2009. Ready or not January 2, 2009
Posted by gordonwatts in ATLAS, CERN, D0, Fermilab, LHC, politics, science.4 comments
We’ve made it through the first day of 2009. I have mixed feelings about this coming year.
- Federal Science Funding Levels. The economy is crashing down around our ears. Business responds quickly (layoffs
) – government is a bit slower. If things followed their natural course of action that would mean science funding, along with everything else, will take yet another hit. However, the incoming Obama administration seems to be committed to spending the USA’s way out of this recession, so in the end funding might not change very much. I am hopeful that hard sciences funding will remain at least stable. - Federal Science Funding Directions. Climate change is what the Obama administration is focused on. There is a good chance that if you are researching something connected with climate change you may have access to increased funding opportunities. I would expect a funding profile similar to NIH’s funding during its years of increase. I would like to think that funding will spill over into the physical sciences – it should because there are connections between the physical sciences and clean air technologies. All of this is applied scientific research. I hope that the pure research funding gets an increase as well, as an investment in this countries future (particle physics is pure research, of course). I’m feeling neutral here.
- Federal Science. Obama’s science team is just a BLAST of fresh air when compared to the current administration’s. After all, his DOE nominee is a Nobel prize winning experimental physicist. Even if the science advisor isn’t elevated to a cabinet position (PDF), there will be someone in the room that knows a great deal about science, research, and how it is done. Even if there are cuts to science funding, I’m very hopeful there will be intelligent cuts rather that unscientifically motivated cuts. I’m very hopeful in this respect.
- State Universities. The economy in states is depressing. Some states, like my own (Washington) that rely on sales tax are being hit hard and very fast. State universities can’t escape that, obviously, and my university is no exception. Unfortunately, this usually translates to reduced raises, inability to counter offers from outside, reduced support for research, etc. In our own department I wouldn’t be surprised if some people left for other universities that, for whatever reason, were able to make good offers in this awful climate. There is, in fact, already evidence this is happening. The only consolation is most universities are in the same boat, and so most of them are having similar problems. I know less about private universities, but I do know the endowments of many of them are also having difficulty. I’m very downbeat about this: it will be a rough two years at least, I think.
- My Science. When it comes to the Tevatron and the LHC… Well, I see no reason that the Tevatron shouldn’t continue to break records in luminosity (they just broke one earlier this week). And the experiments will continue to be flooded with data. While it is possible for one experiment or the other to have a catastrophic failure, I doubt that will happen. And they should continue to produce papers and science at a furious rate. I also am looking forward to real LHC collision data this year. While I hope it will be at the full 14 TeV, I suspect it is more likely to be at 2 TeV, just a hair above the Tevatron’s luminosity. We’ll hopefully know what the machine scientists think about that sometime in February. I’m really hopeful about this.
- New Years Resolutions. Well, I made only one. That way I have a hope of keeping it: make bread more often.
I think there is a chance that I will keep this one. Especially now that I’ve said it publically.
Of course, this should also be a fun year, as noted by the Beacon News:
Frustrated with their failed attempt to destroy the world in 2008, the scientists at Fermilab and their counterparts at Switzerland’s CERN physics lab resolve to perfect their new device, the Large Planet-Sucking Black-Hole-o-Tron.
Here is to another great year of data collection and science at the Tevatron and first collision data at the LHC!
Green is a Relative Thing December 23, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in D0, Fermilab.3 comments
I’m ending a series of 3 owl shifts at DZERO right now. The Tevatron, the accelerator at Fermilab, has been going great guns all week. It finally broke today. You know it is bad when the post to Channel 13, the web page that tells you the status of the machine, “Experts working on LRF3; no estimate.” The Linac is busted. That means no data for a while.
Looking at the accelerator’s log book (not accessible from outside fermilab) we found an interesting entry (we means myself and the other 3 people here on shift):
An energy-conservation timeline has been loaded
We called to find out what that means. Mike, from the Main Control Room, told us that is is like putting your car at idle. The Main Injector normally is constantly ramping protons up to 150 GeV energy and slamming them into a target. It does this once about every 2 seconds. With the Linac broken, however, there are no protons to accelerate – so why ramp every 2 seconds. It takes energy to ramp… The effective equivalent of putting your car as idle when you are at a stop light rather than keeping it revving at 4000 RPM’s.
