Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is America’s premier laboratory for particle physics and accelerator research. Fermilab is operated for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science by the Fermi Research Alliance, LLC, a partnership of the University of Chicago and the Universities Research Association, Inc.

Cryogenic technology plays a major role in Fermilab’s research. Laboratory scientists, engineers and technicians are experts in designing, building and operating superconducting magnets and have worked with industry to build, for example, superconducting magnets for the Large Hadron Collider at the European laboratory CERN.

Fermilab is the U.S. leader in the development of superconducting radio frequency cavities, which must operate at cryogenic temperatures, to power particle accelerators. The lab also uses cryogenics in neutrino, particle astrophysics and quantum computing research. The international Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, hosted by Fermilab, will feature particle detectors filled with 70,000 tons of liquid argon at -184 °C.

The laboratory built a 520-megapixel CCD camera for the Dark Energy Survey, which is cooled to -100 °C to provide researchers with a clear picture of our expanding universe. It also helps build the Super Cryogenic Dark Matter Search experiment, which operates at tens of millikelvin.