Next-generation accelerators, neutrino research get boost with new test beam

January 27, 2010 | 9:53 am

Accelerator operator Salah Chaurize performs a diagnostic test on the RFQ at Fermilab. Courtesy Fermilab.

Fermilab has taken a major step toward laying the technical groundwork for Project X by creating a new test beam for superconducting radiofrequency cavities and components.

Earlier this month, the High Intensity Neutrino Source (HINS) collaboration successfully accelerated a proton beam to 2.5 MeV in a radiofrequency quadrupole accelerator, or RFQ, for the first time at Fermilab.

“This will provide a beam platform to facilitate development of components critical for Project X,” says Bob Webber, APC/HINS department head.

The 10-foot-long RFQ serves as the driving force of a proton linac in the Meson Detector Building. It will enable collaborators to test the ground-breaking application of superconducting radiofrequency (SRF) cavities for the acceleration of a high-intensity proton beam from very low energies.

Gary Lauten, a radiation safety officer, observes while Bob Webber, APC/HINS Department head, and Bruce Hanna, engineering physicist, inspect the RFQ beamline at Fermilab. Courtesy Fermilab.

“On the first attempt the RFQ achieved the design acceleration,” says Giorgio Apollinari, head of Fermilab’s Technical Division. “This type of  technical achievement is the groundwork that will support Fermilab’s research in the second decade of this century.”

The RFQ uses strong electrical fields to accelerate ionized hydrogen into a low-energy proton beam. That beam will then accelerate through 18 copper, room-temperature cavities up to a minimum energy compatible with the superconducting cavities that make up the remainder of the linac. The SRF cavities use stored radiofrequency energy to accelerate particles as they pass.

In February 2009, the HINS collaboration successfully tested the first 325-MHz single-spoke resonator SRF cavity. Collaborators expect to become the first in the world to accelerate beam through this type of cavity using the RFQ as a power source.  This would lay the ground work for stringing many cavities together to create a unique linear accelerator for discovery at the intensity frontier.

This new use of SRF technology enables efficient production of the intense proton beam that will give Project X its versatility as a front end for a muon collider or a neutrino factory. SRF cavities can effectively increase the particle beam energy while minimizing the required electrical power by all but eliminating electrical resistance.

Collaborators from Fermilab and Argonne national laboratories designed the RFQ system to meet anticipated Project X physics needs in early 2006. AccSys Technology Inc., a private manufacturing firm, supplied the mechanical design and fabrication work.

Jim Steimel, engineer, inspects the RFQ beam absorber. Courtesy Fermilab.

“It’s not like there is only one small piece of the lab working on this,” Webber says. “It is the result a great deal of effort from the Technical Division, the Accelerator Division and the Accelerator Physics Center.”

 Along with testing SRF cavities, the RFQ will provide beam to test other components of Project X, including beam diagnostic equipment and the beam chopper that determines the time structure within the beam pulses.

The HINS R&D program comprises contributions from Fermilab, Argonne, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory and the Oak Ridge Spallation Neutron Source.

For the test linac, Berkeley provided two of the non-superconducting cavities and Brookhaven devised prototype beam instrumentation.

Tona Kunz

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This month at the LHC

January 22, 2010 | 4:49 pm

Late last year the Large Hadron Collider collided its first protons at a record-breaking energies. On December 16, the collider shut down so  teams could prepare the machine to run at even higher energies in 2010. So what are the scientists, engineers and technicians at CERN doing during this approximately two-month-long “technical stop?”

The goal of the many activities taking place during the technical stop is to prepare the LHC to accelerate beams to an energy of 3.5 TeV. The three main tasks are replacement of about 4000 connectors in the quench detection system; testing components of the new quench protection system to bring it to full functionality; and maintenance for the CMS experiment.

The LHC’s superconducting magnets are kept at the very low temperature of 1.9 K in order to carry the high currents needed to bend fast-moving particles. At a beam energy of 3.5 TeV, 6000 amps of current will flow through the LHC’s main bending magnets, the dipoles. A quench occurs when part of the superconducting cable within a magnet heats up and can no longer conduct electricity without resistance.  The first line of defense against quenches is detection using a complex electronics system that monitors the magnets and surrounding technology.

One main task for the technical stop is the replacement of some connectors in the new quench detection system’s 250 km of high-voltage cable. The connectors, initially installed in 2009, are being replaced after it was discovered that they were easily damaged if cables were bent.

