet channel reported by CDF.

The graph here shows the most recent result released by CDF in the W+ 2 Jet channel for 7.3 fb-1 and shows a clear (and growing) excess in the invariant mass range around 150 GeV. The community has been buzzing with speculation and ideas as to what this phenomenon could be. From mis-modeling to Technicolor (a new model of physics) the result isn't really clear. But something seems to be really there.

The really exciting thing is that CDF's sister experiment at the Tevatron, DZero, has publicly released their findings in the same channel today and they don't seem to see anything. (See the public release by Fermilab here).

So what does it all mean? Well clearly something is happening here. The CDF result has been checked and double checked from within the collaboration (that is really the only way such a result could ever see the light of day) and now you have an independent check by another experiment on the same data and they don't see anything! The fury of discussion as to whether DZero and CDF are doing identical things will launch as well as much debate as to what it means and how to proceed.

To me this is where physics is really interesting! Methods of analysis and meaning and understanding will be hotly debated. DZero will be giving a seminar talk today at 4pm and is webcasted here.

For sure what is to come will be what makes science great. Checks, cross-checks, argument, and ultimately (and probably after many sleepless nights and hurt ego's) agreement to what causes such deviations.

Get Excited!

Fermilab Users Meeting

Today and tomorrow are the 44th annual Fermilab Users Meeting.
This meeting will highlight the many exciting activities that are coming from Fermilab including Collider Physics (like the stuff I work on) as well as Astro-Particle, Neutrino, and future plans for the lab.

The big draw this year seems to be the already "sold out" (I put this in quotes because the tickets were free, but had to be requested) public talk that will be given on Thursday by Secretary of Energy Steven Chu. There is some overflow seating that will be made available so even if you don't have tickets it may still be worth the while to come.

So far today there has been many good talks, one I especially liked was given by Brendan Casey of Fermilab on the new g-2 experiment that is slated to begin after the much morned shutdown of the Tevatron. His talk can be found here (https://indico.fnal.gov/conferenceOtherViews.py?view=standard&confId=4156). Something that won't come across in the slides (which are very well done!) is the fact that he gave the talk in flip-flops and a Hawaiian shirt and said that the exciting part of his experiment is "we get to use helicopters, and everyone knows helicopters are awesome". This eludes to how they will transport part of their experimental set-up from where it is now to Fermilab.

See an overview of the meeting here: http://www.fnal.gov/orgs/fermilab_users_org/users_mtg/2011/

Tevatron still kicking proton/antiproton butt!

I thought I would share this post from the Tevatron's Facebook page (can be found here).
Just in the last week we had 6 of the top 10 initial luminosity stores from the Tevatron and the accelerator delivered 78 pb-1 of data in just the last week!
This is really an amazing accomplishment for this accelerator and with this rate of data delivery we can be sure that both experiments that operate on the Main Ring (CDF and D0) will have lots of data to analyze before the planned shutdown in September.
For those of you that don't exactly know what these numbers mean, this is just a simple way of measuring the amount of interactions (or collisions) that we will get during the operation of the accelerator. The higher the luminosity, the greater chance that the collisions will occur and the more interesting data we have to record. What is truly amazing is after 25 years of operations the Tevatron is performing like never before and delivering data and unprecedented rates! This means that there is a greater chance of catching a glimpse at rare processes in physics that may be buried in our data.
Even more clear explanations and updated numbers for the Tevatron can be found here:
http://www.fnal.gov/pub/now/tevlum.html
http://www.fnal.gov/pub/now/tevlumexp.html

Explanation of hints at new physics from CDF

There is a good summary article in the New York Times (see link here) that talks about the exciting new physics that will be reported today from CDF (Collider Detection at Fermilab).

I spoke about this in my previous blog post (see link here) and the talk is being given today at Fermilab.

The basic summary, "If it is real, than it is really exciting!" says it best.

Imporant new result from CDF

So there is a really exciting Wine and Cheese Seminar scheduled for Wednesday April 6th at Fermilab to talk about an exciting result being reported in the "W+2 Jet " channel.

