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Tag: Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility

  • Jefferson Lab Receives 2023 EPEAT Purchaser Award

    Jefferson Lab Receives 2023 EPEAT Purchaser Award

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    Newswise — NEWPORT NEWS, VA – Staff and scientific users at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility need all kinds of electronics to do their jobs, including computers, smartphones, printers and more. But instead of buying just any laptop off the shelf, the lab takes care to buy devices that meet sustainability standards when possible.

    During a virtual ceremony on July 27, the Global Electronics Council presented Jefferson Lab with a 2023 EPEAT Purchaser Award for buying sustainable electronics in fiscal year 2022. 

    These devices meet Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool standards, also known as EPEAT. The devices that meet these standards are more energy efficient, less toxic, longer lasting and easier to recycle than typical electronics.

    Although EPEAT devices are more environmentally friendly, they sometimes come with higher price tags up front. 

    “By purchasing EPEAT devices, we’re signifying we will take that extra step to be sustainable,” said Aubrie Davie, energy and sustainability specialist at Jefferson Lab. “We show it’s not just the price tag that we care about, but making sure that these products we’re bringing onto our campus are also environmentally friendly.”

    However, these products often offer the best overall value, because they are more efficient and can help save money in the long run. The lab saved $15,532 in 2022 by using electronics that meet EPEAT criteria. The 645 purchased EPEAT devices also reduced the lab’s greenhouse gas emissions by an amount equal to removing 18 average U.S. passenger cars from the road for one year, and they conserved energy equivalent to the yearly electricity consumption of 31 average U.S. households.

    “That’s a huge part of why we do this,” Davie said.

    She also hopes the award will signal to the Newport News community that the lab is serious about sustainability. 

    “I think it’s important for us to show the community that we care about our impact in this area and that we’re not just going to purchase devices that are going to end up in our local landfills or things like that,” she said.

    A dedication to being green

    This commitment to the environment is nothing new. Jefferson Lab has earned an EPEAT award every year since 2016.

    “We are honored to be a 2023 EPEAT Purchase Award winner,” said Barbara Rice, procurement officer at Jefferson Lab. “This is the seventh time the Global Electronics Council has recognized our procurement intention to purchase more energy efficient, longer lasting, and easier-to-recycle equipment that empowers our employees to better serve customers.”

    Rice has been the one making sure the lab gets recognition for these accomplishments from the start.

    “Barbara has been a huge champion of making sure we apply for these awards and reporting that we have purchased sustainably throughout the year,” Davie said.

    Since Jefferson Lab received its first EPEAT Award, it has increased the number of EPEAT electronics it buys from different categories. Determining which EPEAT devices to procure has become a streamlined process for the Computational Science & Technology Division.

    “The amount of extra time that it takes to select and purchase EPEAT devices is minimal,” said Davis Wright, a Jefferson Lab computer user support technician.

    Wright helps check equipment for EPEAT compliance before purchase, and he maintains a stock of EPEAT devices available for staff and scientific users.

    “The award shows us that our system is working. It’s a great feeling to work for an organization that takes pride in sustainability and incorporates it in all facets,” Wright said. “By receiving this award, Jefferson Lab sets an example for other organizations and industries, showcasing that sustainability is not just a buzzword but a tangible goal.”

    In the meantime, Jefferson Lab continues to push its sustainability goals further, which will aid in the DOE’s goal of net zero emissions. For instance, fiscal year 2022 DOE sustainability goals include steps toward the transition to a zero-emission vehicle fleet and development of a strategy toward net-zero emissions for buildings, campuses and installations. The plan also includes sustainable procurement.

    “It’s great to be acknowledged, but I think it’s important to shoot higher,” Davie said. “We can continue to expand the categories we purchase in and find new ways to be sustainable and achieve emissions and energy-reduction goals. Net zero is a big task for such a large facility. I think building on successful programs like this will help us get there.”

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    Jefferson Science Associates, LLC, manages and operates the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, or Jefferson Lab, for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. JSA is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Southeastern Universities Research Association, Inc. (SURA).

    DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science.

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  • Jefferson Lab Welcomes a ‘New’ Hall Group Leader

    Jefferson Lab Welcomes a ‘New’ Hall Group Leader

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    Newswise — NEWPORT NEWS, VA – After an extensive international search, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has appointed Mark Jones as the new group leader of the lab’s Experimental Halls A and C. He began his tenure Nov. 1.

    Jones already has deep experience with nuclear physics, equipment and analysis. He began working at Jefferson Lab in 1992 as a postdoctoral researcher at William & Mary. He was hired at the lab as a staff scientist in 2001 and was recently promoted to the level of senior staff scientist. For most of the past year, he has also served as acting hall leader.

