Professional Documents
Culture Documents
april 2013
Table of contents
Application: Semiconductors Explain it in 60 seconds: Spin Application: How particle physics improves your life Day in the life: Programmed for success Gallery: Cosmic open house draws curious crowd Breaking: NOvA neutrino detector sees first particles Breaking: BESIII collaboration catches new particle Breaking: OPERA snags third tau neutrino Breaking: Planck reveals new insight into universe Breaking: One step closer to the Higgs boson Breaking: LHCb studies particle tipping the matter-antimatter scales Breaking: Higgs-like particle still looking like the Higgs Signal to background: Astronomers give Dark Energy Camera rave reviews Signal to background: Great minds lauded at physics prize ceremony Signal to background: Meet 63 women in STEM, and counting Signal to background: Research with flair at FameLab 2013 Signal to background: A different spin Signal to background: Linear collider focus gets down to size
Semiconductors
Accelerator-powered ion implantation proves key to advances in integrated circuits.
By Glenn Roberts Jr. Particle accelerators earned an important place on the semiconductor assembly line decades ago, and today their role in silicon wafer manufacturing processes continues to grow in complexity and scope. As a silicon wafer makes its way down the assembly line, it may pass through dozens of particle beams produced by accelerators in a process known as ion implantation. Born out of the national labs, this process embeds fast-moving particles in the wafer at specific locations, depths and concentrations, permanently changing the semiconductor's electrical qualities by selectively creating an abundance of electrons or electron vacancies at specific locations. These electron-rich or electron-depleted areas, in combination with other transistor components affixed to the regions, work like rivers of charge to guide electrons around a semiconductor in precisely controlled ways. Advances in ion implantation have helped manufacturers to pack more transitors into an integrated circuit, revolutionizing computing speed and power and reducing roomsized machines to pocket-sized devices. "Ion implantation is an absolutely necessary technology in the way we build devices, and its use has been growing," says Larry Larson, an engineering professor at Texas State University at San Marcos who previously worked for National Semiconductor, a Silicon Valley-based chip manufacturing firm acquired by Texas Instruments in 2011. "Every time a factory is built, they need some number of ion-implantation machines in the factory, and the number of machines per factory has grown over the years." Today there are an estimated 12,000 ion-implantation accelerators operating worldwide and an average of 300 new ones are purchased each year, with the lion's
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share purchased by the semiconductor industry. To meet manufacturing demands, the implanting processes become incrementally more exacting and elaborate each year, with researchers fine-tuning the number of particle beams a single wafer encounters and the angle at which each beam hits the wafer. The speed of the implantation process is also ramping up to meet manufacturing demand; today, the quickest implanters can process about 300 wafers an hour. Alexander Wu Chao, a professor at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and editor of the journal Reviews of Accelerator Science and Technology, says that ion-implantation accelerators are essential to todaysand tomorrowsadvanced electronics. "They are becoming much more sophisticated and much more precise as required by modern semiconductors," he says. While ion implantation is often used to treat flat semiconductor surfaces, there are also applications that require implantation on the sides of raised, gridded surfaces, which pose far more challenges in achieving uniform doping. Accelerator advances in the semiconductor industry have contributed to the exponential growth of computing technology, Chao continues, saying that he expects "a continuing evolution of accelerator technology to meet the increasing demands in the years to come."
Above: A single silicon wafer, like the one seen here, is typically bombarded with ions of several different elements. Boron, arsenic and phosphorous are among the elements most commonly used in the semiconductor industry.
Spin
Objects as large as a planet or as small as a photon can have the property of spin. Spin is also the reason we can watch movies in 3D.
By Jim Pivarski, Fermilab Spin is the amount of rotation an object has, taking into account its mass and shape. This is also known as an objects angular momentum. All objects have some amount of angular momentum. A spinning coin has a little angular momentum; the moon orbiting the earth has a lot. Like energy, angular momentum is a conserved quantity: The total amount is constant, though it can flow from one object to another. When a spinning figure skater contracts her arms and rotates faster, her angular momentum is unchanged because a narrow object rotating quickly has the same angular momentum as a wide object rotating slowly. Particles, as far as we know, are infinitesimal points of zero size. Yet they have measurable amounts of angular momentum. Does the concept of rotation even make sense for a featureless speck? Angular momentum seems to be a more foundational concept than rotation itself. The angular momentum, or spin, of a single particle is restricted in strange ways. It can have only an certain values, and not all values are allowed for all particles. Electrons and quarks (particles of matter) can have a spin of 1/2 or +1/2; photons (particles of light) can have a spin of 1 or +1; and Higgs bosons must have a spin of 0. Though particle spins are tiny, they have an impact on our everyday world. The spin property of photons allows us to create 3D movies. A movie theater simultaneously projects two images, one with positive-spin photons and the other with negative-spin photons. One side of a pair of 3D glasses filters out the positive-spin photons, and the other filters out the negative-spin photons. We therefore see one image with each eye. Our brains combine them to create the illusion of depth. It is a fortunate accident of biology that humans have as many eyes as photons have
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spin states.