Once a quench is detected, the stored energy must be safely channeled away from the magnet. The new quench protection system, installed in November, includes about 10,000 new cables designed to de-energize specific sectors of the LHC in the event of quenching. The updated system also incorporates better programming and electronics to detect quenches. The software and equipment for this system are being tested during this technical stop to ensure that everything is functioning properly for this year’s maximum beam energies.

The last main task for the current stop is to replace 272 corroding portions within the CMS detector’s yoke endcaps that were causing the detector’s water cooling lines to fail.

The technical stop should be completed by mid-February, and beam is expected back in the LHC shortly afterward.

For more details, read the articles in the CERN Bulletin or CMS Times, or watch today’s episode of LHC News, which focuses on the quench protection system.

by Daisy Yuhas

Symmetry Intern

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Strongly interacting dark matter ruled out by observations

January 22, 2010 | 9:30 am

The possibility that dark matter could be made of heavy, strongly interacting particles has been ruled out by neutrino observations at the IceCube detector, according to physicists Ivone Albuquerque of Fermilab and Universidade de São Paulo and Carlos Pérez de los Heros of Uppsala University.

Although the majority of physicists favor models of dark matter that only rely on weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs, some theoretical models allow for strongly interacting massive particles, or SIMPs. Massive versions of each of these particles are whimsically referred to as wimpzillas or simpzillas.

Prior to this study, this plot represents the excluded types of simpzilla based on mass and interaction strength. The colored regions are all excluded by experiment with just the white triangles remaining as possible types of SIMPs.

Like the other plot, this shows the SIMP types ruled out but with new data added. It cuts out the white triangles, leaving only a patch in the lower right, which does not correspond to any favored theories as the dark matter would be too massive.

During recent years, a range of underground and space-borne experiments have ruled out various combinations of interaction strengths and masses for dark matter particles, but there had always been a few openings left for particles of just the right combinations of interaction strength and mass.

If simpzillas did exist, they would become captured by the gravity of massive objects such as the Sun. Then they would bump into each other, lose energy, and accumulate near the center of the Sun where they would annihilate, giving off neutrinos. Those extra neutrinos should be detectable by a neutrino telescope such as IceCube in Antarctica. Using data collected from 22 strings of IceCube’s optical modules, a fraction of the 80 strings that make up the entire detector, the physicists determined there was no excess of neutrinos coming from the Sun with enough confidence to rule out the existence of simpzillas.

The paper concludes, “…strongly interacting heavy relics from the early universe can only account for the dark matter if they have masses above 10¹⁵ GeV. As these ultra heavy masses are not currently favored by any model, the window for simpzillas as the only component of dark matter can be closed.”

David Harris

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Fermilab seeks new associate director, Steve Holmes focuses on Project X

January 22, 2010 | 6:26 am

The increasing momentum behind the proposed Project X accelerator facility has swept Steve Holmes into a new position at Fermilab and put in motion the search for a new associate director.

Holmes is beginning the transition out of the post of associate laboratory director for accelerators, which he has held for the past decade, so that he can focus solely on Project X. He has been acting project manager for Project X since August 2008, but could rarely dedicate more than 15 percent of his time to the development effort of the high-intensity proton facility.

Steve Holmes

“I’ve been here a long time and frankly, the lab could probably benefit from new blood in this office,” Holmes said. “I would like to dedicate myself full time to Project X. I think that is the most important thing I can do for the lab right now.”

To the Project X team he brings project management experience shepherding the Main Injector to completion. He has had a strong role in the evolution of Project X since its 2004 inception and has put together a strong team, including outside collaborators. During the past year, the team has generated two initial configuration options and cost estimates, as well as initial concepts of how Project X would further a future muon collider. He is hopeful the project will receive the first stage of DOE approval, Critical Decision-0, by the end of FY2010.

“I don’t think the US can have a world-leading, sustainable, competitive particle physics program based solely on overseas accelerators,” Holmes said. “When we build Project X, it will form the basis of a world-leading program for 30 years.”

Holmes will handle the day-to-day work of Project X, including guiding it through the DOE requirements for approval and construction.

“Project X would be an extraordinary machine at the intensity frontier for neutrino, kaon, muon and nuclear physics,” said Fermilab Director Pier Oddone. “It would develop the technologies to support a future global facility at the energy frontier. We are fortunate that Steve will lead Project X on the path forward. He has experience in leading large accelerator projects successfully, and he has repeatedly proven his ability to build collaborations and large-scale projects.”