You will be able to find the talk here: http://theory.fnal.gov/jetp/

IF streaming video is available for this talk you will find it here: http://vms-db-srv.fnal.gov/fmi/xsl/VMS_Site_2/000Return/video/r_live.xsl


For those of you on the fringe of particle physics this will be talk about a new result from the collaboration about production of a fundamental particle known as a W boson. This particle is one of the fundamental messenger particles in the Standard Model. A "Jet" is just a deposit of energy found in our detector coming from the collision.

What is exciting about this somehow boring sounding title is that there could be evidence for all kind of interesting things when looking at what is thought to be "well understood".

No matter how you look at it, this result was important enough to schedule a special seminar...so lots of eyes in the physics world will be looking at it

Budget Problems facing the U.S.

Budget Problems facing the U.S.

If it seems that the news lately has been grim coming out of the U.S…it is because it is. In a talk yesterday by the director of Fermilab Pier Oddone laid out some very bleak circumstances for the coming year that Fermilab and many scientific ventures face.
See Pier’s talk here (http://vmsstreamer1.fnal.gov/Lectures/AllHands/presentations/110215AllHands.pptx)
The short of it is the budget put forward by the Republican congress would slash domestic spending in view of the fact that the U.S would see 1.5 trillion dollar deficit in Fiscal Year 2011. Now that being said, these proposals actually only effect < 20% of the total budget and definitely don’t fix the total problem.

However, the impact would be very real! Since the U.S government has be acting on a continuing resolution (basically saying keep 2010 spending and appropriations since Congress didn’t pass a new budget), getting a 20% cut now actually amounts to a 40% cut for the rest of the year! This fact has DIRE impact on Fermilab

As Pier said in his talk

Impossible to accommodate such cuts without major disruptions:

1) Stop operation of all accelerators immediately

2) Slow down projects to barely keep-alive levels

3) Prepare layoffs of 20% of the staff or 400 employees

4) Furlough staff for roughly two of the remaining six months

This coming on the heels of the announcement that there would be no extension to the running of the Tevatron in 2011 means that things would slow down in the US High Energy Physics area very quickly with no clear signs of when they will pick up again.

Frankly, for a government that is purporting not wanting to miss “their sputnik moment” the idea of drastically cutting funding to fundamental research seems just plain stupid! Innovation does not happen in a climate where people are worried if the lab they work at is going to be there tomorrow…nor will “job creation” and “a balanced budget” happen by cutting spending to a small fraction of the overall budget that actually generates jobs and opportunities in the United States. The best quote I’ve heard to describe this sort of approach to budgetary problem solving was in an article in the Washington Post (linked here)

“Making the government lean by cutting the most defensible (and productive) federal spending is akin to making an overweight aircraft fly by removing the engine!”

So what do we do? Write your congressman/congresswomen and tell them that gutting science is no way to the future! There are instructions on the webpage of how to get this letter written. I encourage all readers to write to help save such great scientific programs such as Fermilab!

http://www.congressweb.com/

cweb2/index.cfm/siteid/

APSPA/action/TakeAction.Contact

/lettergroupid/90

Tevatron to Shutdown!

As was announced today by the director of Fermilab (see here) there will be no extension to the running of the Tevatron beyond 2011.
As stated:

"The present budgetary climate did not permit DOE to secure the additional funds needed to run the Tevatron for three more years as recommended by the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel."
This marks a very sad day for me to hear that the experiment I am working on and have grown to love will be ending after this year.
It is especially hard to hear considering that this choice is being made (at least publicly) by budgetary considerations and not by the recommendation of the science that drives field.
I'll probably have more to say on this in the coming days...but for now I have a PhD to finish and thought it would be worth while to post briefly on this.

See more related articles here:
From the Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/life-and-physics/2011/jan/10/1
From Chicago Buisness: http://beaconnews.suntimes.com/news/3242019-418/tevatron-fermilab-funding-accelerator-energy.html

The Tevatron and Run III

Tevatron Accelerator

This is a re-post from my other blog: http://www.quantumdiaries.org/author/jonathan/

There has been a great discussion raging at Fermilab surrounding the recent report given by the Physics Advisory Committee on August 31st. In this report the committee considered the impact of extending the life of the Tevatron through 2014 in what is being called around the lab Run III.