Diapers Using particle accelerators, chemists were able for the first time to see the detailed wet structure of the superabsorbent polymer material used in diapers. That enabled them to adjust and improve the formula for the superabsorbent polymers until they had the perfect materialthe one thats used in all modern-day diapers.
Shrink wrap If you buy a Butterball turkey, you have particle accelerators to thank for its freshness. For decades now the food industry has used particle accelerators to produce the sturdy, heat-shrinkable film that Butterball turkeysas well as fruits and vegetables, baked goods, board games and DVDscome wrapped in.
Cargo scanning More than 2 billion tons of cargo pass through ports and waterways annually in the United States. Many ports are now turning to high-energy X-rays generated by particle accelerators to identify contraband and keep ports safe. These X-rays penetrate deeper and give screeners more detail about the nature of the cargo.
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MRI The life-saving medical technology known as Magnetic Resonance Imaging makes detailed images of soft tissue in the body. Unlike X-rays, MRIs can distinguish gray matter from white matter in the brain, cancerous tissue from noncancerous tissue, and muscles from organs, as well as reveal blood flow and signs of stroke. Key aspects of this important technology emerged from particle physics research.
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Workforce development Many of the people trained in particle physics move on to jobs in industry, medicine, computing or other fields where their skills are in high demand. You might find an expert on particle detectors exploring for oil or an accelerator scientist working on cancer treatments.
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Heart valves Physicists are improving the safety of artificial heart valves by designing a new material bombarded with silver ions from a particle accelerator. The treated surface of the material keeps the body from identifying the valve as an invader and surrounding it with potentially dangerous extra tissue.
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Intense light for research Circular particle accelerators bend the paths of speeding electrons, causing the electrons to emit light. This light is a powerful research tool with many applications. Dedicated synchrotron accelerators known as light sources allow scientists to control the intensity and wavelength of light for research thats led to better batteries, greener energy, new high-performance materials, more effective drug treatments and a deeper understanding of nature.
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Grid computing The World Wide Web isnt the only computing advancement to come out of particle physics. To deal with the computing demands of the LHC experiments, particle physicists have created the world's largest Grid computing system, spanning more than 100 institutions in 36 countries and pushing the boundaries of global networking and distributed computing.
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Furniture finish For a quarter of a century, companies around the world used beams of electrons from particle accelerators to make scratch- and stain-resistant furniture. The surfaces of these treated desks, shelves and tables look like wood but are nearly impossible to scuff.
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Fellow Rochester and E706 grad student Nikos Varelas became a close friend, and the two still meet often to discuss physics news and life. The experience John had in high-energy physics provided a very good background to bridge the gap between statistical methodology, application development and analysis of business needs, says Varelas, now a physics professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. And although he left physics 18 years ago, he is still keeping up with the developments and discoveries in the field. Mansour scans articles on preprint and science sites and reads books to stay current, but claims, My physics is a bit rusty; Nikos shows a lot of patience. Nonetheless, Mansour says that he continues to draw on many of the skills he developed during his physics training. The switch to Nielsen in 1995, for example, required knowledge of Fortran, C and multivariate regressionso I was a good fit, he says. Its been a happy match for Nielsen and Mansour. Today, Mansour says, a good understanding of the math and programming helps bring ideas generated in our group to production. In addition, the ability to analyze and solve problems is huge. His group helps clients enhance their marketing and promotion strategies, which in turn can benefit consumers with better prices. The group also does pro bono projects; recently, they helped a nonprofit agency more efficiently distribute food where it was most needed. Like his clients, Mansours colleagues welcome his physics-based capabilitiesas well as his views on topics like the Higgs boson. John approaches his job as a scientist, leveraging methods from many scientific fields, says Mitch Kriss, a Nielsen senior vice president of research and development. I have not found an analytical business problem that he was unable to solve.
