By Kate Metropolis
On January 26, PEP-II delivered and BABAR
recorded the highest number of electron-positron collisions in a 24-hour
period to date. Both the accelerator and the detector exceeded 500 inverse
picobarns that day, approximately 500,000 events in which a B meson and an
anti-B meson were produced. This number is more than three times higher
than PEP-II was designed to deliver.
Although the total is large, BABAR
physicists are interested in some very rare events, and the number of
those collected on the record-setting day could be small enough to be
counted on the fingers of a single graduate student. "That’s why we have
to work so hard," said accelerator physicist Mike Sullivan.
The BABAR
collaboration sent congratulatory pizzas to the accelerator control room.
The next pizza challenge, according to Bill Wisniewski, BABAR
technical coordinator, is to achieve 500 inverse picobarns a day for five
days in a row.
