Over the last three years UW graduate student Rachel Osofsky has repeatedly spent several months at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), Batavia, IL, to participate in the setup of the new Muon g-2 experiment (FNAL E989). The new Muon g-2 experiment aims to test a tantalizing hint for physics beyond the Standard Model of Particle Physics by improving the predecessor experiment by more than a factor of four. This endeavor is based on highly precise frequency measurements performed in a superconducting particle storage ring. The magnetic field along the trajectories of the muons through the storage ring needs to be known to 70 parts per billion. After the 40 ft-diameter, superconducting storage ring had been shipped from Brookhaven National Laboratory to FNAL Rachel helped to homogenize the magnetic field produced by the superconducting magnet. Rachel spent many months at FNAL to adjust in a painstaking procedure the exact position of large and tiny pieces of iron in the magnet gap until a sufficient field homogeneity was achieved. Only after that Rachel could commission a system of actively controlled current coils to perform the final fine adjustment of the magnet field.
At this year’s Fermilab users meeting Rachel presented a small subset of her contributions to the magnetic field shimming work to the FNAL users community on a poster titled “Magnetic Field Uniformity in the Muon g-2 Storage Ring”. Rachel’s presentation convinced a jury composed of judges from collider, neutrino, and precision science and won her the first prize in the poster competition. Congratulations Rachel!
”And the poster session winners are, from left, Rory Fitzpatrick of the University of Michigan (second prize), Ivan Lepetic of the Illinois Institute of Technology (third prize) and Rachel Osofsky of the University of Washington (first prize). Photo: Reidar Hahn”
Source of picture and caption:
http://news.fnal.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/users-meeting-2018-18-0114-28.jpg
http://news.fnal.gov/2018/06/in-photos-fermilab-users-meeting-2018/