Established | November 21, 1967 | (as National Accelerator Laboratory)
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Research type | Accelerator physics |
Budget | $739 million (2024)[1] |
Field of research | Accelerator physics |
Director | Lia Merminga |
Address | P.O. Box 500 |
Location | Winfield Township, DuPage County, Illinois, United States 41°49′55″N 88°15′26″W / 41.83194°N 88.25722°W |
Nickname | Fermilab |
Affiliations | U.S. Department of Energy University of Chicago Universities Research Association |
Leon Max Lederman | |
Website | fnal |
Map | |
Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), located in Batavia, Illinois, near Chicago, is a United States Department of Energy national laboratory specializing in high-energy particle physics.
Fermilab's Main Injector, two miles (3.3 km) in circumference, is the laboratory's most powerful particle accelerator.[2] The accelerator complex that feeds the Main Injector is under upgrade, and construction of the first building for the new PIP-II linear accelerator began in 2020.[3] Until 2011, Fermilab was the home of the 6.28 km (3.90 mi) circumference Tevatron accelerator. The ring-shaped tunnels of the Tevatron and the Main Injector are visible from the air and by satellite.
Fermilab aims to become a world center in neutrino physics. It is the host of the multi-billion dollar Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) now under construction.[4] The project has suffered delays and, in 2022, the journals Science and Scientific American each published articles describing the project as "troubled".[5][6] Ongoing neutrino experiments are ICARUS (Imaging Cosmic and Rare Underground Signals) and NOνA (NuMI Off-Axis νe Appearance). Completed neutrino experiments include MINOS (Main Injector Neutrino Oscillation Search), MINOS+, MiniBooNE and SciBooNE (SciBar Booster Neutrino Experiment) and MicroBooNE (Micro Booster Neutrino Experiment).
Since 2007, Fermilab has been operated by the Fermi Research Alliance (FRA), a joint venture of the University of Chicago, and the Universities Research Association (URA); although in 2023, the Department of Energy (DOE) opened bidding for a new contractor due to concerns about the FRA performance.[7] On July 15, 2024, during the bidding process for the new contract, "whistleblowers" published very serious allegations against FRA management on a public physics preprint server. [8] The detailed 108 page report accused the FRA of cover-up of cases of sexual harassment, attacks by employees, guns brought to site, and a major equipment failure. There has been no public response by the FRA or Fermilab Leadership since the appearance of the report.
On-site experiments outside of the neutrino program include the SeaQuest fixed-target experiment and Muon g-2. Fermilab continues to participate in the work at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC); it serves as a Tier 1 site in the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid.[9] Fermilab also pursues research in quantum information science.[10] It founded the Fermilab Quantum Institute in 2019.[11] Since 2020, it also is home to the SQMS (Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems) Center.[12]
Fermilab is a part of the Illinois Technology and Research Corridor.
Asteroid 11998 Fermilab is named in honor of the laboratory.