Light fantastic: Fermilab's central lab building, Wilson Hall (left), and the Feynman computer centre.
Chicago is known as the United States' second city of comedy. But with two US Department of Energy laboratories within a 30-minute drive of each other, it may be the first city of physics. As so often in physics, this claim is underpinned by technology. The Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) boasts the Tevatron, the world's most powerful particle accelerator: a 6.4-km-long ring that accelerates subatomic particles towards each other, smashes them, and then records the aftermath. Scientists hope that this will help them to understand the fundamental nature of matter and the origins of the Universe. The jewel in the crown at the Argonne National Laboratory is the Advanced Photon Source (APS), the most powerful synchrotron radiation facility in the United States. It sends high-powered beams of light into proteins or material, helping scientists to work out their structure on the atomic scale.
The two facilities employ a few thousand people, with a few thousand more visiting every year to do research. But developments in Europe and Japan could change the area's employment dynamics. CERN, the European particle-physics lab near Geneva, is building the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). When it goes online in 2007, this will be seven times more powerful than the Tevatron. Some synchrotrons in Japan and Europe are already more powerful than the APS.
The Chicago scientists are meeting the challenge. They have begun designing technology to meet needs that haven't been addressed and are finding new uses for existing equipment. John Cooper, head of Fermilab's particle-physics division, notes, somewhat wryly, that some scientists at Fermilab are adding to the facility's obsolescence.
THE SPIRIT OF PHYSICS
Fermilab scientists are developing and building superconducting magnets for the LHC that steer particles towards a collision, and are helping to build detectors that record the paths of the fragments after the particles smash.
The spirit of physics sets the overall goal of the field above any competition, says Cooper. During the past few years, while CERN has been running at reduced capacity in order to build the LHC, many European collaborators have sent their students to Fermilab (see Nature 409, 754–755; 2001). "They need a place for their students to get trained while they are waiting for the LHC to get turned on," Cooper says.
Nigel Lockyer: predicts a rise the amount of data analysis.
Will the flow of young physicists go in the other direction when the LHC goes online? "We're not really sure," says Cooper. What he does know is that the collaborations being formed now improve Fermilab's chances of keeping a role after it is overtaken.
Its neighbour is helping. Argonne computer scientist Ian Foster and collaborators have developed the Grid, a form of computing that makes better use of existing networks and allows users in different locations to work on the same set of data. Fermilab scientists could use the Grid's powerful capacity to process and analyse a torrent of data from the LHC's detectors. Continuing to build and refine its infrastructure and software could also keep scientists at both labs busy.
Nigel Lockyer, a University of Pennsylvania professor who heads experiments at one of the Tevatron's main detectors, says that the 600 or so scientists there mainly do data analysis. The LHC's greater power and capacity will mean even more work for them. "There will be a big effort to keep things going," says Lockyer. And with the Grid, it shouldn't much matter if the scientists are in Geneva or Illinois.
GOODBYE TO THE OWL SHIFT
Such an arrangement could save on travel between the European and US labs, says Cooper. "You could control your experiment at CERN while sitting at Fermilab," he says. It would also save visiting scientists at Fermilab having to work the 'owl shift' and live in trailers.
Fermilab's accelerator may still have a role, even once the LHC is online. Some experiments, such as those involving neutrinos, require less power. Fermilab has a small experiment, the Mini Booster Neutrino Experiment, under way, and plans to start a larger one, the Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search, in early 2005. The Tevatron may go on serving the neutrino field even if it is superseded for other types of experiment.
Argonne's facilities are less likely to become outdated, as the lab doesn't depend on one instrument. Even if other synchrotrons are stronger than the APS, the demand to probe protein structures and new kinds of material should keep the facility busy for quite some time. And it has room for more: its 40 beamlines, split between biology and materials research, can be increased to run 30 more experiments.
Robert Rosner: wants to see Argonne as a centre for nanotechnology.
Robert Rosner, Argonne's chief scientist, has ambitions for the lab beyond the APS. A $36-million Center for Nanoscale Materials now being built there will have an operating budget of between $15 million and $20 million.
Another project will expand Argonne beyond its current campus. There is already an energy-research centre on neighbouring land owned by the local airport, which is being developed for more applied research (see 'Looking for company', right). The facility will host research on fuel cells, converting hydrocarbons into hydrogen and storing and transporting the gas, says Harvey Drucker, associate laboratory director for energy and environmental research. Once the facility is complete, the lab's staff of 100 will grow to 150, with a doubling of graduate students and postdocs.
One of the biggest hopes for Argonne, in terms of both science and employment, is the Rare Isotope Accelerator (RIA), an instrument that would allow physicists to probe the interactions between particles that make up an atom's nucleus, and to make isotopes for applied-science purposes.
Such isotopes could be used to analyse properties of new materials. Engineers can understand piston wear by irradiating the piston wall and then measuring radiation. Materials scientists could use rare isotopes produced by the RIA to do the same with, say, artificial knee joints.
But although the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation have called the RIA their "highest priority for major new construction", the money has not yet been committed. And Argonne is competing with Michigan State University for the $65-million facility. There's a lot at stake. The RIA would create jobs for some 400 operators and bring in about 800 users a year by 2010, the earliest it could be fully online, says Donald Geesaman, director of Argonne's physics division.
New facilities will play an important role in keeping the area robust, so scientists from both labs and local universities have begun banding together. Argonne's Kwang-Je Kim is leading a multi-institution effort to set up the Institute for Advanced Accelerator Physics, where scientists will ponder how instruments such as the APS could be tweaked into a more powerful light source, and consider technologies not yet in use for new kinds of accelerator.
STRENGTH IN NUMBERS
The Illinois Consortium for Accelerator Research, a group of universities and institutes formed to back Fermilab, has allowed local universities to pool their resources with the two national labs, resulting in more state funding for research salaries.
Consortium director Chris White, assistant professor of physics at the Illinois Institute of Technology, was drawn to the area by such interactions. He participates in research projects at both federal labs. And when the LHC gets turned on? "That's many years out," says White. Meanwhile, "there's no better place than Chicago to get a job in physics".