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gravitational lensing (including a "lens yourself" version of a photo booth), and the taxonomy of galaxies. Guests could take advantage of the sunny spring weather to peer through solar telescopes set up on the lawn. Sadly, it was a "boring day for the Sun," as one of the KIPAC postdocs on duty admitted, with only a few prominences and a lone sun spot visible. They could also learn more about what the telescopes couldn't tell them at the exhibit showcasing the Solar Dynamics Observatory, a project with significant KIPAC involvement. One booth, "The Physics of Star Trek," seemed particularly popular with the older crowd. Stubborn baby boomers argued for the feasibility of warp drives and transporters and made their preferences for time travel quite clear. But even though KIPAC studies physics, not fiction, they still packed their party with a sense of wonder. Really, the only thing missing was the cake.
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Later this year, Fermilab, outside of Chicago, will start sending a beam of neutrinos 500 miles through the earth to the NOvA detector near the Canadian border. When a neutrino interacts in the NOvA detector, the particles it produces leave trails of light in their wake. The detector records these streams of light, enabling physicists to identify the original neutrino and measure the amount of energy it had. When cosmic rays pass through the NOvA detector, they leave straight tracks and deposit well-known amounts of energy. They are great for calibration, says Mat Muether, a Fermilab post-doctoral researcher who has been working on the detector. Everybody loves cosmic rays for this reason, Muether says. They are simple and abundant and a perfect tool for tuning up a new detector. The detector at its current size catches more than 1000 cosmic rays per second. Naturally occurring neutrinos from cosmic rays, supernovae and the sun stream through the detector at the same time. But the flood of more visible cosmic-ray data makes it difficult to pick them out. Once the Fermilab neutrino beam starts, the NOvA detector will take data every 1.3 seconds to synchronize with the Fermilab accelerator. Inside this short time window, the burst of neutrinos from Fermilab will be much easier to spot.
This 3D image shows a cosmic-ray muon producing a large shower of energy as it passes through the NOvA detector in Minnesota. Courtesy of: NOvA collaboration Fermilab released a version of this text as a press release.
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"We are very excited about this," says Yifang Wang, director of the Institute of High Energy Physics at Beijing, in a press release issued by the institute. "With our Beijing collider, we can accumulate a lot more data that will permit more comprehensive investigations of the nature of this unusual, electrically charged charmonium state. When all of these results are used as inputs to theory, we may begin to open the door toward a fuller understanding of the XYZ particles discovered in recent years."
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This Planck map shows the oldest light in our universe, revealing what the universe looked like 13.8 billion years ago. Courtesy of: ESA and Planck Collaboration The map reveals that dark matter makes up about 26.8 percent of our universe, an increase from the previously measured 24 percent, while normal matter makes up 4.9 percent rather than 4.6 percent. The results also indicate that dark energy makes up 68.3 percent of the universe rather than the 71.4 percent previously estimated. The Planck data also reveals that the universe is 13.8 billion years old and is expanding at about 67.15 kilometers per second per megaparsec. (A megaparsec is about 3 million light-years.) This makes the universe 100 million years older than previously thought and reveals that its rate of expansion is less than previously determined by data from space telescopes. In addition, the map suggests an apparently random distribution of matter across the universe, suggesting that when the universe expanded at great speed in the inflationary epoch, random processes ruled the day. This discounts some of the more complex theories describing inflation and gives credence to the simpler ones. Although the big picture from Planck agrees well with our cosmological models, the level of detail is astounding, says Marc Kamionkowski, a professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved in the research. Theorists throughout physics and cosmology will be kept awake at night for quite some time thinking about this. Planck continues to view the sky today; the missions complete results will be released in 2014. These full results are expected to have implications on additional areas of particle physics and cosmology, including the number of neutrino species in the universe. Stay tuned!
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precisely predicted how often a Higgs will decay into different combinations of other particles. In todays update, scientists showed that, with more data and updated analysis, the particle they discovered is continuing to follow predicted decay patterns. "This particle is remarkably consistent with the Standard Model Higgs boson," says Andrew Whitbeck, the doctoral student at Johns Hopkins University who presented the CMS experiments measurements. "There are still large error margins, but everything is lining up for the Standard Model. It's pretty spectacular." Only timeand more datawill tell whether the physicists have really found the Higgs they were looking for.
