<p>Carlo Rubbia Gives Liquid Argon Seminar at Fermilab - Carlo Rubbia with physicist Bonnie Fleming and Fermilab director Pier Oddone - One West was packed Wednesday afternoon when Nobel Laureate Carlo Rubbia gave a special colloquium presentation on liquid argon technology. In his talk, Rubbia explained that liquid argon detectors are good for two reasons: they filter out backgrounds and pick up a stronger signal. He told yesterday's crowd: "With liquid argon, we've got the suspenders and the belt."
</p><p>Often described as the father of this liquid argon technology, Rubbia started his career working on weak interactions at CERN in 1961. Fifteen years later, he spearheaded the first proton/antiproton collider by adapting CERN's Super Proton Synchrotron. It was the first antiproton factory in the world. In 1983, Rubbia's team, known as the UA1 collaboration, discovered the W and the Z bosons, for which he and Simon Van Der Meer won the 1984 Nobel Prize in Physics. From 1989-1993, Rubbia served as the Director-General of CERN. He is currently a full-time professor at Pavia University in Italy.
</p><p>Rubbia's visit to Fermilab came at a good time. Of particular interest for Fermilab is the prospect of building a liquid argon neutrino detector. Bonnie Fleming, a Yale professor and former Lederman fellow working on MiniBooNE explained, "In neutrino detection you have three options: make more neutrinos, capture more neutrinos, or get a better reading of those that you do capture." Liquid argon detectors do the latter; they can register 80-90 out of 100 neutrinos, while current methods might register only 20-30 percent. "Heavy liquid argon detectors would be an extremely powerful tool for Fermilab's NuMI beam," said Alberto Marchionni, a neutrino physicist at Fermilab. "This could be a great opportunity for collaboration." Fermilab's director, Pier Oddone was also excited about the visit: "This is exciting technology for Fermilab," he said. "And it is wonderful to have Carlo back."
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—Siri Steiner
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