Fermilab at 50

Swapan Chattopadhyay, Joseph David Lykken;;;

• Publisher: WSPC
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9789813227477
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Physics
• Index: Physics

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Fermilab — originally called the National Accelerator Laboratory — began operations in Illinois on June 15, 1967. Operated and managed by The University of Chicago and Universities Research Association, LLC for the US Department of Energy, it has the distinction of being the only US national laboratory solely dedicated to the advancement of high-energy particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. It has been the site of major discoveries and observations: the top and bottom quarks; the tau neutrino; direct CP violation in kaon decays; a quasar 27 billion light years away from us; origin of high-energy cosmic rays; and confirmation of the evidence of dark energy, among others. For 25 years it operated the world's highest energy particle collider, the Tevatron. Fermilab contributed collaboratively to the Tevatron's successor, the Large Hadron Collider, which discovered the Higgs boson in 2012. Fermilab's core competencies in accelerators, superconducting technologies, detectors and computing have positioned the laboratory for a bright future at the frontiers of science. Today Fermilab scientists, engineers, technicians together with partners from 50 countries are working to explore the nature of the elusive neutrino, enable future x-ray photon science facilities, and construct and exploit higher-energy and higher-intensity particle accelerators. Fermilab is a designated "American Physical Society Historic Site".

In this commemorative volume, scientific leaders from around the world celebrate Fermilab's 50th anniversary with thoughts on the laboratory's past, present and future.

CONTRIBUTORS:
Norm Augustine (Ex-CEO, Lockheed Martin)
James D Bjorken (SLAC/Fermilab, Emeritus)
Fabiola Gianotti (Director-General, CERN)
Paul Grannis (Stony Brook University)
Randy Hultgren (US Representative from Illinois)
Eric Isaacs (VC for Research and Innovation, University of Chicago)
Neal Lane (Rice University)
T D Lee (Nobel Laureate, Columbia University, Emeritus)
Art McDonald (Nobel Laureate, Queens University/SNOLAB)
Naba Mondal (TIFR, India, Emeritus)
Burton Richter (Nobel Laureate, Director Emeritus, SLAC)
Gino Segrè (University of Pennsylvania, Emeritus)
James Siegrist (Director, DOE OHEP)
Nigel Smith (Director, SNOLAB)
Jack Steinberger (Nobel Laureate, CERN, Emeritus)
Michael Turner (Director, KICP, University of Chicago)
Yifang Wang (Director, IHEP, China)
Ed Witten (Princeton University)
Sau Lan Wu (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
Robert Zimmer (President, University of Chicago)
and many others.

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--> Contents:

