Decommissioning SciBooNE

We have just done something on SciBooNE that has become somewhat rare in the field these days: we turned off the detector intentionally! On 18 August 2008, the SciBooNE neutrino beam data run offically ended at 08:00 in the morning (CDT). It seems like only yesterday that we put SciBooNE together and observed the first neutrino events in the detector, but we have now finished all the data-taking and have decommissioned the detector. Many of the detector components will be returned to their respective owners, but the main bulky parts will remain the detector hall until someone else decides to use the parts or the hall.

When most people learn that we decided to end the run, they are puzzled and ask why, apparently in the belief that we must have been forced to end the run. In fact, we ended the run mainly because we have already collected all the data we need to achieve the physics goals we set out to achieve, and it's now time to concentrate on the analysis of the data. Far from being a sad occasion, it was actually rather triumphant. (You can see how happy our Run Coordinator Hidekazu Tanaka, Columbia University, was to end the run in the photo at right. Also shown in the photo is Zelimir Djurcic, Columbia, who was the last SciBooNE shifter. (Photo courtesy of Hideyuki Takei.)

We spent a couple of weeks dismantling everything in the detector hall and sorting out all the parts for shipment back to their places of origin. As usual for us, most of that work was done ahead of schedule. To help out with the work, many of our collaborators came to the lab, and we had a large influx of young students as well. In the photo at left you can see several SciBooNErs working on removing the multi-anode photomultipliers from the top side of SciBar. From left to right are Yuki Kobayashi and Shunsuke Masuike, Tokyo Institute of Technology, co-spokesperson Tsuyoshi Nakaya, Kyoto University, Joan Catala Perez, University of Valencia, and in front is Katsuki Hiraide, Kyoto University. (Photo courtesy of Reidar Hahn.)

Yuki and Shunsuke are two M.S. students who came to Fermilab (and America) for the first time just to help with the decommissioning, and Joan and Katsuki are two of our PhD students and they've both been out at Fermilab for years building and operating the detector and of course working on data analysis. Actually, Katsuki recently presented our first preliminary physics result at the ICHEP08 conference in Philadelphia, PA. You can see him in front of a pretty large audience of neutrino physicists presenting the result in the photo at right. (Photo courtesy of Herman White.)

To commemorate and celebrate the end of the run we threw a big party at Fermilab on 22 Aug. You can see the invitation to the party up at the top of this entry. (The photo in the

invitation is courtesy of Reidar Hahn.) We had a nice simple cookout and a friendly game of volleyball which, unfortunately, the SciBooNE team lost to the MiniBooNE team. I guess we can't win them all...

(Photo courtesy of Joan Catala Perez.)

R-ECFA Meeting 11-12th May

ECFA stands for European Committee for Future Accelerators. The committee visits institutes in its member countries to assess the current status of accelerator physics and make suggestions on how things can be improved. I was invited to give a talk at a recent Restricted-ECFA meeting that was held at Imperial. They wanted to get an idea about what PhDs in particle physics are really like, so gave a talk about what I had done during my PhD, why I did one in the first place and what my future plans are. It was a lot of fun to stand up and give a talk that was all based on opinion (so I couldn’t technically get anything wrong!). I told them that I thought the atmosphere at CERN was great and that everyone who works there is really enthusiastic. I also said I thought the funding for PhD students was set a quite a reasonable level, sorry to anyone who thinks I should have used the opportunity to campaign for more cash. I had a few complaints, mainly about PPARC admin department (all PhD students have a story or two to back this up) and GSEPS (transferable skills courses) which are generally a waste of time. In the main I think I am lucky to be working in such an interesting and diverse field, especially at such an important time, so that’s what I told them.

Many people gave talks concerning the state of physics in schools, funding for research and general overviews of experiments and institutes. The committee returned a very positive verdict about the status of physics in the UK and made some constructive suggestions. They commented on the small proportion of women in the field but accepted that redressing this balance is a complicated, long term process.