A communication resource from the world's particle physics laboratories.
This new magnet reached the highest field strength ever recorded for an accelerator focusing magnet. Designed and built by Fermilab, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, it will be the first niobium-tin quadrupole magnet ever to operate in a particle accelerator — in this case, the future High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Photo: Dan Cheng, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
In a multiyear effort involving three national laboratories from across the United States, researchers have successfully built and tested a powerful new magnet based on an advanced superconducting material. The eight-ton device — about as long as a semi-truck trailer — set a record for the highest field strength ever recorded for an accelerator focusing magnet and raises the standard for magnets operating in high-energy particle colliders.
Inner vertex components of the STAR detector at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (righthand view) allow scientists to trace tracks from triplets of decay particles picked up in the detector's outer regions (left) to their origin in a rare "antihypertriton" particle that decays just outside the collision zone. Measurements of the momentum and known mass of the decay products (a pi+ meson, antiproton, and antideuteron) can then be used to calculate the mass and binding energy of the parent particle. Doing the same for the hypertriton (which decays into different "daughter" particles) allows precision comparisons of these matter and antimatter varieties.
New results from precision particle detectors at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) offer a fresh glimpse of the particle interactions that take place in the cores of neutron stars and give nuclear physicists a new way to search for violations of fundamental symmetries in the universe.
ICFA was encouraged by the reports from Mr. H. Masuko, Deputy-Director General, MEXT Research Promotion Bureau and Hon. T. Kawamura, Chairperson of the Federation of Diet Members for the ILC, at the ICFA meeting held at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford, USA, on the 20th February 2020.
-- Symmetry Magazine, Kathryn Jepsen
This year, October 31 was more than just Halloween. It was also the first global celebration of Dark Matter Day. In 25 countries, 11 US states and online, people interacted with scientists, watched demonstrations, viewed films, took in art exhibits and toured laboratories to learn about the ongoing search for dark matter.
Symmetry has collected a series of photos from participants around the world. Check out how people celebrated Dark Matter Day and download a commemorative dark matter poster (to be printed using visible matter).
This report distills the findings of a series of international peer reviews of the communications and outreach functions of large-scale multidisciplinary science laboratories around the world.