On the Trail of Dark Energy

On the Trail of Dark Energy

I n t e r n at I o n a l Jo u r n a l o f HI g H -en e r g y PH y s I c s CERN COURIERV o l u m e 49 nu m b e r 2 m a r c H 2009 On the trail of dark energy LHCCOVERLINE NEWS HEAD LASERSCOVERLINE HEAD PERSONALITYCOVERLINE HEAD ChamonixCoverline normal meeting High-intensityCoverline normal pulses AnCoverline interview normal with firmscoverline up thenormal schedule px p5 offercoverline exciting normal potential px p21 Georgescoverline Charpak normal px p24 CCMar09Cover.indd 1 10/2/09 09:45:18 Abstract Submission 25-31 October 2009 Deadline: 11 May 2009 General Chair: Nuclear Science Symposium Richard Lanza MIT, Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering Medical Imaging Conference 77 Massachusetts Ave, Building NW13-221 Radiation Detectors and Instrumentation and their Cambridge, MA 02139-4307 USA applications in Physics, Biology, Space, Material Science, Medical Physics and Homeland Security www.nss-mic.org/2009 Plenary Sessions • Oral Sessions • Poster Sessions• Short Courses email [email protected] Special Topic Workshops • Industrial Exhibits • Companion Program phone 617.253.IEEE (4333) HILTON DISNEY WORLD, ORLANDO, FLORIDA Bleed full page template.indt 1 10/2/09 09:23:44 CONTENTS Covering current developments in high- energy physics and related fields worldwide CERN Courier is distributed to member-state governments, institutes and laboratories affiliated with CERN, and to their personnel. It is published monthly, except for January and August. The views expressed are not necessarily those of the CERN management. Editor Christine Sutton Editorial assistant Carolyn Lee CERN CERN, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland E-mail [email protected] Fax +41 (0) 22 785 0247 Web cerncourier.com Advisory board James Gillies, Rolf Landua and Maximilian Metzger COURIERo l u m e u m b e r a r c h Laboratory correspondents: V 49 N 2 m 2009 Argonne National Laboratory (US) Cosmas Zachos Brookhaven National Laboratory (US) P Yamin Cornell University (US) D G Cassel DESY Laboratory (Germany) Ilka Flegel, Ute Wilhelmsen EMFCSC (Italy) Anna Cavallini Enrico Fermi Centre (Italy) Guido Piragino Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (US) Judy Jackson Forschungszentrum Jülich (Germany) Markus Buescher GSI Darmstadt (Germany) I Peter IHEP, Beijing (China) Tongzhou Xu IHEP, Serpukhov (Russia) Yu Ryabov INFN (Italy) Romeo Bassoli Jefferson Laboratory (US) Steven Corneliussen JINR Dubna (Russia) B Starchenko KEK National Laboratory (Japan) Youhei Morita Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (US) Spencer Klein New horizons for CERN p15 Searching for dark energy p17 Georges Charpak p24 Los Alamos National Laboratory (US) C Hoffmann NIKHEF Laboratory (Netherlands) Paul de Jong Novosibirsk Institute (Russia) S Eidelman News 5 NCSL (US) Geoff Koch Orsay Laboratory (France) Anne-Marie Lutz CERN firms up the LHC schedule. Protons reach the J-PARC Hadron PSI Laboratory (Switzerland) P-R Kettle Experimental Hall. MSU will host new rare-isotope facility...and projects to Saclay Laboratory (France) Elisabeth Locci Science and Technology Facilities Council (UK) Peter Barratt upgrade the NSCL make excellent progress. MINOS maps the secrets of the upper atmosphere. Produced for CERN by IOP Publishing Ltd IOP Publishing Ltd, Dirac House, Temple Back, Bristol BS1 6BE, UK Sciencewatch 10 Tel +44 (0)117 929 7481 Astrowatch 11 Publisher Jo Nicholas Art director Andrew Giaquinto CERN Courier Archive 12 Production editors Lizi Brown, Jesse Karjalainen Technical illustrator Alison Tovey Advertising manager Ed Jost Features Recruitment advertisement manager Moo Ali CERN sets course for new horizons 15 Advertisement production Katie Graham Marketing & Circulation Anastasia Ireland Rolf Heuer talks about his long-term vision for CERN. Advertising Conference probes the dark side of the universe 17 Tel +44 (0)117 930 1026 (for UK/Europe display advertising), +1 215 627 0880 (for North American display advertising), or Researchers gathered in Munich to discuss dark energy. +44 (0)117 930 1027 (for recruitment advertising); E-mail: [email protected]; fax +44 (0)117 930 1178 The light-pulse horizon 21 High-intensity laser pulses offer the promise of exciting science. General distribution Courrier Adressage, CERN, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland. E-mail: [email protected] In certain countries, to request copies or to make address changes, Georges Charpak: hardwired for science 24 contact: An interview with Georges Charpak as he turns 85. China Keqing Ma, Library, Institute of High Energy Physics, PO Box 918, Beijing 100049, People’s Republic of China. E-mail: [email protected] CERN leads the way with novel beam extraction 29 Germany Veronika Werschner, DESY, Notkestr. 