• Congratulations to Fermilab (T D Lee)
• FNAL 50th Birthday Reminiscences (Burton Richter)
• Pepper and Salt, Enrico Fermi and Neutrinos (Jack Steinberger)
• Fifty Remarkable Years of Scientific Discovery (Dick Durbin)
• Fermilab: Personal Thoughts on a Remarkable Laboratory (Randy Hultgren)
• Fermilab at 50 (Norm Augustine)
• Reflections: Fermilab at 50 (Jonathan A Bagger)
• Fermilab/NIU: A Strong, Enduring Partnership (Douglas D Baker)
• Fermilab and SLAC: Looking Forward to Another Half-Century of Discovery (Chi-Chang Kao)
• Fermilab and China–US HEP Cooperation (Hesheng Chen)
• Forty Years of Association with Fermilab (Lyn Evans)
• Happy Birthday, Fermilab! (Fabiola Giannotti)
• A View from the Far Side (of the Tevatron Ring) (Paul Grannis)
• Fifty Years of Pioneering Coopetition! (Rolf-Dieter Heuer)
• Fermilab's Lasting Impact (Eric D Isaacs)
• Reminiscences of Fermilab, 1983–2006 (Rocky Kolb)
• Reflections from a Fermilab Admirer Across the Fields (Neal Lane)
• Two Icons and an Experiment (Nigel Lockyer)
• Fifty Years of Service — Congratulations, Fermilab! (Art McDonald and Nigel Smith)
• To Our Friends at Fermilab (Joachim Mnich)
• Fermilab: Unravelling the Secrets of Nature (Naba K Mondal)
• And Proud Too (Hugh Montgomery)
• Fermilab 2005–2013 (Pier Oddone)
• Growing as a Scientist with Fermilab (John Peoples)
• Thoughts on Fermilab at 50 (Jim Siegrist)
• Reflections on the Occasion of Fermilab's 50th Anniversary (Ken Stanfield)
• A Personal Journey from MINOS to DUNE (Mark Thomson)
• Fermilab and the Coming Together of the Inner and Outer Space (Michael S Turner)
• A Great Past and a Better Future (Yifang Wang)
• A Tribute to Bob Wilson and His Laboratory (Michael Witherell)
• Transition, Learning and Re-invention (John Womersley)
• The Future of Our Civilization Has its Roots in Our Labs (Antonino Zichichi)
• Thoughts on the 50th Anniversary of Fermilab (Robert J Zimmer)
• Site 29 (James Bjorken)
• Reflections on 25 Years of Research at Fermilab During the Tevatron Era (Bill Carithers)
• Message on the Occasion of Fiftieth Anniversary of Fermilab (CERN Staff Association)
• Some Personal Thoughts and Memories on the Occasion ofFermilab's 50th (Henry J Frisch)
• Reminiscences of a Fermilab Postdoc (Gian Francesco Giudice)
• Silver and Gold: 25 and 50 Years at FNAL (Tao Han)
• A Home Away from Home (Hélio da Motta)
• Volleyball Was Serious Then (Angela V Olinto)
• Visiting Fermilab: A Collection of Wonderful Memories (Silvia Pascoli)
• NAL's First Theory Group (P Ramond)
• Fermilab: Memory Flashes (Eliezer Rabinovici)
• Fermi's Globatron (Gino Segrè)
• Think Different (Maria Spiropulu)
• Born in Fermilab (Taku Yamanaka)
• Amazing Half Century of Discovery (Ed Witten)
• Fermilab — 50 Years of Great Achievements and a Land for Young Talents (Sau Lan Wu)
• Fermilab — My Newborn Land (Weimin Wu)
• R R Wilson's Congressional Testimony (April 1969)
• R R Wilson's Sculptures Around the Fermilab Site
• 1981 Summer School on High Energy Particle Accelerators — The First of Its Kind Around the World and Precursor to the Now Well-Established US Particle Accelerator Schools
• Photographs of Nobel Laureates' Visits to Fermilab
• Fermilab Timeline:1963–2017
• An Artwork Inspired by R R Wilson

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--> Readership: Academics and general readers in particle physics. -->
Keywords:Fermilab;Particle Physics;High Energy Physics;Particle AccelaratorReview:

"My 40 years of association with Fermilab has been exciting and memorable. I have worked with many very competent, dedicated and sometimes colorful characters with whom I have made friends. I look forward to a continuing collaboration... Happy 50th anniversary Fermilab!"

Lyndon Evans
Director, Linear Collider Collaboration

"It's been a pleasure watching Fermilab over the years as it has produced some of the most significant discoveries in physics and now as an involved participant as Fermilab aspires to carry out the world's most ambitious experiments."

Eric Isaacs
VP for Research and Innovation, University of Chicago

"In the last 50 years, Fermilab has been true to this legacy that continues to inspire, shape and enrich the lives of countless young scientists resulting in such world-class fundamental discoveries as the bottom quark, the top quark and the tau neutrino."

T D Lee
Nobel Laureate

"As Fermilab celebrates its 50th in 2017, I am gratefully reminded of the contributions and support to our laboratory at critical times of its development by scientists and scientific leaders from around the world. This commemorative book captures the sentiments of some of these special colleagues, especially what Fermilab has meant to them and their thoughts on its current status and future evolution."

Nigel Lockyer
Director, Fermilab

"Congratulations to Fermilab on 50 years of service and leadership to the particle physics community... in collaborations for experiments in underground laboratories such as SNOLAB. Fermilab scientists are an integral part of the SNOLAB community... we look forward to many years of great science."

A McDonald, Nobel Laureate and
N Smith, SNOLAB Director

"On the occasion of Fermilab's 50th birthday I am happy to offer my congratulations on the lab's past successes and best wishes for its future. There has been much technical and scientific collaboration between Fermilab and SLAC over the last 50 years."

Burton Richter
Nobel Laureate

"Jim Cronin... decided to have another look at the energy vs. time graph Fermi had plotted... The point in the graph corresponding to Fermilab's initial run lies a little below the Fermi line and the one for the Tevatron a little above it, in large part due to Bob Wilson, Fermilab's visionary first director."

