Fermilab

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) is a US Department of Energy national laboratory specialized in high-energy particle physics. It is located just outside Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago. The Fermi Research Alliance, a joint venture of the University of Chicago and the Universities Research Association, has run Fermilab since 2007. (URA). The Illinois Technology and Research Corridor includes Fermilab. The Tevatron at Fermilab was a landmark particle accelerator; until the launch of the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland in 2008, it was the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, accelerating protons and antiprotons to energies of 980 GeV and producing proton-proton collisions with energies of up to 1.96 TeV, making it the first accelerator to achieve one “tera-electron-volt” energy. It was the world’s fourth-largest particle accelerator in terms of circumference, at 3.9 miles. The discovery of the top quark in 1995, announced by research teams employing the Tevatron’s CDF and D detectors, was one of its most significant achievements. It was decommissioned in 2011. Since then, Fermilab’s Main Injector has been the laboratory’s most powerful particle accelerator, with a circumference of two miles. In 2020, the first building for the new PIP-II linear accelerator will be completed. Since 2013, the Fermilab chain of accelerators’ first stage of acceleration (pre-accelerator injector) has taken place in two ion sources that convert hydrogen gas into H ions. The gas is injected into a container lined with molybdenum electrodes, each consisting of a matchbox-sized oval-shaped cathode and a surrounding anode separated by one millimeter and held in place by glass ceramic insulators. To form the ions near the metal surface, a magnetron creates a plasma. Wilson brought five American bison to the site in 1967, including a bull and four cows, and the Illinois Department of Conservation donated another 21. Some townspeople were initially concerned that the bison were being introduced to act as a warning if and when radiation levels at Fermilab reached harmful levels, but Fermilab assured them that this notion was unfounded. The herd is now a famous tourist attraction, and the grounds also serve as a refuge for other local wildlife groups. Every year since 1976, the lab has held a Christmas Bird Count.