    “I’m grateful and honored to be chosen,” Jones said. “There has been outstanding leadership in the past, so I just hope I can keep up the good work. We have a world-renowned staff of physicists, engineers, designers and technicians, so it’s great to have this wonderful team. It makes it easier.”

    As hall leader

    Around 1,600 users from around the world conduct cutting-edge nuclear physics research at Jefferson Lab, using its powerful Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility, or CEBAF, to probe the smallest subatomic particles that are the building blocks of the universe. CEBAF is a DOE Office of Science user facility pursuing nuclear physics research.

    For each experiment, a particle beam is shot around a nearly mile-long oval underground accelerator at nearly the speed of light, gaining energy with each lap. When the right energy is reached, the beam is directed into one of four experimental halls — A, B, C or D — where it collides with a chosen target. Highly sensitive detector systems observe and register the subatomic particles that cascade downstream of the collision. The results augment — or sometimes challenge — current understanding of the workings of the universe.

    As hall leader, Jones is responsible for managing the physicists, administrators, engineers and technicians who support, develop, maintain and engage in experiments as well as the vast number of precision instruments required to conduct them in Halls A and C.

    Halls A and C have had joint leadership in the last decade or so, largely because there’s some overlap between the halls and the types of experiments they’re able to support. Jones worked on the first Hall A experiments at the lab while still a postdoc, when he supervised the construction, installation and operation of the front chambers of the focal plane polarimeter in one of Hall A’s High Resolution Spectrometers.

    Jones said his goal is to continue the productive leadership of his predecessors, advancing experiments that have been vetted and approved by its Program Advisory Committee sometimes years in advance.

    “I’m just hoping to successfully run the experiments that have been proposed and approved by the PAC and then support new ideas that come forward,” he said. “We’re in early planning for a potential energy upgrade for the CEBAF, so I’ll try to generate new ideas for experiments that can take advantage of that upgrade and improve our understanding of the fundamental forces between quarks and gluons, so that we can push these limits and improve our understanding.”

    Jones was a staff scientist in Hall C during the last CEBAF upgrade, when its energy was doubled to 12 GeV, or 12 billion electron-volts, to enable even more informative studies in nuclear physics. During that upgrade, he managed the update of the data analysis software from the aging Fortran to a C++ code based on the framework of the Hall A analyzer. He also served as a co-spokesperson for several of the upgraded CEBAF’s first-run, high-profile experiments.

    ‘New possibilities’

    The drive to expand our understanding of the universe is what initially drew him to physics.

    “The sense of discovery is the main thing,” Jones said. “It crosses all science. Even with the best predictions, you’re never sure what you’re going to find in nature. There are always surprises.”

    This is true for what he considers his most notable accomplishment in the late 1990s in an experiment to measure the electron form factor of the proton, which produced highly unexpected results that have now been verified multiple times by subsequent measurements. The form factor encodes information about the internal structure of a particle, which can be used to test theories of the strong force between quarks and gluons.

    “People didn’t think that the measurement was going to be that exciting,” Jones said. “I do remember when we were getting the first online results, and they were totally different than what people were expecting.

    “That’s what’s exciting about discovery. If you find the unexpected, it usually opens up new avenues for a theory to explain the data, and new possibilities.”

    Those results are the most-cited Jefferson Lab publication and led to Jones’ becoming project manager for the successful construction of the Super BigBite Spectrometer equipment and comprehensive nucleon form factor program now running in Hall A.

    For now, Hall A is in the midst of experiments to measure the electric and magnetic form factors of the proton and neutron using the Super BigBite Spectrometer and BigBite Spectrometer. After these wrap up, the Measurement of a Lepton-Lepton Electroweak Reaction (MOLLER) experiment will measure the weak charge of the electron. This measurement is sensitive to new physics beyond the Standard Model and is complementary to direct searches for new physics at high-energy colliders such as the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. MOLLER is a ~$60 million project supported Primarily by DOE with contributions to the detector and data collection systems from the National Science Foundation and the Canadian Foundation for Innovation.

    Next spring, Jones will oversee installing the Neutral Particle Spectrometer (NPS) in Hall C. With the NPS, scientific users will measure deeply virtual Compton scattering on protons and neutrons, while simultaneous experiments will measure neutral pion production in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering. The results will guide theorists in developing models of the 3D map of the quark’s momentum and position inside the proton and neutron.

    Jones, 61, is originally from Pennsylvania. He earned his bachelor’s degree in physics from Oberlin College and Conservatory and his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. In addition to William & Mary, he conducted postdoctoral work at Old Dominion University, the University of Maryland and Rutgers University before joining Jefferson Lab as a staff scientist in 2001.

    By Tamara Dietrich

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    Jefferson Science Associates, LLC, manages and operates the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, or Jefferson Lab, for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

    DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science.