Basically what has been outlined is trying to answer the difficult question of whether or not the immediate physics payout of extending the life of the experiments and most likely doubling the data sets out weighs the potential impact on the future experiments at Fermilab. In addition, the performance of the experiments (CDF & D0) in terms of hardware, man power, and analysis reach have to be considered when viewed in light of the draw for many scientists to move onto other interesting experiments happening at Fermilab (NuMI, Project X, etc…) and elsewhere (CMS, ATLAS, and the like…)

What faces the lab, the director of Fermilab (Pier Oddone), and the scientists that work in the world of particle physics is a really difficult one. What they have to do is look into their crystal balls and ask the questions:

1) With the LHC going into a 15 month shutdown at the end of 2011, what will the data the is already on tape look like and what kind of physics reach will it provide us?

2) With the ever improving performance of the Tevatron and the experiments at Fermilab what is the likelihood of having a discovery with a larger data set (read: Find the Higgs or exclude the Standard Model flavor in the low mass ranges)

3) What does the funding question look like for the other interests of the lab in light of the extended running of the Tevatron? Not to mention the timeline / manpower / and resource availability!

These are just some of the big issues….there are clearly 100’s more that me as a lowly graduate student am probably not even aware of! But from my own perspective I see the PAC report as a great sign! Their conclusion was simple:

The Committee strongly endorses the extension of the Tevatron run for three years during 2011–2014 under either funding scenario presented in the charge. The Committee is aware that the development of the future programs might be severely affected and projects delayed by the Collider run. The Committee recommends that efforts be made to mitigate the effects. While the Tevatron run extension would take advantage of a compelling opportunity, the long-term plans of the Laboratory and of the field, as outlined by the P5 report, should be pursued vigorously.

I was really excited to hear this! As a young researcher on the verge of graduating I saw this recommendation as an opportunity to continue my with a post-doc at Fermilab working at a time in particle physics where the chance of a real discovery (Higgs/SUSY/Beyond Standard Model) is a real possibility and to be able to contribute to the American thrust of physics in the global arena during the shutdown/upgrade of the LHC.

There is no question what the future of high energy physics will be, and that is the Large Hadron Collider at CERN for many years. There is also no denying that Fermilab is looking to the future with the intensity frontier in such experiments like NuMI and Project X. However, we are at a time where the physics possibilities are so great, the timing too perfect, and the reach of our experiments so close, that I think it would be a shame not to extend the run and take this chance to make a major discovery!

Higgs Exclusion that could be extended (or discovery made) in the low mass region still to be explored

I encourage everyone to read the PAC Report and get excited for the potential reach of the Tevatron! Coming back out of our summer shutdown we are already colliding with inital luminosities near 250 nb-1 and delivering 5000 nb-1 per store. There are so many exciting hints and clues in the analysis in the pipeline at CDF that adding more of this quickly accumulating data will help shed light on all the great mysteries.

Recent result from D0 showing hints of new physics to still be understood in the asymmetry of matter and anti-matter

So, when asked: “To run or not to run?” The answer is TO RUN! At least in this humble blogger’s opinion

2010 Hadron Collider Physics Summer School (Live and Streaming)

The fifth annual CERN / Fermilab Hadron Physics summer school is currently going on right now at Fermilab in the Wilson Hall High Rise.

This annual summer school is a great opportunity for young physicists to listen to lectures about the field of high energy physics both experimental and theory. Furthermore, these  lectures are designed to give someone with limited experimental knowledge some real understanding of how these accelerators, detectors, and analysis computing take place in the real world of particle physics

This summer series is going on August 17th - August 20th and is available streaming online:
http://www-visualmedia.fnal.gov/live/2010HCPSS_Live.htm

As well as the slides from the various speakers are publicly available here:
http://indico.fnal.gov/conferenceOtherViews.py?view=standard&confId=3532

So even if you aren't able to be at Fermilab for these lectures you can still enjoy them. Much thanks to the Fermilab visual media services!

D0 sees new physics!!!