Gino Segrè
Emeritus Professor, University of Pennsylvania

"Enrico Fermi is one of the greatest physicists of all time whom I have personally known and worked with. Fermilab should be very proud of being named after Fermi. It is a major laboratory of particle physics... my best wishes... on its 50th anniversary."

J Steinberger
Nobel Laureate

"Robert Wilson had a vision of the laboratory as a cultural, recreational and educational center for the surrounding community, as well as a global research center open to the international scientists... Bob Wilson's legacy survives at Fermilab, in the surrounding communities and in the world of science."

Mike Witherell
Director, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

"What an amazing half century of discovery this has been! Neutral currents, high energy neutrino interactions, jets, bottom quarks, top quarks, tau neutrinos, tests of quantum chromodynamics and the full Standard Model — Fermilab has played a central role in an epochal period. There is much to be proud of as we look back, and hopefully the next half century will be just as eventful."

Ed Witten
Princeton University
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Congratulations to Fermilab

T. D. Lee

On the occasion of Fermilab’s 50^th anniversary, I send my warm greetings and congratulations for half a century of dynamic inspiration and leadership, culminating in Fermilab’s status as a world-renowned basic science research institution today.

Robert R. Wilson expressed it best when he defined the value of building Fermilab’s first accelerator:

It only has to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture.

In the last 50 years Fermilab has been true to this legacy that continues to inspire, shape and enrich the lives of countless young scientists resulting in such world class fundamental discoveries as the bottom quark, the top quark and the tau-neutrino.

My sincere congratulations and very best wishes for your continuing efforts in celebrating a distinguished legacy while inspiring and shaping a vibrant future.

About T. D. Lee

Tsung-Dao Lee (born November 24, 1926) is a Chinese-American physicist, known for his work on parity violation, the Lee Model, particle physics, relativistic heavy ion (RHIC) physics, nontopological solitons and soliton stars. He holds the rank of University Professor Emeritus at Columbia University, where he has taught since 1953 and from which he retired in 2012. In 1957, Lee, at the age of 30, won the Nobel Prize in Physics with Franklin C N Yang for their work on the violation of the parity law in weak interactions, which Chien-Shiung Wu experimentally verified in 1956, with her so-called Wu experiment. Lee was the youngest Nobel laureate after World War II until Malala Yousafzai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. He is the fourth youngest Nobel laureate in history after William L. Bragg (who won the prize at 25 with his father William H. Bragg in 1915), Werner Heisenberg (who won in 1932 also at 30) and Malala Yousafzai (awarded at just 17). Lee and Yang were the first Chinese laureates. Since he became a naturalized American citizen in 1962, Lee is also the youngest American ever to have won a Nobel Prize. (Courtesy: Wikipedia)

FNAL 50^th Birthday Reminiscences

Burton Richter

On the occasion of Fermilab’s 50^th birthday, I am happy to offer my congratulations on the lab’s past successes and best wishes for its future. There has been much technical and scientific collaboration between Fermilab and SLAC over the last 50 years. I leave those things to others. This is a personal reminiscence covering some of my own involvement with Fermilab and its previous directors.

Bob Wilson: My first involvement in FNAL affairs occurred in 1970. Bob Wilson was Director and he had said he would complete the machine with a maximum energy of 400 GeV rather than the 200 GeV that was its original energy goal. Not only that, but there would be money left over. I was a new member of HEPAP and had more accelerator experience than most of the members, and so was appointed to a committee of three to visit FNAL and bring back an evaluation of Bob’s promise. At the last minute, the other two members, who had more experience than I, found excuses not to come (I hide their names to protect the guilty). They knew that Bob did not take kindly to being questioned. I was the innocent.

I arrived alone and went to Bob’s office where I found Bob and Norman Ramsey, then Chairman of URA. After some introductory chit-chat, I could see that this was not going to be an easy time. I asked my first question and Bob’s face turned red, he stiffened and was about to explode when Norman, who could talk the birds out of trees, started to talk instead. During Norman’s soothing waterfall of words, I could see Bob relax, and when Norman thought he had relaxed enough he stopped and Bob responded quite thoroughly and clearly. This went on for most of the hour I had with Bob, though it took less time to calm him down as the meeting went on. After, I talked to some of the staff, saw Norman again, thanked him for his hypnotic skills, and went on my way.

My report to HEPAP said that he could do it, but I thought he would not have as much money left over as he then thought he would. The main ring was completed in 1971, and reached 400 GeV in 1972 with about $10 million left over which the Congress promptly took back.