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  • Machine Learning Takes Hold in Nuclear Physics

    Machine Learning Takes Hold in Nuclear Physics

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    Newswise — Scientists have begun turning to new tools offered by machine learning to help save time and money. In the past several years, nuclear physics has seen a flurry of machine learning projects come online, with many papers published on the subject. Now, 18 authors from 11 institutions summarize this explosion of artificial intelligence-aided work in “Machine Learning in Nuclear Physics,” a paper recently published in Reviews of Modern Physics. The paper is also available on arXiv.

    “It was important to document the work that has been done. We really do want to raise the profile of the use of machine learning in nuclear physics to help people see the breadth of the activities,” said Amber Boehnlein, lead author of the paper and the associate director for computational science and technology at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. 

    Because the paper gathers and summarizes major work in the field thus far, Boehnlein hopes it can act as an educational resource for interested readers, as well as a roadmap for future endeavors. 

    “It provides a benchmark that people can use as they go forward into the next phase,” she said.

    A machine learning revolution

    After attending a workshop exploring artificial intelligence at Jefferson Lab in March 2020 and publishing a follow-up report, Boehnlein and two of her co-authors, Witold Nazarewicz and Michelle Kuchera, were inspired to go a step further. Together with 15 colleagues representing all subfields of nuclear physics, they decided to conduct a survey of the state of machine learning projects in nuclear physics. 

    They started at the beginning.  As the authors describe, the first significant work employing machine learning in nuclear physics used computer experiments to study nuclear properties, such as atomic masses, in 1992. Although this work hinted at machine learning’s potential, its use in the field remained minimal for more than two decades. In the last several years, that changed.

    Machine learning, which involves building models that can perform tasks without explicit instruction, requires computers to do specific things, including complicated calculations. With recent advances, computers can better meet these demands, which has allowed physicists to more readily incorporate machine learning into their work. 

    “This would have been a less interesting paper in 2019, because there wouldn’t have been enough work to catalog. But now, there is significant work to cite due to the increased use of the techniques,” Boehnlein said

    Today, machine learning spans all scales and energy ranges of research, from investigations of matter’s building blocks to inquiries into the life cycles of stars. It is also found across the four subfields of nuclear physics: theory, experiment, accelerator science and operations, and data science.

    “We made an effort to compile a comprehensive, collective resource that bridges the efforts in our subfields, which will hopefully spark rich discussions and innovation across nuclear physics,” said co-author Kuchera, who is an associate professor of physics and computer science at Davidson College.

    Machine learning models can be used to help both the design and execution of experiments in nuclear physics. They can also be used to aid in the analysis of those experiments’ data, of which there is often in excess of petabytes.

    “I expect machine learning to become embedded into our data collection and analysis,” Kuchera said.

    Machine learning will speed up these processes, which could mean less time and money is needed for beamtime, computer usage, and other experimental costs.

    Connecting theory and experiment

    So far, however, machine learning has developed the strongest foothold in nuclear theory. Nazarewicz, who is a nuclear theorist and chief scientist at the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at Michigan State University, is especially interested in this subject. He says that machine learning can help theorists do advanced calculations faster, improve and simplify models, make predictions, and help theorists understand the uncertainties of their predictions. It can also be used to study phenomena that researchers cannot conduct experiments on, such as supernova explosions or neutron stars.

    “Neutron stars are not very user friendly,” said Nazarewicz.

    He uses machine learning to study hyperheavy nuclei and elements, which have so many protons and neutrons in their nuclei that they can’t be observed experimentally. 

    “I find the results to be the most impressive in the theory community, particularly the low-energy theory community that Witold is associated with,” Boehnlein said. “They seem to be really embracing these techniques.”

    Boehnlein said theorists have also started to embrace these techniques at Jefferson Lab in their study of proton and neutron structures. Specifically, machine learning can help extract information from complicated theories, such as quantum chromodynamics, the theory that describes the interactions between the quarks and gluons that make up protons and neutrons. 

    The authors predict that machine learning’s involvement in both theory and experiment will speed up these subfields independently, and it will also better interconnect them to speed up the entire loop of the scientific process.

    “Nuclear physics helps us make discoveries to better understand the nature of our universe, and it’s also used for societal applications,” said Nazarewicz. “The faster we can do the cycle between experiment and theory, the faster we will arrive at discoveries and applications.”

    As machine learning continues to grow in this field, the authors expect to see more developments and broader applications incorporating this tool.

    “I think we’re only in the infancy of the application of machine learning to nuclear physics,” Boehnlein said.  

    And, along the way, this paper will act as a reference, even for its own authors. 

    “I hope the paper is used as a resource to understand the current state of machine learning research, allowing us to build from these efforts,” Kuchera said. “My research is centered on machine learning methods, so I absolutely will utilize this paper as a window into the state of machine learning across nuclear physics right now.”