Holmes will work closely with his replacement, who will hold management and oversight responsibilities for all Fermilab accelerator operations, accelerator science and technology R&D, and construction support for new accelerator facilities. In addition his replacement will serve as line manager for the Accelerator Division, Technical Division and Accelerator Physics Center.

Located 45 miles west of Chicago, Fermilab’s particle accelerator complex provides beam to particle physics experiments, test facilities and a cancer treatment center. The proposed Project X would replace the 40-year-old linear accelerator and booster ring.

The associate director for accelerators plays a central role in developing and implementing the strategy for future development of the accelerator complex at Fermilab and aligning this strategy within an international context.  

“My replacement will be responsible for assuring there is a coherent vision for the accelerator complex into the future and that the R&D to support that vision is effectively organized and executed,” Holmes said. “The job is to figure out how to build on the base we expect to establish over the next decade: the Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment, Mu2e and Project X.” Long range opportunities are expected to include a muon collider, the ILC (organized in collaboration with the ILC program director), US contributions to upgrades of the LHC, and other options that might open up via the advanced accelerator R&D program.

“Fermilab has a vibrant and flexible plan to keep the laboratory and US particle physics on the pathway to discovery,” Oddone said. “The next associate director of accelerators at Fermilab will lead the accelerator development that is critical to research at the energy and intensity frontiers.”

The search committee includes: Maury Tigner of Cornell  University (chair); Young-Kee Kim, Fermilab’s deputy director (deputy chair);  Roland Garoby, of CERN;  Helen Edwards, Roger Dixon, David Harding and Sergei Nagaitsev, all of Fermilab.

The committee welcomes applications from and nominations of qualified candidates from around the world. The detailed job description of the ALDA position has been posted on the Fermilab employment pages.

Tona Kunz

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PHENIX rises: A detector gets a new life

January 21, 2010 | 6:14 am

Fermilab's Bert Gonzalez handles silicon detector components at the lab's silicon detector facility. Photo: Fermilab

For the first time, Fermilab technicians have completed design work for a 4000-ton particle detector over the phone.

“The benefit of our past experience allowed us to design through conference calls,” said Bert Gonzales, Fermilab technical supervisor on the design project. “This is a new endeavor. We’ve never assembled a project in this fashion. Usually we’ve had everything in-house.”

Scientists in the PHENIX collaboration at Brookhaven National Laboratory have enlisted the expertise of a group of technicians at Fermilab’s SiDet facility in upgrading their particle detector, originally constructed in 2000.

Technicians at SiDet, which is short for silicon detector, have in the past built components that track particles in the hearts of the CDF and DZero detectors at Fermilab’s Tevatron. The technicians also contributed a large number of components for the CMS silicon detector at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.

Originally Brookhaven planned to build new parts at academic institutions, said Columbia University physicist Dave Winter, who coordinates between Brookhaven and Fermilab in a portion of the design and production effort. But they were impressed by the extensive related experience technicians had at SiDet.

“Once we saw what was already at Fermilab, it was a no-brainer,” Winter said. “We’d be crazy to do it ourselves.”

The Pioneering High Energy Nuclear Interaction Experiment, or PHENIX, detector combs through the subatomic chaos produced by collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, or RHIC. Scientists at RHIC crash protons, gold nuclei, and the nuclei of a hydrogen isotope called deuterium together in an effort to recreate the conditions of the early universe.

PHENIX collaboration members meeting at Brookhaven in May 2008. Photo: Brookhaven National Laboratory

Brookhaven scientists have collected evidence that the RHIC has created quark-gluon plasma, a state of matter in which quarks float unbound from one another. Scientists theorize that quarks behaved this way in the split second after the big bang.

They hope that by upgrading the PHENIX detector, they can better measure the number of beauty and charm quarks created in collisions. Fermilab scientists will design additional components that will extend the detector closer to the beam, zooming in on the collision point. Quark-gluon plasma tends to suppress the particles into which quarks decay. So in order to find out whether a particle collision created quarks, scientists must look for those particles as close to the collision point as possible.

Fermilab technicians will begin production of parts for the PHENIX detector this month. Engineers in Fermilab’s Particle Physics Department are also designing, producing, and testing the readout chips needed for the upgrade.

Fermilab’s involvement goes deeper than doing work-for-hire, said Fermilab scientist Hogan Nguyen. “We feel as though we are part of the project; we want it to be successful.”