So some big news from Fermilab was just recently released. (See press release here). The interesting thing here is that the result gives an indication of why we observe an abundance of matter over anti-matter in the universe. In one interpretation (and this might be a bit of an over-reach) this could be experimental evidence for physics that isn't explained in our current best theory of particle physics (The Standard Model) and help explain the existence of everything we observe in the universe!

With such big claims I think this result deserves a little bit more of an explanation. So one of the big mysteries in particle physics is why do we observe so much matter in the universe (basically everything we can see with our telescopes) and observe so little anti-matter IF the universe started with the Big Bang in which the universe was created with a sea of matter and anti-matter and was governed by the laws of particle physics in the early universe.
Basically, up till these very new results (with the exception of the B_s results discovered at Fermilab) there was no experimental evidence that matter and anti-matter behaved differently in any way significant enough to account for the HUGE difference in the abundance of matter over anti-matter that we see in the universe. However, this new result is a big clue along that path showing a very significant difference between the symmetric theory known as the Standard Model and what we observe experimentally.
Now the D0 experiment had to use some really sophisticated techniques to do this experiment and using aspects of their experiment that CDF (its sister experiment at the Tevatron and my home) is not capable of doing.
So what does this mean...could mean a lot of different things. But I'm a big fan of making a measurement and letting it speak for itself. So here is what we can say, this is the first statistically significant evidence that the Standard Model gets the CP violation wrong, Fermilab/D0 were the first to get there, and there is evidence that our Standard Model isn't the whole story and we need to keep looking because the new physics we have been searching for to explain the universe is right around the corner!

The Amazing Tevatron!!!

So the other day I saw a status update come across my news feed on Facebook from my good friend The Tevatron that read:

Cap'n Tevatron: Store 7247 terminated intentionally after delivering 6900 nb^-1. Pacific Ocean earthquakes caused observable magnet motion.

This made my jaw drop!!! To understand what this means the average reader will need a little bit of background.

What is a Tevatron?

The Tevatron is the name given to the 4 mile long circular particle accelerator located at Fermi National Labs in Batavia, Il and is currently (as of 10/12/09)  the worlds highest energy particle collider. What the Tevatron does is create proton and anti-proton beams that circulate in opposite directions at speeds of ~99.99% the speed of light (2 TeV center of mass energy) and cause them to collilde at two different detectors located around the ring.

If it wasn't amazing enough to take things smaller than an atom and trap them into a space less then a millimeter across and then collide speed them up to near the speed of light (186,000 miles/hour) and then collide them to within a few centimeters of the center of TWO three story detectors...imagine doing all of this with magnets that are 8 times more powerful than the entire Earth's magnetic field requiring a power supply of a small town!!! No small task.

Magnets at the Tevatron

Now, how do we see an earthquake that happens on the other side of the world using these magnets. Well the piece of information you need to know to understand this is that these giant magnets we use at the Tevatron have to be cooled to really cold temperatures in order to allow them to reach the power we need to create the magnetic fields of the right strength. How cold is that...around -450 degrees Fahrenheit. When you are dealing with spaces smaller than a millimeter and temperatures that cold...any and all vibrations matter! So how do you detect and control these vibrations...how else, you put a level on whatever it is you built and measure and try to correct for these vibrations.


Ok, now it is a little more complicated than that...but not too much more detailed. So on each of these magnets to measure the vibrations and losses due to this is a level-of-sorts. This is what they use to detect the earthquakes. Basically, the control room notices that they are losing some protons or anti-protons because the magnets are moving changing the orbit of the particles. They check their levels, compare with any known earthquakes that may have happened on the earth...do a little physics and math...and compare to see if the observed motion matches where and when the earthquake occurs. Amazingly they do and this isn't the first time they've observed this...in 2006 (see plot below) they observed the same thing 

Obviously, they try to correct when the orbit starts to stray...but the time frame that the earthquake wave passes is very small and the correction software must adjust at some regular time interval. So even though it is rare to see these earthquakes...taking them into account and correcting for them is important.

Needless to say...THIS IS INCREDIBLE THAT WE CAN DO THIS!

From the Neighborhood to the Lab

I hope in the upcoming posts to catalog what my life has been like during the transition from the life in the neighborhood to the life at Fermilab. More than anything I don't want to say that one was better than the other...they are both great times in my life and I think in seeing how these two communities work and influence the world around them I have a blueprint for building a better life.

