30 April 2009“How do you ‘see’ neutrons in a scintillator calorimetry?” asks Frank Simon a group of 40 students in the afternoon three days into a five-day “Calorimetry for International Linear Collider” school, held from 22 to 26 April in Beijing. The spring in Beijing is just over outside the classroom on the CCAST campus, and the Chinese students who traveled from many academic institutions across mainland China, such as Tsinghua University, Institute of High Energy Physics Chinese Academy of Science (IHEP) and the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), eagerly hitch forward in their seats. “Have you played billiards?” An excellent lecturer himself (and a blogger for Quantum Diaries), Simon effectively delivers his ideas as the students speak up. What target would take away momentum from neutrons? Exactly, the mass equivalent of neutrons, the protons. Hydrogen in the active medium makes the detector, and thus the plastic scintillator, sensitive to neutrons.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: Calorimetry for International Linear Collider school, CCAST, China, school
23 April 2009Big international meetings always mean a lot of preparation for many people — not only for the local organisers like the team who smoothly and perfectly hosted the 200+-participant meeting held in Tsukuba, Japan, until Tuesday this week. Participants have to prepare for these meetings as well. The TILC09 workshop was particularly intense for the whole community: half of the participants had just passed a phase of night-long writing and editing sessions for the Letters of Intent (LOI) for the ILC detector concepts, while the other half spent weeks preparing for an internal review of the accelerator held all of last week. The accelerator review report will be published in the coming weeks and detector concept validation will be presented this autumn. See the photo album for a few impressions. Photos: Nobu Toge, Perrine Royole-Degieux
Category: Around the World, Slideshow | Tagged: photo album, TILC09
Elizabeth Clements | 9 April 2009As a lead machinist at Argonne National Laboratory, Frank Meyer recognized the need for industry to supply complex equipment for scientific research. So in 1966 he started Meyer Tool & Manufacturing on a part-time basis in his garage. Three years later, he left Argonne to expand his machine shop into a full-time manufacturing facility.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: technology benefits, technology transfer
2 April 2009Commissioning has begun at the Japan-based Accelerator Test Facility 2, a major technology test bed for future accelerators, including the proposed International Linear Collider, or ILC. During the two-year commissioning process, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory physicists are shuttling back and forth to KEK, the high-energy accelerator lab in Tsukuba, to join an international team of scientists working around the clock to get the accelerator's final focus system up and running. When fully commissioned, this system will squeeze the facility's electron beam down to a slender ribbon just 35 nanometers thick—the narrowest beam of particles ever achieved.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: ATF2, KEK, SLAC
Rika Takahashi | 26 March 2009On 26 February, in the middle of an important Diet discussion (equivalent to members of congress in Japan) on the supplemental bill, the Advanced Accelerator Association Promoting Science and Technology (AAA) held a symposium entitled “Departing from Japan to Universe – Toward the realisation of International Linear Collider (ILC)” in Akasaka, central region of Tokyo with over 150 participants from industry, academia and the political community. AAA, established in June 2008 with a total of about 100 companies, universities and laboratories, has discussed issues on R&D, intellectual property rights and other related areas concerning the ILC as a model project. The primary aim of this symposium was to review AAA’s activities for fiscal year 2008 and to gain a better understanding of the advanced accelerator – the significance of promoting the R&D and the expected impact to the society.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: AAA, Accelerator Association Promoting Science and Technology, Japan
5 March 2009In mid February detector scientists from around the world met in two subsequent detector meetings held in Korea: the ILD (International Large Detector) Workshop at Ewha Campus Complex in Seoul from 16 to 18 February and the CALICE (Calorimeter for the Linear Collider Experiment) Collaboration Spring Meeting at Kyungpook National University in Daegu from 19 to 20 February.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: detector R&D, Korea
26 February 2009INDORE, India (February 10, 2009) - The Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., today announced the signing of a new Memorandum of Understanding with four Indian institutions. The MOU establishes collaboration in the areas of superconducting acceleration science and technology and in research and development of superconducting materials.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: Fermilab, India, MOU
12 February 2009Geneva, 9 February 2009. CERN management today confirmed the restart schedule for the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) resulting from the recommendations from last week’s Chamonix workshop. The new schedule foresees first beams in the LHC at the end of September this year, with collisions following in late October. A short technical stop has also been foreseen over the Christmas period. The LHC will then run through to autumn next year, ensuring that the experiments have adequate data to carry out their first new physics analyses and have results to announce in 2010. The new schedule also permits the possible collisions of lead ions in 2010.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: CERN, Chamonix, LHC
5 February 2009For the last few years, Jefferson Lab staff members have used the lab's unique facilities to test various accelerator components for a proposed next-generation collider, the International Linear Collider. Reminiscent of a stack of doughnuts, accelerator components called cavities energize particles for use in experiments that explore the smallest bits of matter.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: cavity gradient, electropolishing, JLab, United States
Rika Takahashi | 29 January 2009Since the leadership of its President Lee Myung-bak, Korea has placed high value on science and technology. On 13 January, the government officially signed a contract for a big project to build an international science and business belt that includes the establishment of a new institute, the Asian Basic Science Institute (ABSI), and the construction of a Rare Isotope Accelerator.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: ABSI, Korea