Kathryn Grim

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US flexes its developing SRF muscles

January 19, 2010 | 4:54 am

Horizontal test stand at Fermilab. Courtesy of Fermilab.

US researchers recently proved their ability to process and test world-class superconducting radiofrequency, SRF, cavities.

In preparing two dressed, high-gradient nine-cell ILC-type cavities for use in the S1-global effort, a prototype at KEK of the International Linear Collider main linac, researchers had to climb multiple technical hurdles.

SRF cavities enable accelerators to increase particle beam energy levels while minimizing the use of electrical power by all but eliminating electrical resistance. Future experiments into the origins of the universe and nature of matter, including the proposed ILC and Project X, both of which Fermilab would like to host, will require advanced SRF technology.

The shipped cavities show the US is well on its way to meeting those technology needs.

The processing and assembly of the cavities depended heavily on the contribution of scientists and engineers across the globe, including at Argonne National Laboratory, Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Cornell University, INFN and DESY.

AES004 cavity during tuner test. Courtesy of Fermilab.

Initial testing of the cavities involved dipping them in liquid helium andsupplying a low-power RF source. Cavities that reached the needed accelerating field got sealed into a helium vessel and outfitted, or dressed, with auxiliary components necessary for high-power operation in an accelerator. These components include input couplers to feed RF power into the cavity and tuners to adjust the cavity’s resonant frequency.

The first cavity, dubbed AES004, was fabricated by Advanced Energy Systems in New Jersey and is the first dressed cavity assembled and tested at Fermilab. The fact that the cavity’s power gradient did not degrade between the processing steps shows that the US can operate world-class SCRF cavity facilities. Jefferson National Laboratory oversaw the chemical processing of the cavity, including etching and baking; Fermilab welded the helium tank and connection components onto the cavity, and then Argonne National Laboratory conducted high-pressure rinses to eliminate microscopic dust particles inside the cavity.

ACC011 cavity during helium vessel welding. Courtesy of Fermilab.

The second cavity, dubbed ACCO11, was fabricated by a German manufacturer but is the first cavity fully prepared—dressed and chemically tested – in the US to operate above 30 megavolts per meter, or MV/M. The cavity will be able to accelerate particles to 33 MV/M, exceeding the ILC’s design gradient of 31.5 MV/M. The AES004 cavity successfully passed a horizontal test with a gradient of 28 MV/M, similar to the best vertical test of this cavity type.

Because of a time crunch to get the cavities to Japan, Fermilab essentially combined quality testing steps and for the first time put a dressed cavity through vertical testing. The successful test opens the door to quicker turnaround of cavities, though with some limitations.

This pair of successful tests of two dressed ILC-type cavities with Blade tuners demonstrates the viability of the US as a provider of finished cavities for international research projects, says Tug Arkan, Fermilab project engineer for the cryomodule assembly facilities group.

Tona Kunz

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US particle accelerator feels Haiti earthquake

January 15, 2010 | 2:23 pm

This screen image from the Tevatron main control room shows how the earthquake in Haiti affects superconducting quadrupole magnets in the accelerator tunnel during a one-hour period. The green line shows forward and backward pitch of a magnet near the CDF detector, while the blue line shows the side-to-side roll of a magnet near the DZero detector. The abort gap line shows much less than 1 percent of the beam jiggled out of alignment in one monitoring area. None of the movements would be visible with the naked eye.

Minutes after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake in Haiti on Tuesday started shaking whole blocks of Port-au-Prince  into dust, physicists hundreds of miles away in Illinois knew something terrible had occurred.

The crew operating the particle beam for the Fermilab Tevatron, the world’s highest-energy proton-antiproton collider, hadn’t yet seen  images of the toppled buildings; that would come later on the television news. But  the squiggles on their computer screens spoke of devastation.

They had seen squiggles like these before–during a 2007 quake in Mexico, a 2006 quake in New Zealand, and earthquakes that triggered deadly tsunamis in Sumatra in 2005 and Indonesia in 2004.

The readings came from sensors on underground magnets that steer particles around the four-mile Tevatron ring. They record vibrations too tiny for people at the laboratory to feel, including seismic waves from distant earthquakes. Big  spikes usually mean big trouble somewhere in the world.

A December symmetry magazine article explains how physicists first noticed the Tevatron’s super sensitivity, and how they work to make sure it doesn’t  interrupt the laboratory’s multi-million-dollar research efforts.

