Thursday - November 2, 2006
SLAC Today is
available online at:
http://today.slac.stanford.edu
In this issue:
Strong Currents Ahead
Science Today: X-Ray Diffraction and the Fight against Heart Disease
Fermi Research Alliance to Manage Fermilab
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Thursday - November 2, 2006 |
PEP-II, showing High-Energy (lower) and Low-Energy (upper) Rings. (Photo Courtesy of Peter Ginter.
Click on image for larger version.) Strong Currents AheadMidway through the four-month shutdown, the PEP-II rings are being primed for strong currents and big luminosity. By the end of the 2007 run, the rings will deliver 70 percent more luminosity to the BaBar experiment than during the record-breaking previous run. To achieve these goals, crews are working to create high luminosity—as many collisions between electrons and positrons as possible. In the aftermath, fascinating and surprising physics emerges. The upgrade plan is taking two routes to ultimately increase luminosity 70 percent: adding more particles to a bunch and compressing particles closer together within a bunch. In the first of three projects, the vacuum systems around the interaction region (where the electron and positron beams collide) are being improved to handle stronger beam currents. More current literally means more electrons (or positrons) in the beam. But when those multitudes of charged particles circle the PEP rings, they emit synchrotron radiation that can damage the vacuum system. Therefore, accelerator engineers are working on better controlling the radiation power hitting the vacuum systems. Read more... |
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 X-Ray Diffraction and
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Fermi Research Alliance to Manage Fermilab
Fermilab has been operated for the Department of Energy by URA since the laboratory's inception in 1967, and scientists at the laboratory have made many crucial discoveries about the fundamental nature of matter and energy. The University of Chicago has managed the DOE's nearby Argonne National Laboratory since Argonne's founding in 1946. The DOE's Office of Science is the nation's major supporter of federally funded research in particle physics, and much of the past century's extraordinary progress in the understanding of the elementary structure of matter comes directly from DOE-funded research. "Fermilab has for decades been the nation's center for research on the frontier of particle physics," said Robert J. Zimmer, President of the University of Chicago and Chairman of the FRA Board of Directors. Read more... |
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Fermi Research Alliance, LLC, a partnership between the University of Chicago and Universities Research Association Inc., has been chosen by the U.S. Department of Energy to operate Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, effective Jan. 1, 2007. The Alliance is a new corporation that was formed in response to the DOE's competition to manage Fermilab and is dedicated solely to the laboratory's management.