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Physicists are looking beyond the Standard Model for another source of CP violation that gave rise to galaxies, stars, planets and, eventually, us. Between 1964 and 2012, physicists found that several types of mesonsparticles made up of quarks and antiquarksdecayed into matter more often than antimatter. But one particle seemed different. In 2011, LHCb analysis hinted that the CP violation in D mesons went beyond the amount predicted in the Standard Model, a possible sign of new physics in the works. But in results presented today at the Rencontres de Moriond physics conference in Italy, those hints of new physics have melted away, reinforcing the predictions in the Standard Model of particle physics and leaving us with the mystery of why our universe is made of so much matter. If we look at it as the glass being half empty, we could be disappointed that the hint for something exciting isnt confirmed, says Tim Gershon, LHCb physics coordinator and professor at the University of Warwick. On the other hand, there was a lot of theoretical work suggesting models to explain effects weve seen. New results constrain the models and tell us something about nature.
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affect the angles at which those lighter particles fly. Scientists from the ATLAS and CMS experiments studied a well-understood decay pattern of the Higgs-like particle: into a Z boson and a virtual Z boson, which then decay into two pairs of another type of particles, leptons. By studying the angles at which the decay products move away during this process, scientists can figure out the spin and parity of the particle. If the Higgs-like particle did not have a spin-parity of 0+, it would be something other than the Standard Model Higgs boson. That would be an exciting prospect for physicists who would like a brand new mystery to solve. But, from what scientists have seen so far, the Higgs-like boson is behaving the way the Standard Model Higgs boson is supposed to behave. With further analysis and data from higher-energy collisions, though, the Higgs-like particle will have many more chances to step off its expected path. LHC scientists will continue to give updates to their analyses at the Rencontres de Moriond meeting next week.
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for asteroids while some examined the properties of galaxies. David Silva, Director of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, has been pleased with the cameras ability to tackle a wide range of astronomical problems of pressing interest to US astronomers. After almost a decade of anticipation, it has been extremely gratifying to see the diversity of astronomical research problems being enthusiastically investigated so early in the lifetime of a major new instrument by astronomers from the US and abroad, Silva says. Kelson, who has been with the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena since 2000, is interested in the evolution of galaxies. Specifically, his research probes whether there is something about galaxies themselves, or their environments, that can account for the reduction in new stars over the past 10 billion years. To understand the process, we collected spectra for a couple hundred thousand galaxies over the last several years, he says. We hope to understand how the evolving galaxy environments affect changes in star formation. Kelsons research group targeted three specific areas of the sky, thinking that good optical images had been taken in all three. But two of the fields, he said, had not been photographed in the detail required. So he and five other Carnegie Institution scientists used the Dark Energy Camera in December to take the images they needed. The camera was still in the commissioning phase, in what is called shared risk time. Using a complex piece of machinery during shared risk time, Kelson says, often leads to glitches, crashes and other setbacks as the devices are fine-tuned. But, he says, his time with the Dark Energy Camera was smooth. It was impressive that it worked so well so early, he says. It didnt crash on me once, and it worked beautifully. Anja von der Linden had a similar experience. An astronomer with the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at SLAC and Stanford, von der Linden spent 10 nights with the camera at the end of January and the beginning of February measuring the masses of clusters of galaxies. Von der Linden's team used a technique called weak gravitational lensing, one of the specialties of the Dark Energy Camera. The camera can capture quality images over a large field of view, allowing astronomers to observe many galaxies at once, measuring their distortion due to lensing effects of foreground clusters. The camera has been working great. It is certainly set up to make observing very efficient, she says, praising the cameras auxiliary charged coupled devices, which aid in focusing the telescope, and its on-the-fly image processing, allowing users to quickly estimate the quality of the picture being taken. She noted one of the many tweaks still being made to the camera and the telescope during her time therea new chiller to cool down the mirror during the day, to prevent the slight washing out of the images partially due to temperature changes in the mirror. Von der Lindens team shared observation nights with the Dark Energy Survey, and she says the collaboration members were extremely helpful to her before, during and after her observation time. I have asked many DES members many questions, and they have been extremely
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forthcoming in providing insights, she says. Community time with the Dark Energy Camera is booked through mid-March, when the observation season ends. The Dark Energy Survey will officially begin in September 2013 and will spend 525 nights over the next five years searching for the secrets behind dark energy. And during the other 400 or so nights, when the astrophysics community gets to use the camera for other experiments, who knows what wonders will be discovered?