… The Tevatron has recorded about 20 more earthquakes from all over the globe, including this year’s deadly shocks in Sumatra and Samoa. Only one, a moderate local quake on June 28, 2004, shut the collider down. The tiltmeter recordings look a lot like seismogram squiggles—which makes sense, says US Geological Survey seismologist William Ellsworth, because these sensors are essentially low-resolution seismometers.

The Haiti quake didn’t disrupt  the Tevatron beams, though it almost reached the level at which the lab’s two particle detector teams would consider shutting off part of  their three-story machines to avoid potential damage. Quakes can jiggle small numbers of particles–less than 1 percent of the beam–out of alignment, as shown in the “abort gap” section of the graphic.

The earthquake’s human toll is estimated at 50,000 dead and three million injured or homeless. CNN.com reports on the need for money to help victims and provides information about several of the not-for-profit charities. Physics Today describes the “perfect storm” that made the quake so deadly.

Tona Kunz

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Easy listening and learning with Deep Science podcasts

January 15, 2010 | 6:00 am

Check out this nice selection of physics podcasts taken from public outreach talks organized by Sanford Laboratory on the science that could occur in the Homestake Mine in South Dakota. Here is the current selection of talks:

• Microbiologist T.C. Onstott of Princeton University talks about how scientists hope to study extreme forms of life in Dark Life for Everyone.
• UC Berkeley physicist Hitoshi Murayama explains theories about the origin of the universe in Cosmology for Everyone.
• UC Davis physicist Bob Svoboda explains how the LUX experiment, 4850 feet underground at the Sanford Laboratory at Homestake, will search for a mysterious substance called “dark matter” in Dark Matter for Everyone.

Svoboda was recently elected co-spokesperson for another high-energy physics experiment that could take place in the mine, the Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment.

Tona Kunz

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Ground-breaking neutrino R&D gets government boost

January 14, 2010 | 4:47 am

How the LBNE would fit into the Fermilab accelerator complex. Courtesy Fermilab.

Work toward the world’s most intense long-distance neutrino beam received key government approval last week, invigorating US and global collaborators.

The Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment passed the first Department of Energy approval stage Friday, Jan. 8, when it received Critical Decision-0. This designation cements the DOE’s support for the need and physics goals of the experiment. In a field where researchers work on multiple projects at once, the designation also helps laboratories prioritize efforts.

“The fact that we have CD-0 motivates scientists and engineers to give this project a larger fraction of their time, optimize efforts and make faster progress,” says Vaia Papadimitriou, project manager for the Fermilab Neutrino Beam Facility.

LBNE will use the Main Injector accelerator at Fermilab to produce protons that collide with a fixed target to generate a beam of muon neutrinos. This neutrino beam will strike a small detector on the Fermilab site and then travel more than 620 miles to strike an underground detector more than 10 times the size of the largest LHC detector.

Three caverns, each as tall as a 20-story building and located deep underground, are necessary to build a 300-kiloton Water Cerenkov detector. Scientists are also advancing the R&D for liquid-argon detectors, which would be smaller but more difficult to build. Courtesy DUSEL

The experiment could help explain the matter/antimatter asymmetry we see in the universe today and determine the ordering of the three light-neutrino masses.

Physicists and engineers have made substantial R&D design progress already toward this cutting-edge, one-of-a-kind experiment. LBNE will create the world’s most intense neutrino beam. The beam will start at 700 kilowatts of power, close to double the power of the  NuMI beam.  Scientists can upgrade the LBNE beam’s power in the future to increase the intensity and quicken the pace to discovery.

The mammoth far detector, which may sit in the proposed DUSEL facility in the Homestake Mine in South Dakota, will test liquid particle detection capability at a volume never before attempted. Collaborators continue to investigate which detector option to pursue: water Cerenkov technology like that used at Super-Kamiokande in Japan, or a less-developed technology known as a liquid-argon time projection chamber, which is planned for Fermilab’s MicroBooNE experiment.

On the accelerator side of the experiment, collaborators continue to work toward optimizing the design.  Several engineers and scientists from Facilities Engineering Services Section, Technical, Accelerator and Particle Physics divisions and the Accelerator Physics Center have joined in to help design civil structures, magnets, targets, horns, absorbers, and many other technical components.

The design of a high-power target is a particularly challenging task. Fermilab staff is performing this R&D work with the help of IHEP in Russia, Brookhaven and Argonne national laboratories, and Rutherford Appleton Laboratory  in the United Kingdom. For example, about a half a dozen possible target materials will be studied at the Brookhaven Linac Isotope Producer, or BLIP, facility.

