Leah Hesla | 24 February 2011With his feet firmly planted on Cornell university ground and certain clouds permanently in his head, Mark Palmer is a key figure in the ILC's battle against an unwanted phenomenon called electron cloud. Learn more about him and his work in this profile.
Category: Profile | Tagged: CesrTA, Cornell University, electron cloud
Leah Hesla | 3 February 2011Though it doesn’t sound like a way to tidy up, the alliteratively named klystron cluster could be the mechanism that helps streamline the large-scale design of the ILC. Scientists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) in the US are currently developing the klystron cluster scheme, a new kind power-delivery system for radio frequency cavities that distributes power from a common conduit.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: KCS, klystron, klystron cluster, single tunnel, SLAC
Leah Hesla | 27 January 2011The idea behind recycling is straightforward: reuse what you have to make more of the same. Applying this concept, however, is seldom simple. In the case of Cornell University's Energy Recovery Linac (ERL), recycling energy to generate particle beams requires technological advancements that are born from decades of research. If scientists there fulfil their mission, they'll be able to use particle beams to accelerate particle beams, producing some of the brightest bunches to be made by an accelerator.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: Cornell, energy recovery linac, ERL
Leah Hesla | 6 January 2011Scientists at the ILC who deal in matters positively charged have a new go-to guy: Wei Gai. This month, Gai assumes the role of the ILC's Positron Technical Area Group Leader (Positron TAGL). He takes over the position from Jim Clarke at the Science & Technology Facilities Council/Daresbury Laboratory in the UK, who has given up the role because of the UK's changing programme priorities.
Category: Feature | Tagged: Argonne, positron source, undulator
Leah Hesla | 9 December 2010Years of effort by more than 100 staff members at Fermilab have led to the cooldown of Cryomodule 1 at the laboratory's SRF Accelerator Test Facility. At 11 a.m. on Nov. 22, liquid helium flowed through CM1, cooling it to 2 Kelvin (-271° C).
Category: Around the World | Tagged: cryomodule, Fermilab, SRF cryomodule
Leah Hesla | 2 December 2010To see one example of tunnel safety done right, scientists and engineers in the linear collider community took a tour of the Mont Blanc tunnel earlier this autumn. The road tunnel, an 11.6-kilometre thoroughfare that connects France and Italy, is a model of safety in civil engineering.
Category: Feature | Tagged: CFS, conventional facilities and siting, tunnel
Leah Hesla | 18 November 2010A research team at Jefferson Lab has developed its own detailed set of rules for optimal cleaning. Team members have been working on a regimen for removing imperfections and impurities from superconducting radiofrequency (SRF) niobium cavities. Their procedures, they believe, have helped create cavities that could exceed ILC 2010 performance benchmarks.
Category: Feature | Tagged: accelerator R&D, electropolishing, JLab, superconducting cavity