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experimentally, said Hawking in the computerized voice that has become his own. I never thought my discovery would be confirmed or recognized. He summarized the theory of a no-boundary universe, proposed with fellow theorist James Hartle, which suggests that time didnt exist prior to the big bang. Since then, he said, time has existed, but in an unlimited wayevery timeline of every possibility exists in different branches of the universe. I have a sense of achievement to make these contributions despite having ALS, he said, adding new meaning to the name of his theory: My motto is there are no boundaries. Freeman then introduced the physicists recognized for their contributions at the Large Hadron Collider. Physicists on two experiments, CMS and ATLAS, announced in summer 2012 that they had discovered a new particle that is likely the theorized Higgs boson that physicists had been hunting since 1964. The special award was shared among seven physicists (shown in the slideshow at the bottom of the page):
Lyn Evans, who led the construction of the LHC Peter Jenni, ATLAS spokesperson from 1994 to 2009 Fabiola Gianotti, ATLAS spokesperson from 2009 to early 2013 Michel Della Negra, CMS spokesperson from 1992 to 2006 Tejinder Jim Virdee, CMS spokesperson from 2007 to 2010 Guido Tonelli, CMS spokesperson from 2010 through 2011 Joe Incandela, CMS spokesperson since 2012 Each recipient said the $3 million award and recognition belonged to the thousands of physicists involved in the work. When the time came to reveal the winner of the 2013 Fundamental Physics Prize, Alan Guth, one of the 2012 laureates, took the stage with the unopened envelope. During Hawkings discussion of no-boundary theory, Hawking had referred to wave function collapse, a phenomenon in quantum mechanics in which a superposition of several possible states is narrowed to a single reality after interaction with an observer. Alan, will you please collapse the wave function? Freeman joked. Guth took the opportunity to mention that, according to the no-boundary theory, there exist realities in which every laureate is the winner of the 2013 Fundamental Physics Prize. But the winner in this branch of the universe, he announced, is Alexander Polyakov, a theorist known for his work with field theory and string theory. Concluding the ceremony, Freeman said that the work of fundamental physics is not done. There is more to explore and more to discover. It will be difficult and not always appreciated, but our laureates will not rest on their laurels, Freeman said. As 2012 award-winner Andrei Linde said earlier in the program, I tell students, If you can avoid being a physicist, do it. But its like if youre a poet. You cant stop writing poetry. Itll hurt.
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I'm afraid they will be finished! We didn't have many books at that time, she says, so I'd find one book and do just one problem a day, like eating a cake, you knowyou don't want to be finished. These days, Hafidi has plenty of problems to solve as an experimental physicist at Argonne National Laboratory. There, she studies how quarks and gluons, two fundamental particles, come together to form nucleons and nuclei. The quest for knowledge and discovery excites me, she says. The more we understand, the more we can do. Aliya Merali wholeheartedly agrees. As science educator at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Merali often calls on her training in plasma research, work on the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search, and NASA collaborations that resulted in several microgravity flights aboard the Weightless Wonder (pictured above). In her current role, she coordinates events and activities to encourage students to consider science careers. I believe that our country needs to make the STEM fields more accessible to the youth, she says. A strong stigma exists about the scienceswe often present them to our students through media and society as fields that only the elite few are capable of. Ultimately, I believe that if we change the way we present the sciences to the youth by highlighting the underrepresented and non-stereotypical members of the STEM fields, the social stigma will deteriorate. Read more about Aliya Merali, Kawtar Hafidi, Jana Thayer and 59 other women in STEM on the Department of Energys website.
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how scientists at the Large Hadron Collider search for missing bits of the Standard Model of particle physics. The first-place winner, Divya Ail from the University of Zurich, used humor and props to explain how using Viagra can affect a persons vision. This is a way to foster the interaction between scientists and the public, says Antonella Del Rosso, member of the CERN Communication Group and organizer of this years Swiss FameLab semifinal. They are only given three minutes, so its a challenge. But they are eager to explain their research and how important it is. Contestants for this round of FameLab work at universities or institutions across Switzerland. Participants enchanted and educated their live audience, online spectators and a panel of judges by presenting on issues including how to fight cancer with physics and why birds fly in a V-shaped formation. I think its important to communicate science to the general public, says Nazim Hussain, a contestant and University of Oxford physicist from the LHCb experiment at CERN. People are interested, but they might be intimidated by what they see in the media. Its easy to dismiss something because its complicated. Of the 20 contestants, 10 were selected to go on to the Swiss FameLab Finals in Zurich on May 24. Winners from that round will continue on to the FameLab International Festival in Cheltenham in June.