Ground coring of Fermilab’s site is expected to finish by mid-January. Scientists expect the coring report due in mid-February to validate assumptions about soil and rock quality and ground-water conditions. This information will advance the civil construction conceptual design.

How to make neutrinos with a fixed target. Courtesy Fermilab.

Preliminary design on-site work plans include constructing a new 1900-foot-long primary beamline off the current NuMI line, installing a fixed target, digging a particle decay tunnel 820 feet long and 13 feet in diameter and placing a small detector underground on the Fermilab site near Kirk Road. In total, that will require the excavation of about 60,000 cubic yards of rock and the movement of 40,000 cubic yards of earth.

By March collaborators expect an optimized neutrino beamline configuration, and by May the civil construction conceptual design.

Tona Kunz

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People in physics: Joe Incandela, new deputy spokesperson for CMS

January 13, 2010 | 5:40 am

Joe Incandela has begun his term as a Deputy Spokesperson of CMS.

Joe Incandela of the University of California, Santa Barbara has begun his term as one of two deputy spokespeople for the CMS experiment collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider.  Incandela and his fellow deputy spokesperson Albert De Roeck of CERN were appointed in July 2009 by new CMS spokesperson, Guido Tonelli.

Tonelli appointed De Roeck and Incandela, exotica group convener and deputy physics coordinator respectively, to their two year posts in a break with recent tradition. In the past, one deputy has been involved with activities closer to the hardware of the detector and the other with activities that are closer to physics. Tonelli appointed two deputies from physics in recognition of the major transition underway from commissioning hardware to data-taking and first physics with LHC collisions.

“To be deputy spokespersons at this time is a great privilege because we are in front row seats at a historical event. I’m very honored to be in this position,” explains Incandela.

In addition to diplomatic and administrative duties like guiding visitors and coordinating with funding agencies, De Roeck and Incandela need to follow the progress of many areas of the CMS experiment with emphasis on the chain of events from data-taking to final results. The two have divided up various aspects of the CMS program in order to follow things in greater detail but they plan to stay in close contact so that both are always on top of the main issues.

“I would say that the biggest and hardest part about this job is that there’s a huge amount of information that you have to track. There’s a huge amount of reading and often you’re just keeping up with everything,” observes Incandela.

Among new responsibilities, Incandela is especially excited about the new cross-coordination meetings in CMS that he will co-chair with De Roeck. De Roeck and Incandela believe that these meetings will assist CMS top coordinators in their planning, particularly where their goals impact other coordination areas.

“Coordinators often need to know from other coordinators if it is okay to go ahead with some new task or change an existing task, but they do not have an opportunity to come together at one time to understand the implications and to schedule the work. Having the deputy spokespeople chair these meetings should help,” explains Incandela. “It will be a lot more efficient this way and will allow us all to get synchronized with each other.”

Though the position will have its challenges, Incandela feels his experiences over the past three years as deputy physics coordinator have provided him with good preparation. Incandela joined the CMS collaboration in 1997 when he formed the US silicon tracker group that built a large fraction of the CMS detector’s modules.

For Incandela, part of what makes working in particle physics and with an experiment like CMS so exciting is its position at the forefront of discovery. He compares physics to art, a field with which he is familiar. A student of painting and sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago from age seven to age seventeen, Incandela had intended to pursue a career in glass sculpture. It was while studying chemistry to improve his understanding of the medium that he discovered and became fascinated by physics.

“Art can produce contributions to our culture that will last the ages and so can particle physics. We’re creating and finding out new things, and we believe that what we find will be an enduring part of our culture and history.”

Also important to Incandela is the atmosphere of collaboration that he sees as essential to CMS. He recalls how he was initially concerned about joining such a large experiment. As a deputy spokesperson, Incandela hopes to encourage those with an interest in CMS to become involved.

“CMS is a really fantastic collaboration and it is very open. The people that come in and work and get involved can quickly find themselves in positions of responsibility if that’s what they want.”

Incandela especially wants to be a contact person for anyone who has concerns or uncertainties about joining the collaboration. The current spokesman and deputies hope to continue to set a tone in the experiment that establishes a lasting, open intellectual environment.

“We want people to enjoy their experience on CMS. Competition is unavoidable but we want a healthy competition. We want people to relax and really enjoy their experience and so far as I can see, it’s coming together really well.”

by Daisy Yuhas

Symmetry Intern

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