Newsline

Feature

The sound of accelerator cavities

Liquid helium’s curious properties help scientists focus on cavity defects.

by Leah Hesla

Elegant and inexpensive, the second-sound detection system developed at Cornell University helps scientists triangulate the location of hard-to-see accelerator cavity flaws. Helium helps.

Research Director's Report

“Crazy” years await us – or maybe not

This month's Research Director's Report was written by Juan Fuster, co-chair of the Worldwide Study and regional detector contact for Europe.

by Juan Fuster

Though the road ahead is long, the ILC collaboration has made considerable strides designing the machine and its two detectors, contributing to the advancement of other fields and bringing together a global community. Now we must keep up the energy for the remaining stretch as we fulfil our mandate to deliver its technical design.

Director's Corner

Positron source relocated to the end of the linac

by Barry Barish

The last of four proposed major changes to the ILC baseline is to move the positron source to the end of the linac. That proposal has been adopted after evaluating the advantages and the possible options to retain low-energy performance.

Slideshow

Electron beam welding machine arrives at KEK

KEK received its new electron beam welding machine from a German company last week. It will be installed in the laboratory’s Cavity Production Pilot Plant.

Images: Nobu Toge

In the News

  • from Reuters
    20 April 2011
    NASA clears shuttle Endeavour for April 29 launch
    The primary purpose of the flight is to deliver the $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, or AMS, particle detector, an instrument designed to detect dark matter, antimatter and other exotic phenomena.
  • from INFN
    19 April 2011
    INFN The Italian Government Approved the Long-Term Funding for SuperB
    The SuperB project uses the assumption that particle accelerators, smaller than the current ‘giants’, operated at a low energy, can enable excellent scientific results complementary to the high energy frontier. The crucial element consists in getting particle beams – which are extremely compact, small, short and very dense – to collide.
  • from INFN
    15 April 2011
    New data from XENON100 narrows down the search for dark matter
    After analyzing one hundred days of data taken with the XENON100 experiment, they see no evidence for the existence of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs), the leading candidates for the mysterious dark matter.
  • from Nature
    14 April 2011
    Dark matter no-show confronts supersymmetry
    The XENON100 experiment has placed the tightest limits yet on the properties of dark matter.
  • from Wired
    13 April 2011
    South Pole Neutrino Detector Comes Up Empty
    After years of waiting, the world’s biggest and best neutrino detector has started its search for the source of ultrahigh-energy cosmic rays that constantly bombard the Earth’s atmosphere. And it’s seen exactly zilch.
  • from New York Times
    13 April 2011
    Particle Hunt Nets Almost Nothing; the Hunters Are Almost Thrilled
    This could have been the day they discovered dark matter.
  • from Science
    12 April 2011
    Energy Department’s National Labs Avoid Major Disruptions
    Since early February, scientists supported by the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Science have been bracing for massive layoffs at the department’s 10 national laboratories and the temporary closure of many of the large user facilities located there.