In a study published in Physical Review Letters, Fermilab and University of Chicago scientist Brad Benson and colleagues use the polarization, or orientation, of the cosmic microwave background to calculate the masses of enormous galaxy clusters using a new mathematical estimator. This is the first time that scientists have measured these masses using the polarization of the CMB[...]

Fermilab Today Result of the Week

Data from antipodal places: First use of CMB polarization to detect gravitational lensing from galaxy clusters

Neutrinos have baffled scientists for decades as their properties and behavior differ from those of other known elementary particles. Their masses, for example, are much smaller than the masses measured for any other elementary matter particle we know. They also carry no electric charge and  interact only very rarely – through the weak force —[...]

Finding hidden neutrinos with MicroBooNE

After riding in a cage with nickel miners, walking down drifts and stopping at the dry, SuperCDMS scientists enter their shotcrete igloo of discovery deep underground. Translating this out of mining lingo: After taking an elevator down a two-kilometer mineshaft with nickel miners, Fermilab scientists walk through nearly two more kilometers of tunnels and then[...]

It’s chilly here: Lowest temperature at Fermilab reached in equipment for dark matter experiment

Underneath the vast, frozen landscape of the South Pole lies IceCube, a gigantic observatory dedicated to finding ghostly subatomic particles called neutrinos. Neutrinos stream through the Earth from all directions, but they are lightweight, abundant and hardly interact with their surroundings.  The IceCube detector consists of an array of 86 strings festooned with more than[...]

Expanding a neutrino hunt in the South Pole

The American Physical Society (APS) Division of Particles and Fields has given its 2019 Early Career Instrumentation Award to two scientists on the international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), hosted by Fermilab. You can read this brief article at the Fermilab News website.

DUNE scientists win APS Early Career Instrumentation Award

The most recent physics result from the MicroBooNE experiment provides one of the very first rigorous tests of our understanding of neutrino interactions with argon. The paper, published in Physical Review Letters, presents the first ever measurement of neutrino interactions on argon as a function of the momentum and angle of the muon, a particle produced[...]

High-resolution MicroBooNE detector provides new details in neutrino-argon interaction measurement

The inside of the ANNIE detector looks like a series of carefully placed Jell-O domes, or perhaps a jeweled Fabergé egg. Its walls are dotted by 137 sensors for detecting packets of light and embrace 26 tons of gadolinium-doped water. By Catherine N. Steffel. Read the entire article here.

ANNIE poised to take data on neutrino-nucleus interactions

In 2017, ADMX operated with the highest sensitivity of any axion experiment to date. In doing so, it ruled out a range of possible axion masses. Now the ADMX collaboration released its latest results based on data taken in 2018. The new results rule out yet another mass range, four times wider than the first, while maintaining[...]

ADMX experiment places world’s best constraint on dark matter axions

Today the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory announced the launch of the Fermilab Quantum Institute, which will bring all of the lab’s quantum science projects under one umbrella. This new enterprise signals Fermilab’s commitment to this burgeoning field, working alongside scientific institutions and industry partners from around the world. This press release can[...]

Fermilab launches new institute for quantum science

Accelerated, charged particle beams do what light does for microscopes: illuminate matter. The more intense the beams, the more easily scientists can examine the object they are looking at. But intensity comes with a cost: the more intense the beams, the more they become prone to instabilities. By Alexey Burov . You can read the[...]

Discovery of a new type of particle beam instability

NOvA’s latest measurements of neutrino oscillation parameters have been published in Physical Review Letters. The data were recorded between 2014 and 2019 and correspond to 8.85 x 1020 protons-on-target of neutrino beam and 12.33 x 1020 protons-on-target of antineutrino beam. This represents a 78% increase in the amount of antineutrino data compared to NOvA’s previous results, presented at the Neutrino[...]

Gotta catch ’em all: new NOvA results with neutrinos and antineutrinos

In October 2019, the Department of Energy announced that it has awarded scientists at its Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory funding to boost research on dark matter, the mysterious substance that makes up an astounding 85% of the matter in the universe. The award will fund two Fermilab projects focused on searching for dark matter particles of low[...]

Department of Energy awards Fermilab funding for next-generation dark matter research

Tthe CMS Collaboration has just announced the most precise measurement of the Higgs boson’s mass achieved so far.  CMS physicists recently measured the mass of the Higgs boson to be 125.35 GeV with a precision of 0.15 GeV, an uncertainty of roughly 0.1%!  This very high precision was achieved thanks to the enormous amount of[...]

CMS precisely measures the mass of the Higgs boson

The Dark Energy Survey is the first experiment to demonstrate the immense power and promise of this combined-probes approach to survey design. The combined-probes approach is the basis for all major next-generation dark energy experiments in the 2020s including the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. It enables scientists to make the most precise measurement of dark energy[...]

Survey delivers on dark energy with multiple probes

Fermilab is celebrating Dark Matter Day with a Facebook Live event — underground! On Thursday, Oct. 31, at 10 a.m. CT, visit Fermilab’s Facebook page to hear our scientists chat about their exciting dark matter investigations from one of Fermilab’s underground experimental halls. By the Interactions collaboration. You can read this press release at the Fermilab[...]

Dark Matter day is just around the corner

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Fermilab Today Result of the Week

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