Fermilab uses a lot of power – in 2007 the power consumed was about that required to run 45,000 homes. A lot!! As you can imagine this has impacts both on operating costs and general “greenness” (pollution, etc.). There is a broad effort to reduce power at Fermilab, but this is the first one I have seen in the science program. Very cool.
You might ask – since there is no beam, why run the Linac at all? Why not just shut it off. I will point you to a previous posting of mine:
On Tuesday I decided to shut down my home computer. I’m not sure why I decided to do that – I almost never do. … When I hit the “power” button on the 2.5 year old Dell XPS/200 machine the power light briefly flickered yellow… and that was it.
The accelerator is so large and so complex and there are so many different parts (and computers!) that shutting it down and then turning it on is something that is only done when a very long shutdown is planned. Very long means months. Otherwise things fail and then it takes much longer to get back to doing the science.
For those not familiar with the operation of the Tevatron, the “no estimate” isn’t as bad as it might sound. It just means the experts who have looked at the problem scratched their collective heads and said “Hmmm, I don’t recognize this!”. Usually that means it will take several hours to get things going again. Experiments treat it as an opportunity, actually. The machine has no protons circulating and so we can take special calibrations. Or sometimes we can get access to the detector and fix things.
Tomorrow I jump on a plane and my actual Christmas break starts! Happy holiday’s everyone!
English Language Summaries December 19, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in D0, physics, physics life.add a comment
This is pretty neat. The RNA Biology journal is now requiring a Wikipedia article along with every submitted paper. The guidance from the journal is as follows:
At least one stub article (essentially an extended abstract) for the paper should be added to either an author’s userspace at Wikipedia (preferred route) or added directly to the main Wikipedia space (be sure to add literature references to avoid speedy deletion). This article will be reviewed alongside the manuscript and may require revision before acceptance. Upon acceptance the former articles can easily be exported to the main Wikipedia space.
Keep in mind that Wikipedia articles are to be targeted at a level that an undergraduate could comprehend. Try to avoid jargon and do provide links to other Wikipedia articles at the first use of specific terms, e.g. [[RNA]]. Also the title of the page should appear in bold at the first use of the text of the article, e.g. "eRNA."
This is fantastic. For a long time here at DZERO we were trying to write English Language Summaries (or Plain English Summaries) of all of our papers. For example, here is one for an old Z+b analysis. These were aimed at people who weren’t particle physicists, but had some real interest in the science – the general interested public. We have mostly given up on this, however (I haven’t followed why). Currently the best summaries of this nature I know about are on a blog – Tomasso’s, specifically (e.g. here and here for recent examples).
But Wikipedia is a great idea! It is an increasingly popular search destination. And it is, supposedly, better organized than a blog. And more permanent. Writing the results up there I think would be a great idea. The only thing thing that this doesn’t address is a central pillar of the power of Wikipedia: inter linking. For these articles to really fit in they have to be linked. And if similar results (for example, measurements by both CDF and DZERO of the same thing) are presented then pages would have to be combined or correctly linked. Perhaps a page a paper and then other pages that discuss the specific pages? The experiments could appoint topical editors (i.e. service work) that maintains all the W/Z results, all the Higgs results, etc. Ok, now this is starting to sound like lots of work!
A neat idea, however!
The D0 Run 2 Detector – 5am shift fun November 28, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in D0.add a comment
I’m on shift at DZERO again. The detector is running amazingly smoothly. We have had one interruption that lasted about 1 second (the system fixed itself). So… I’ve been getting a lot of work done! But sometime around 5am my ability to answer email without making an embarrassing error or run a program without having to try over and over… well, lets just say I give up.
So I’ve been playing with a nice image stitch program I found from MSR: ICE. I took some high resolution pictures of the D0 Run 2 detector’s blueprint and stitched them together at max resolution, and then dumped it into a neat high speed DeepZoom image. Check it out here. Looks best when you full-screen it! [you’ll need Silverlight installed, but you should be prompted if you are missing it automatically].
