Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Aerial view of the Fermilab
Report on planned linear proton accelerators

The Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab for short, is a particle physics research center operated by the US Department of Energy . It is located about 50 kilometers west of Chicago in Illinois , on the territory of the Batavia community, and is home to the Tevatron , which was replaced by the Large Hadron Collider on November 30, 2009 as the world's most energetic particle accelerator .

history

In 1968 the National Accelerator Laboratory was founded. Founding director was Robert R. Wilson , who headed the laboratory until 1978. The 16-story main building of the Fermilab ( Wilson Hall , colloquially also known as High Rise ), which was modeled on the Gothic Saint-Pierre cathedral in Beauvais , France , is named after him . It was given its current name in 1974 in honor of Enrico Fermi . Fermilab currently employs around 2200 people and is the leading research institute for proton - antiproton collisions with the two detectors CDF and D0 experiment .

The bottom quark (1977), the top quark (1995) and the tau neutrino (2000) were discovered at the Fermilab .

After Robert Wilson's tenure, the institute was headed by the following directors:

construction

It essentially consists of two accelerator rings:

  • the main injector, which accelerates particles up to 200 GeV . However, it ran at 400 GeV from 1974 to 1982 until the second accelerator ring, the Tevatron, was completed in 1983.
  • The Tevatron accelerates particles up to 980 GeV (protons and antiprotons with a corresponding center of gravity of around 2 TeV) and has a circumference of 6.5 kilometers.

The protons and antiprotons were brought to collision at two points of interaction. The detectors D0 and CDF are located there . During the collisions, states were reached that prevailed shortly after the Big Bang . The experiments provided more precise information about the structure of matter. Among other things, an attempt was made to prove the Higgs boson , which is predicted in the standard model of elementary particle physics . Despite evidence of this particle, it could not be clearly detected for a long time. The existence of the Higgs boson in 2013 at CERN could explain the mass of the elementary particles.

The Tevatron was shut down at the end of 2011 and the Fermilab is participating in experiments at the LHC at CERN.

Further experiments besides the Tevatron and planned experiments

Several experiments on neutrino physics are running at Fermilab, MiniBooNE (Mini Booster Neutrino Experiment), SciBooNE (SciBar Booster Neutrino Experiment) and MINOS (Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search), which directs the intense neutrino beam NuMI (Neutrinos at the Main Injector) onto a detector in the Soudan mine , and its successor NOνA (which is supposed to direct the neutrino beam 800 km into a mine in Minnesota).

A proton linear accelerator of high intensity (Proton Improvement Plan-II, PIP-II), which is to Template: future / in 3 yearsstart in the early 2020s, the Mu2e experiment (which is supposed to search for flavor-damaging conversion of muons into electrons, first preliminary results) are planned are expected in 2020) and the LBNF (Large Baseline Neutrino Facility), which as part of the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) is to send a neutrino beam 1,300 kilometers to an underground detector in the Homestake Mine in Lead (South Dakota) (where the Homestake experiment has already taken place).

The Fermilab Holometer has been in operation since 2014 , an interferometer experiment used to study fluctuations in spacetime . The first results were published in 2016.

Others

Large parts of the area are undeveloped land with several larger lakes that are used for the cooling water supply. The original prairie vegetation of Illinois has been restored over an area of ​​around four square kilometers . A bison herd of about 50 animals is kept on pastures within the Fermilab area . The area of ​​the laboratory is also used for local recreation by the population. As a result of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 , it was temporarily closed to the public, but is currently open again without restrictions.

Annual electricity costs range from $ 12 to 18 million.

Web links

Commons : Fermilab  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Proton Improvement Plan-II. (No longer available online.) Fermilab, archived from the original on February 7, 2018 ; accessed on February 5, 2018 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / pip2.fnal.gov
  2. ↑ Mu2e: muon-to-electron-conversion experiment. Fermilab, accessed February 5, 2018 .
  3. ^ Facility for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment. Fermilab, accessed February 5, 2018 .
  4. ↑ Holometer. Fermilab, accessed February 5, 2018 .

Coordinates: 41 ° 49 ′ 58 "  N , 88 ° 15 ′ 8"  W.