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A different spin
In physics, spinors are used to plot the spin properties of elementary particles. In Stanford's recreational softball league, it's a whole different story.
By Glenn Roberts Jr. Sporting both physics and physique, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory employees field a slow-pitch, co-ed softball team each year, the Spinors, in a Stanford University recreational league. Although their competitors are a mostly younger bunch of graduate students and staff, the SLAC team likes to think they have physics in their favor. In physics, spinors are used to plot the spin properties of elementary particles. First described by French mathematician lie Joseph Cartan in 1913, spinors have a range of applications in modern physics and mathematics. They also share a pronunciation with spinnersbaseball slang that describes curveballs and sliders, which are pitches thrown with heavy spin on the ball. The teams logo even features two softballs smashing together, with smaller spheres bursting out of the impactpaying homage to the labs particle collider experiments. Softball traditions run deep at SLAC; physics faculty and students engaged in annual softball championship games on the Stanford campus as far back as the 1950s, even before the 1962 groundbreaking for the labs two-mile-long linear accelerator. Since then, an annual softball game remains an unbroken tradition. Team manager Mike Woods, a 21-year Spinors veteran, says that since the Spinors first formed in 1991, the team has evolved to include a representative slice of SLACs workforce: men and women, ranging in age from their 20s to their 80s, who trade hits and runs with teams that are often quite a bit younger. Woods describes the Stanford recreational league as very laissez faire, very socialweve never even had hired umpires. Based on work schedules and availability,
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its common for a different set of players to show up to each game. And although the Spinors havent yet won the league championship, theyll be back again next year for another try.
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researchers have been using it to squeeze down the electrons in the beam into tighter bunches. Packing electrons into smaller bunches helps maximize particle collisions, and maximizing collisionsalong with maximizing the energy of the colliding particlesmaximizes the science. That relationship holds for all colliders. We are very dependent upon novel beam focusing schemes, such as the one we use at ATF2, to get the very small beam spot sizes required to deliver the promised physics, White says. This means ATF2 is a prototype of the final focus for any future linear collider, and not just for the ILC in its current design incarnation as captured by the Technical Design Review, also completed last December. In addition to prototyping the optics for focusing the beam, the ATF2 team needed diagnostic instruments capable of telling them whether or not the optics were working correctly. Old diagnostic instruments arent much good tracking beams smaller than a micrometer in size, White says. So the team assembled a whole new suite of instruments, including making significant improvements to a beam size monitor that made its debut at the Final Focus Test Beam, the ATF2s precursor, at SLAC. Called the interaction point beam size monitor, this equipment uses laser interferometry to measure the diameter of the beam at its most important location: the interaction point where particle bunches collide. But an accelerator is more than its components, and the ATF2 needed to prototype more than the optics to focus the beams and the diagnostic instruments to track them. Two stated goals of the ATF2 project were to prototype the operation of a complex accelerator in an international setting and to educate the next generation of accelerator physicists and operatorswhatever their country of origin. The facility is an international test facility for linear colliders and instrumentation, says White. Its a big global communityanother requirement for any future linear collider. ATF2 met those goals, says White, thanks to a final eight-week push to reach the 70-nanometer spot size. The extra time spent learning the accelerators idiosyncrasies proved vital, especially when an elusive problem with the accelerator blocked further progress near the end of commissioning. We shut down the beam at about 10 p.m. and we basically tore the machine apart, White says. From the most senior physicist to the youngest student, Everyone grabbed a wrench and headed for the accelerator. By three in the morning we had the whole machine laid out on the floor. He smiles. That was a great bit of international collaboration, he says, and one that paid off handsomely. The problem-solvers used what theyd learned in the previous several weeks to rebuild the machine, swapping around parts and testing the resulting electromagnetic fields. When they fired the beam up, lo and behold, the beam stabilized. But achieving the small beam size is just the start. Its a two-stage program here, White says. First we make the small beam size and then we maintain it. In the next few years well learn a lot of valuable information about how the ILC will perform.
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