Leon Lederman: My next connection was after Leon was named as the next FNAL Director, but before he took office in 1979. In late 1978 he convened a group called “Three Wise Men”, flattering us to get us to work on his problem. He wanted an evaluation of where FNAL was regarding a superconducting accelerator/collider project. The three were Boyce McDaniel of Cornell, Matt Sands, former Deputy Director of SLAC, and at the time a vice-Provost at UC Santa Cruz charged with setting up a first-class physics program, and me.

We met over a period of three or four months at FNAL and quizzed the accelerator group and the superconducting magnet group. We found that the accelerator people were demoralized because there never seemed to be an end in sight to the magnet work.

We found the accelerator group very capable, and the magnet group close to being ready for industry to take over. Toward the end, we gave the accelerator people a homework assignment; design a 1-TeV ring. They did an impressive job. We told Leon he should focus on getting the magnets industrialized, and get going on what became the Tevatron. He did so, the Tevatron was built, and FNAL held the energy frontier lead for 25 years, only surrendering it to the LHC when it was repaired after the destructive short circuit. All the superconducting magnet technology in use in accelerators today is based on Bob’s drive and Fermilab’s skills.

Washington Merry-go-round: Leon or John Peoples overlapped with Nick Samios and me for most of my time as SLAC Director (1984–1999). We had a system for working the Washington scene. We did lots of visiting as a trio talking up the entire high-energy physics program. Of course, we made the rounds as individuals too, but our informal rule was never to talk down the program at other labs. URA had its own lobbyist and Stanford had a part-time one. We made sure they followed the rules too: talk up your own program and don’t talk down the other labs’ programs. I think the united front did more than a little good with both the administration and congress in keeping the budget up.

Sloan Digital Sky Survey: The Sloan started operation in 1998, and has been upgraded several times. I think it is now on its fourth incarnation. Its data probably represents the largest survey of astronomical objects in existence and is certainly the most cited. It owes its existence to FNAL, and to John Peoples in particular. Although it is called the Sloan, John sold DOE on investing much money in the project as well. I never really understood why FNAL did not go on in what I called experimental astro-particle physics after making such a strong start. Kudos to John for getting it built and for running it for many years.

A final observation: Once before, the rising cost of fixed-target systems in the 1950s and 1960s, where the center-of-mass energy only went up as the square root of the accelerator energy, threatened the future of particle physics. Colliding-beam systems came to the rescue. The cost escalation is happening again. Although Fermilab’s main focus is on neutrino physics, don’t forget advanced accelerator work.

About Burton Richter

Burton Richter is a Nobel Laureate (physics, 1976); the Paul Pigott Professor in the Physical Sciences Emeritus, Stanford University; and former director, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Since stepping down as Director of SLAC in 1999 his focus has been on energy issues, writing articles and a book, Beyond Smoke and Mirrors, that was awarded the 2011 Phi Beta Kappa Science Book of the Year award. All told, he has been author of more than 350 publications. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences; fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and American Association for the Advancement of Science; and past president, American Physical Society and International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. He is a member of the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee, and has chaired its subcommittee on Advanced Fuel Cycles. He is on the Precourt Energy Efficiency Center Advisory Council, Stanford University and a member of the JASON Group and the French Atomic Energy Commission Visiting Group. He chaired the influential 2008 American Physical Society’s Energy Efficiency Study. In 2012, Richter received the Enrico Fermi Award, one of the government’s most prestigious awards for scientific achievement, and in 2014 received The National Medal of Science from the President.

Pepper and Salt, Enrico Fermi and Neutrinos^∗

Jack Steinberger

When one mentions Fermilab, I remember Aurora, the town nearby. As you know, I escaped Hitler in Germany as a young man of 12 years of age and taken into an American foster home. My foster father had a farm, Farroll Farm, in Aurora which housed Pepper and Salt — two beautiful ponies for riding. So, my first impression of Chicago, Illinois was with the town of Aurora and with Pepper and Salt.

Coming back to Fermi now — after all a laboratory named after Fermi must be a great institution. I remember fondly my time at the University of Chicago, working under Fermi. Enrico Fermi is one of the greatest physicists of all time whom I have personally known and worked with. Fermilab should be very proud of being named after Fermi. It is a major laboratory for particle physics and I am honored to be asked to offer my thoughts. Fermi was extremely helpful to me, a fantastic mentor and a thoughtful physicist as everyone knows. My first recollection of him was a car trip to Mount Evans in Colorado, where Fermi’s idea was to detect and then generate electricity or electric current from cosmic rays. I think Bernard Gregory, who later became the Director General of CERN, was also with us in that trip.

