Users’ Meeting focuses on results and Fermilab's future
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Stuart Henderson, Fermilab's associate director for accelerators, spoke in a lecture yesterday on that laboratory's plans for the accelerator complex and about Project X, a proposed accelerator. |
Fermilab’s exciting future was the focus of the first day of the laboratory’s annual Users’ Meeting. The two-day event features physics results, future initiatives and presentations from leaders of the scientific policy community.
On Wednesday, a few hundred particle physicists and graduate students gathered in Fermilab’s Ramsey Auditorium, where speakers from NOvA, Mu2e, muon g-2 and other current and proposed experiments at the Intensity Frontier gave overviews and status updates for their experiments. Attendees also learned about new results from experiments at all three frontiers. The collaborations that presented results included CDMS, NOvA, the Tevatron experiments and CMS.
Craig Group, a researcher from the University of Virginia with an appointment at Fermilab, gave a summary and status of Mu2e, the muon-to-electron conversion experiment planned at the laboratory. Brendan Casey, a member of the proposed muon g-2 experiment at Fermilab, explained that knowledge from this, and similar experiments, is necessary to help us understand what we see at the Tevatron and the LHC.
Associate Director for Accelerators Stuart Henderson gave an overview of laboratory plans for its accelerator complex the Tevatron shuts down at the end of FY11. He also explained how Fermilab will build its future using Project X, a proposed accelerator that would serve as a platform for U.S. leadership at the Intensity Frontier.
“We have a very strong program we can build on,” Henderson said.
He gave an overview of the experiments that would rely on Project X, and outlined Project X would be the cornerstone for a neutrino factory and a powerful program at the Energy Frontier.
However, he explained, any future program relies on advancing accelerator science and technology. Fermilab can enable that future by continuing to focus its efforts on the laboratory’s superconducting radio-frequency program, high-field magnet advancements, collimator studies at the Tevatron and more, he said.
The Intensity Frontier was also a topic of a talk by KEK Director General Atsuto Suzuki, who touched on earthquake recovery plans and near, long-term and far-future plans for high-energy physics in Japan.
Power Point presentations and pdf versions of talks from the meeting are available online. Video from the meeting will be made available online at a future date.
— Rhianna Wisniewski
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