    Further Reading
    Journal Article: Machine Learning in Nuclear Physics

    By Chris Patrick

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    Jefferson Science Associates, LLC, manages and operates the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, or Jefferson Lab, for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

    Michigan State University operates the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams as a user facility for the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science, supporting the mission of the Office of Nuclear Physics. 

    DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science.

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  • JLab Welcomes New Experimental Hall Leader

    JLab Welcomes New Experimental Hall Leader

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    Newswise — NEWPORT NEWS, VA – The U.S. Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility has appointed Patrick Carsten Achenbach as the new leader of Jefferson Lab’s Experimental Hall B. The appointment comes after an international search. 

    Long before he was chosen for this position that leads studies of the tiniest particles in nature, Achenbach was fascinated by the biggest. As a schoolboy in his native Germany, he was intrigued by astronomy and the workings of the universe. 

    “But then I learned very quickly that this also relates to some fundamental research in physics – in nuclear and particle physics, where we study the Big Bang and the particles created 14 billion years ago, which are now making up the matter in the universe,” said Achenbach. 

    “It’s not a single topic. It’s all interconnected. Physics really describes the universe on many scales. It describes it on the largest scales of millions and billions of light-years and it can also describe it on the tiniest scales inside of the nucleus,” he said. 

    The star-struck student went on to become an experimental physicist investigating the fundamental makeup of the universe by using powerful particle accelerators to delve deep inside atomic nuclei.

    Now in his new position leading one of four experimental halls at Jefferson Lab, he will promote cutting-edge nuclear physics using the most powerful accelerator of its kind in the world: the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility, or CEBAF. More than 1,600 nuclear physicists worldwide come to CEBAF, a DOE Office of Science user facility, to conduct their research.

    Leading an experimental hall

    Achenbach began his tenure Sept. 1.

    “I’m very happy to be here,” he said. “It’s a great lab, a world-leading lab in this type of accelerator-based nuclear physics. I’m proud to be part of the group here, and of the team.”

    An experimental hall relies on a vast network of moving parts and precision instruments, including an injector to produce the particle beam; cryogenics systems to supercool components that accelerate the beam; electromagnets to steer it around the accelerator; detectors that can run as big as a house; complex electronics and computing systems; and a small army of highly skilled technicians, engineers and physicists to keep it all humming.

    For each experiment, the particle beam shoots around the nearly mile-long underground racetrack-shaped accelerator at nearly the speed of light. With each lap, the beam gains energy. Once it gains the right amount of energy, it’s directed into an experimental hall, where it smashes into a chosen target. There, detector systems with more than 100,000 electronic channels – or electronic “eyes” – can see and register the fleeting and often rare subatomic particles created in the collision.

    “And all of this needs to be coordinated, and all of these great people need to work together,” Achenbach explained. “So that, in the end, we get results out or we get data that can be analyzed and we can do our research, and maybe we have discovered something new, or we understand something new, or we expand our knowledge.”

    As hall leader, Achenbach will coordinate staff, instruments and experiments, as well as help choose future experiments from among the recommendations of an international advisory committee and the priorities or restrictions of the hall. As he settles into his new position, he plans to look for ways to best develop the hall even more. 

    Discussions are underway, he said, to potentially upgrade CEBAF and increase its energy. Greater energy means even more compelling experiments and the potential for even greater discoveries. The lab is also considering producing a different type of beam – a positron beam – for new kinds of experiments, he said. A positron is the antimatter counterpart of an electron.

    Such upgrades and enhancements would require adapting the experimental halls to accommodate them. 

    A background in physics

    Achenbach most recently served as a professor of experimental physics at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany. He has a strong background in the operation of experiments and experimental equipment, with leadership roles at electron accelerator and spectrometer facilities. In 2009, he also engaged in research at Jefferson Lab.

    He studied physics and mathematics at Justus Liebig University in Giessen and earned a doctorate at Johannes Gutenberg University before conducting postdoctoral research at the University of Oxford.

    He has served on the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC) program advisory committee, as well as on various executive and collaboration boards and steering and collaboration management committees. 

    He worked on the H1 inclusive deep inelastic scattering experiments at the German laboratory DESY; in the A2 and TAPS collaborations at the Mainz Microton accelerator (MAMI) to study nucleon resonances and excitations and pion/eta photoproduction; and in A4 collaborations at MAMI to carry out elastic electron scattering, parity violation and strangeness form factor experiments. He was also involved in cosmic ray and atmospheric neutrino science.

    He was a member of the A1 Collaboration at Mainz and the PANDA Collaboration at the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) in Darmstadt. He has many years working within the A1 Collaboration on strangeness production, hadron spectroscopy and hypernuclei. He is also involved in the light dark matter searches and beam dump experiment at MESA. 

    By Tamara Dietrich

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    Jefferson Science Associates, LLC, manages and operates the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, or Jefferson Lab, for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

    DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science.

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