In the last years of his life, Fermi did something that nobody did; and this is about the Chicago cyclotron, the world’s highest energy cyclotron at that time. If I remember correctly, Richard Garwin worked on that cyclotron as well. Everyone believed that cyclotron energy is fixed, but many experiments required the proton beam energy to have different values. Fermi found a completely new way to change the energy of the cyclotron beam on an experimental target . . . he attached the experimental target to a little cog which went around following the magnetic field of the cyclotron. Coils were attached to the cog moving along the outer edge of the magnet. Thus, the cog carrying the target sees different fields and hence different energies of the protons.

During my experimental work at Columbia, several good students worked with us at that time . . . Marshall Rosenbluth, John Wheeler and many others. There was a paper published much afterwards, about the Fermi hierarchy of beta decays, which could also explain observations in cosmic rays. This eventually led to the universal theory of beta decay. But not everybody in this smart team saw it first. Being smart does not always mean that you can do things or observe things first — sometimes not. I have a son — he had lots of trouble in high school, but today he is the best-known Steinberger, for making musical instruments. Of course, I have another son, a mathematician, who is a professor at Tsinghua University in China.

About neutrinos now . . . my brain is far from being functional these days. Several types of neutrino experiments interest me. These are focused on decay of B-mesons into two muons or other forms of beta-decay, including double beta decay experiments. I do not know about the DUNE project you mention, but neutrinos are most interesting particles . . . any program of pursuing them must be a worthwhile exercise today.

You ask me about accelerator-based high energy physics. The field is dear to me but I am also troubled by it. It feels incredible to me, but as I cannot read anything anymore due to my vision, I also have not been able to give much thought to this topic lately. I am unhappy that I cannot think much anymore. But I believe that learning something about dark matter must be interesting. Who knows there maybe connection with neutrinos.

You ask me about my connection with Germany now. I am a wandering Jew as you know. In 1988, before I got the Nobel Prize, in the small town of my birth Bad Kissingen, Germany with a population of 20,000, people of the town decided to try to remember the Jewish experience and Jews like me. After I got the Nobel prize, I was invited back and I have made some great friends with people in the local high school there who I am very fond of. For my 95^th birthday, there was a concert given by students of the local high school, which bears my name. This concert was a great pleasure for the students who gave it, and for me also.

You say T. D. Lee wrote something by hand . . . can you show it to me please, he is a very dear friend of mine.

Well, I have said much I think . . . you will of course write for me, knowing what I would have liked to have said, rather than what I am actually able to say now, for my memory makes it all jumbled up and it often feels empty. In any case, my best wishes to Fermilab on its 50^th anniversary.

About Jack Steinberger

Hans Jakob “Jack” Steinberger (born May 25, 1921) is an American physicist who, along with Leon Lederman and Melvin Schwartz, received the 1988 Nobel Prize in Physics for the discovery of the muon neutrino. Steinberger was born in the city of Bad Kissingen in Bavaria, Germany, in 1921. The rise of Nazism in Germany, with its open anti-Semitism, prompted his parents to send him out of the country. Steinberger emigrated to the United States at the age of 13, making the trans-Atlantic trip with his brother Herbert. Jewish charities in the U.S. arranged for Barnett Farroll to care for him as a foster child. During this period, Steinberger attended New Trier Township High School, in Winnetka, Illinois. Steinberger studied chemical engineering at Armour Institute of Technology (now Illinois Institute of Technology) but left after his scholarship ended to help supplement his family’s income. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from the University of Chicago, in 1942. Shortly thereafter, he joined the Signal Corps at MIT. With the help of the G.I. Bill, he returned to graduate studies at the University of Chicago in 1946, where he studied under Edward Teller and Enrico Fermi. His Ph.D. thesis concerned the energy spectrum of electrons emitted in muon decay; his results showed that this was a three-body decay, and implied the participation of two neutral particles in the decay (later identified as the electron and muon neutrinos rather than one). As an atheist and a humanist, Steinberger is a Humanist Laureate in the International Academy of Humanis...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Editors’ and Publisher’s Note
• About the Editors
• Contents
• Prologue
• PERSONAL ESSAYS, NOTES, AND LETTERS
• HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS, IMAGES, EVENTS, AND VISITS