So in the neighborhood there were twenty or so central people who lived and gave to one another. A perfect example of this was an art show that was put on primarily by three girls (Mary Ellen, Carie, and Claire) but became the pet project of everyone in the Neighborhood. This show was called "Barefoot Art Guild" and was held about once every two months. What was truly amazing about this show is that what started as a small gathering of friends to share the art they created quickly grew to a show that spanned a city block, had live musicians come in from many different cities, would last 8 hours, and never charged a dime (except for food...which was still primarily given away)

In this example of my community I found the meaning of selfless enjoyment. Putting together, organizing, and breaking down these art shows took many hours and often a lot of resources. But the neighborhood always banded together, giving time, money and equipment to make sure that a good time could be had by complete strangers. All this was done without expectation and with very little drama. It was at one of the last Barefoot Art Guilds that it struck me why the Neighborhood functioned so well. Simply put, we were all interested in having a good time, and what was the unsaid truth is that we had a better time together than apart. So, by giving of what little we had to a common cause that would gather friends we could have a better time.

Seems simple enough. Give to your friends for the sake of fun. Don't be selfish with your resources and try to benefit those around you. The concept of the Neighborhood was all these things...but it was also more than that. It was a desire to be larger then our parts. We were becoming a force in College Station because there were many of us all contributing, watching out for one another and working for a greater good. Barefoot Art was just one of the many facets that the Neighborhood gave and in the future I will write more as to exactly what it was and maybe produce a timeline.

But more to the point I realized how this idea has leaked into my professional life here at Fermilab, and it is a good thing. I work with an amazing adviser (Prof. Dave Toback) and two other graduate students (Eunsin Lee and Adam Aurisano) on Supersymmetry searches at CDF. We do our work for the most part without a post-doc, and without our adviser being on site. Moreover, we all have wives or girlfriends, and Eunsin and Dave have kids. We have outside interests and responsibilities, however we are leading the way in photon searches and I see our institution as a leader on CDF.

 How is this possible? Simply, we give to one another, we support each others research, we give to each others lives. I wouldn't say that we are necessarily best of friends, but most of us in the Neighborhood weren't that way either. Instead we see that we are better when we give to each other and build something bigger than the individual. We support each other without ego or selfishness, and very little drama.

This idea, how did the Neighborhood change my life and how do I apply this to the world I am stepping into. Be it in particle physics, rock climbing, social life, moving...or whatever is part of the subject of this blog. The connection between Fermilab and the Neighborhood I hope can be teased out even further in future posts.
 

Life at the lab

So it has been just over a year since I made my journey from the little corner of Texas where the Neighborhood was founded and made my way to Fermilab to finish up my PhD.

I've loved my life and time up here so far and hope that I can share some of the unique experiences I am having right now living at the world's highest energy particle accelerator

I realize, of course, that the Tevatron won't be the world's best for that much longer. With the looming turn-on of the LHC at CERN coming ever closer I am witness to a unique time to be at this lab.

Funny enough when I originally moved up here it was to work on the LHC experiment through a collaboration known as CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid), however with the delay it didn't make any sense to wait around for data while our group had a strong presence on a working experiment right here at Fermilab!

So I made the transition and started working on the BEST EXPERIMENT EVER (I'm paid to say that...but seriously I do love this experiment) So ever since December'ish 2008 I've been working on the Collider Detector @ Fermilab or lovingly called CDF.

This has really been a great transition and I am working on exciting searches on a well run machine with tons of experts and scientists who know how to squeeze every bit of information out of the detector we have.

Since joining I have many great stories and physics things to share and will slowly give all these up during this blog. Most recently I've been on what is known as "Ace Shifts" where you learn how to manage and control the detector for data acquisition quality. In short, I'm the pilot of this amazing experiment. Now it goes without saying that I'm only a link in the chain of many people and many years of work...so I don't want to paint myself as THE expert...just becoming AN expert.

Interestingly, I've gotten to be the Ace during a time where I was able to go down and stand in front of and climb around on this 3 ton 3 story monster of a machine and it was amazing! But that story is probably for another time