Parts Not Available? eBay! October 6, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in D0, Fermilab.3 comments
The DZERO detector – or at least parts of it – are quite old now. And the goal of the Tevatron is to collect as much data as possible as cheaply as possible. So what do you do when you need a spare part that hasn’t been manufactured in 12 years? You can redesign the system to use a modern part… or you go to eBay. I didn’t realize this, but this is what we do at Fermilab for very old parts. How cool is that!? Smart use of money… which I’m guessing is going to be in very short supply in the near future!
UPDATE: Turns out I misheard. The parts were actually purchased on the grey market – eBay came up when the person was explaining what the grey market was. Sorry about that!
5 fb-1 – thanks, Fermilab! September 29, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in D0, Fermilab.add a comment
Fermilab just reached 5 fb-1 of data delivered to the experiments. When things started in March of 2001 I don’t think I ever expected us to get here – but the recent performance of the Tevatron has been stellar! The DZERO experiment has recorded 4.36 fb-1 of data (I expect CDF is close to that). The 13% dead time is due to downtime on our detector’s part – broken bits and normal trigger dead time.
The current results the Tevatron is releasing are all for 3 fb-1 of data – so we have an additional 2/5ths worth of data to improve everything (like our Higgs).
Thanks!!
It is Better When You Are Away August 22, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in D0.add a comment
Last week was the DZERO workshop, as I’ve mentioned. During that time many people from DZERO were 1000’s of miles away from the detector. Many of these people help keep the detector running – fix it when it breaks, etc.
So… how did our detector do? It had a better than average week – smooth running with almost no pauses. I guess it was happy not to have all sorts of people tweaking it? Fortunately, nothing major broke – then there would have been real downtime as people tried to fix it over the phone from Prauge!
I guess DZERO should have more collaboration meetings away from Fermilab!
BTW – this is one reason I like taking owl shifts on DZERO. The detector breaks less often because there aren’t people around to mess with it!
Will it really take ATLAS 3 years to see 5 sigma Higgs? August 20, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in ATLAS, CERN, D0, Fermilab.15 comments
Probably (for ATLAS new predictions on this should be released in a few months). But in the context of the Tevatron and the LHC Higgs search that isn’t really what is important.
The ATLAS prediction that it might take 3 years to reach the 5 sigma level for a low mass Higgs discovery got a lot of airplay. It got me to thinking. Lets say the two accelerators are in close competition for the Higgs. The Tevatron can really only speak to the 3 sigma level. It isn’t ever going to get to the 5 sigma level. Further, at the Tevatron the CDF and DZERO experiments will have to combine their results to even reach this 3 sigma level. So, I find it highly unlikely that the LHC will sit back and let the Tevatron get away with this. I certainly wouldn’t (and I’m on a LHC experiment). So what to do? Obvious – beat the Tevatron at its own game: combine results from CMS and ATLAS and the 3 sigma level will be obtained much more quickly. At that point the LHC has stolen the thunder from the Tevatron and CMS and ATLAS can now race each other to individual discoveries of the Higgs at the 5 sigma level.
I don’t expect the experiments to combine for the 5 sigma discovery (I could well be wrong, of course – I know of no plans to not do this or to do this!). There are many forces at play that are driving each experiment to make the first paper submission of a 5 sigma signal. This may, indeed, be what gives the Tevatron space to slip in with a 3 sigma evidence paper. And in the grand scheme of things – the Tevatron goes out with a 3 sigma evidence and the LHC with a 5 sigma discovery – that doesn’t seem like a bad “split”. But who has ever heard of the free market working like that!?
As a member of DZERO I want to push as hard as possible to nail a low mass Higgs. As a member of ATLAS, I want the experiment to scramble as fast as possible to get the Higgs – evidence and discovery. After all, that is one of the LHC’s main points.
DZERO Workshop Redux August 18, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in D0, life, travel.add a comment
Well, if there is one thing to be said about the DZERO workshop, it is that the recent breaking of the Higgs SM limit line by CDF and DZERO has certainly injected excitement into the experiment. On the other hand, the LHC startup is right around the corner (officially, Sept. 10). Many of the talks given were infused with both of these themes. The theme of the workshop isn’t hard to guess: the Tevatron is schedule to give another 4 fb-1 of data or so — doubling our current dataset — is the experiment ready to absorb that? Especially as people drain away from the Tevatron experiments to the LHC experiments.