85, 22607 Hamburg, A more efficient technique is put through its paces. Germany. E-mail: [email protected] Italy Loredana Rum or Anna Pennacchietti, INFN, Casella Postale 32 56, 00044 Frascati, Rome, Italy. E-mail: [email protected] Faces and Places UK Mark Wells, Science and Technology Facilities Council, Polaris House, North Star Avenue, Swindon, Wiltshire SN2 1SZ. Recruitment 39 E-mail: [email protected] US/Canada Published by Cern Courier, 6N246 Willow Drive, Bookshelf 43 St Charles, IL 60175, US. Periodical postage paid in St Charles, IL, US. Fax 630 377 1569. E-mail: [email protected] Inside Story 46 POSTMASTER: send address changes to: Creative Mailing Services, PO Box 1147, St Charles, IL 60174, US Published by European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland. Tel +41 (0) 22 767 61 11 Telefax +41 (0) 22 767 65 55 Printed by Warners (Midlands) plc, Bourne, Lincolnshire, UK © 2009 CERN ISSN 0304-288X Cover: The South Pole Telescope will allow independent tests for the existence and strength of dark energy – the topic of a recent conference in Munich (p17). (Courtesy Jeff McMahon.) CERN Courier March 2009 3 CCMar09Contents.indd 3 10/2/09 10:02:36 AVM16: 160 MHz ADC with features extraction W-Ie-Ne-R presents its new 16 channel VME flash ADC equipped with 5 FPGAs for data preprocessing. The feature extraction FPGA modules allow to compute pulse integrals (also for overlapping pulses), measure and subtract pedestals, extrapolate pulse arrival times with 1.5 ns resolution, extract maxima and minima of the signal and disentangle pile up events in real time. A VXS version will soon be available. Standard versions Item Description AVM16 16 channel VME flash ADC, 160 MHz, 12 bit, features extraction AVX16 16 channel VXS flash ADC, 160 MHz, 12 bit, features extraction trigger window time time=0 P0 Pi Pz Pa PPi PPz PPa PPq Pe Pq Pq +- Even for pile-up events, the FPGAs extract maxima, minima, timestamps, integrals and pedestals AVM16 and AVX16 functional diagram AVM16 www.wiener-d.com In collaboration with Forschungszentrum Jülich and The Svedberg Laboreatory Plein & Baus GmbH, Muellersbaum 20, 51399 Burscheid, Germany Phone: (+49 2174) 6780, Fax: (+49 2174) 678 55 CCMar09AdWienerPROOF.indd 1 10/2/09 11:08:47 NEWS LHC NEWS CERN firms up the LHC schedule In a workshop in Chamonix on 2–6 February, members of the LHC accelerator and experimental teams, as well as CERN’s management, met to formulate a realistic timetable to have the LHC running safely and delivering collisions. The main outcome is that there will be physics data from the LHC in 2009 and there is a strong recommendation to run the machine through the winter until the experiments have produced substantial quantities of data. Such extended running could achieve an integrated luminosity of more than 200 pb–1 at 5 TeV per beam. Meetings in Chamonix were a feature of the annual winter shutdown at CERN during the LEP era, providing a forum where intense Replacement dipoles for sector 3-4 of the LHC are prepared for lowering into the tunnel. discussions led to a clear consensus on objectives for the following year. CERN’s the installation of new pressure-relief can now detect a single defective splice in situ director-general, Rolf Heuer, intends for valves will reduce the amount of damage when a sector is cold and they have identified similar meetings to guide operations during that occurs, compared with last year (CERN another dipole showing a similar defect in the LHC era. The first occasion provided Courier January/February 2009 p6). The new sector 6-7. This sector will be warmed up and a tough start, as the participants had to valves will prevent pressure build-up and the magnet removed. Each sector has more agree on the best way to proceed following collateral damage by allowing a greater rate than 2500 splices, but the resistance tests the incident in sector 3-4 that brought LHC of helium release in the event of a sudden can only be conducted on cold magnets. commissioning to a halt last September. increase in temperature. Discussions in Three sectors remain to be tested: sector 3-4, The crucial improvement since the incident Chamonix centred on whether to install these where the incident occurred, and the in sector 3-4 is a new resistance-measurement pressure-relief valves in one go or to stage adjoining sectors, 2-3 and 4-5. system which can detect nano-ohm their installation over the next two shutdowns. Tests on the magnets were among the resistances in the joints. This new system There were many interesting exhanges on this important topics under discussions at would have prevented September’s incident topic and opinions were divided. The CERN Chamonix. The participants agreed on and will prevent all imaginable failures of a management is to make the final decision on teams to work on the detailed analysis of superconducting joint in the future. The work this in the week beginning 9 February. the measurements made during the cold on this new detection and protection system Meanwhile, work continues apace on the tests of magnets in building SM18 before was reviewed at the workshop and is already repairs at the LHC.

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