More B mesons for Cornell.

The competition to host the B Factory - a particle accelerator dedicated to the study of subatomic particles known as B mesons - pitted the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) against Cornell University. Last month, the Department of Energy selected SLAC as the site of this new facility (SN: 10/16/93, p.245), leaving uncertain the future of the Cornell Eiectron-Positron Storage Ring (CESR). Cornell's collider is at present the world's leading center of its type for studying the decays of B mesons.

Now, the National Science Board, the governing body of the National Science Foundation, has approved a five-year program that permits CESR to continue operating. NSF will also provide $29 million to upgrade the facility's storage ring and its CLEO detector. The new phase of improvements will include doubling or tripling the intensity of the collider's electron and positron beams. "[This upgrade] assures the continued productivity of the CESR-CLEO facility at the forefront of B physics beyond the end of the decade," says Cornell physicist Karl Berkelman.

Unlike SLAC's B Factory, which will have separate rings for positrons and electrons circulating at different energies, CESR has one ring and both particle beams are accelerated to the same energy This allows the two facilities to concentrate on different aspects of B physics.