On one hand, many of the future talks would split the physics they discussed into physics that only the Tevatron could do vs physics that both the Tevatron and the LHC could do. The implication being, of course, that the LHC would quickly produce better results once it was up and running.
For the Higgs searches, it was the opposite — there is a small window of opportunity that must be grabbed while the grabbing is good. Indeed, I think it is safe to say that most of the experiment is focused on getting the Higgs signal.
At the last minute I was asked to give a talk on my daqAI work. This is artificial intelligence for the data acquisition system at DZERO. Actually, there is nothing “AI” about it – it is just a bunch of if-then-else statements that recognize a problem and either tell the shifter or attempt to fix it themselves. The up shot is better up time. Actually, DZERO’s data taking efficiency is amazing. Above 90%. When we hit 80% we claim we’ve had a bad week. Our competition, CDF, is not doing so well. While I’d like to think that daqAI helps towards this (and I suppose it does a bit) the real reason is the people we have working on this. CDF – if the Tevatron is going to say anything about the Higgs then you guys need every drop of data… Get to work! 
Another really interesting session I went to was the b-tagging one. I used to co-run the b-tagging group at DZERO. It was especially satisfying to see some large projects that I attempted to get going while I was the co-convener actually completed. They weren’t completed because they continued using myself – people mostly started from scratch – bit still… And the fact that ex-students of mine had a hand in getting those things done. Very cool! And, of course, there is all the ongoing work – some of it rather interesting.
Lots of other interesting stuff, but I can’t talk about it of course.
Finally, our Prague hosts did a great job. That picture above is Julia dancing to traditional Czech music.
I’m on vacation now, in Cyprus. My wife was full time Mom last week while I was attending the DZERO workshop. This week it is her turn – she gets to keynote at the physics education conference here in Cyprus while I’m a full time Dad. After that we will be busy moving back to the USA. In this hotel they charge 20 euros a day for internet… so I’m not sure if my blog will be updated much! But we’ll see…
Play it safe, or… August 17, 2008
Posted by gordonwatts in ATLAS, CERN, D0, Fermilab.add a comment
There was an unspoken theme at the DZERO workshop this week. Stick with the Tevatron for a huge, but iffy, payoff. Or switch to the LHC now because it is a “sure” bet (as sure as anything gets in research).
This is all about the Standard Model Higgs search at the two accelerators. If such a Higgs does exist the LHC is bound to discover it. The LHC has some “difficulty” at low mass Higgs (below about 125 or so). Difficulty for the LHC means it could take up to 3 years for a single experiment to declare a 5 sigma discovery, the gold standard of “discovery”.
At the Tevatron the Higgs analysis is all about difficulty. Each new Higgs result you hear or read about is a tour-de-force of new techniques and new methods of extracting every last bit of signal out of the experiments. As a graduate student I never remember techniques this sophisticated. And the LHC pre-trial analyses are not as sophisticated either (on the other hand, they don’t need to be).
Global fits to the Standard Model currently predict the Higgs to be low mass – between 114 GeV and 120 or 125 GeV. The Tevatron is currently x2 away from being sensitive to this mass range. By doubling our dataset to 6 fb-1 of data and making a number of improvements to our analyses, we expect that we should be there. These improvements are not easy – it will require a lot of work and a lot of people. Nor are they assured. At best, if the Higgs is there, and we aren’t unlucky, we should be able to see it at the 3 sigma level. But never the 5 sigma discovery level. That will have to be left to the LHC in any case.
So is it worth sticking with the Tevatron? Well… the payoff would be huge to see something at the 3 sigma level. So it is like a lottery with high stakes. The chance of winning is not all that sure, but the jackpot is big!
Me? Well, I’m working on both the LHC and the Tevatron (as are many US physicists). I have a student working on the Higgs search at Fermilab, for example. I’m deeply involved in a number of topics at the LHC as well.
What will happen? Hard to tell. Things to watch? Well, that is easy. There are only two things that really matter here – the performance of the Tevatron and the performance of the LHC. Each physicist who is on both collaborations is performing some complex calculus to optimize their time on the two experiments depending on the chances of success.
I wish us all luck.
