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."

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.

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."