MAIN INJECTOR DEPARTMENT
Main Injector and
Recycler Ring History and Public Information
The Main Injector has been a decade in the making. The initial design work started in 1987, when a small group of physicists undertook a study of how Fermilab could enhance the performance of the Tevatron beyond its original performance goals, by integrating a new accelerator or accelerators within the existing complex. Funding for the Main Injector Project was approved starting in October 1991. After an extended design and R&D period, the construction really got underway in the spring of 1993. In the spring of 1999 the Main Injector is ready for high energy physics research at Fermilab.
The addition of Main Injector to the Fermilab accelerator complex marks a dramatic increase in the physics capabilities of the Fermilab High Energy Physics Programs.
- There will be a dramatic increase in the number of proton-antiproton collisions that can be created and observed in the Tevatron, by increasing the beam current in the Main Injector, its reliability and the cycling rate over the Main Ring which it replaces, This extends the physics "reach" to higher mass and rarer particles that will, if discovered, expand our understanding of the nature of matter and the forces that hold it together.
- The Main injector will operate simultaneously in fixed target and antiproton production modes. A very intense 120 GeV beam can be extracted. Targeting this beam will create an intense beam of neutrinos that will be used to study the basic question: do neutrinos have mass? An intense beam of K-mesons can also be created and rare decay modes studied.
Greater understanding of the basic quark structure of matter and the nature of the matter-antimatter asymmetry in the Universe will emerge from these studies.
The Recycler Ring was added to the Main Injector Project in the spring of 1997. The Recycler Ring will increase the collision rate in the Tevatron collider by a factor of three to five beyond that with the Main Injector alone. Without the Recycler, the precious antiprotons left at the end of a collider "store" (8-12 hour period of time when the beams are in collision) must be thrown away. The Recycler will allow Fermilab to recover these antiprotons and re-use them in a later store. As an added benefit, the Recycler will also allow the existing Antiproton Source to perform more efficiently and produce more antiprotons per hour.
