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Tag archive: XFEL

From football field to field strengths

| 3 September 2009 It takes vision to be able to image the transformation of one thing into another. Take a football field, for example. What are your associations – running, competition, goals, fun? And now imagine you want to build a new accelerator. What would you use the field for? The European XFEL team at DESY did not have to reflect for very long: acceleration, competition, goals? An accelerator module test facility of course! It’s only a small step to the next vision: an accelerator module test facility for the ILC… Category: Around the World | Tagged: ,

Digging deep

| 12 February 2009 The small town of Schenefeld just outside Hamburg in northern Germany isn't exactly known for its sights or its tourism. Many Schenefeld citizens, however, have recently become tourists in their own neighbourhood: ever since the construction works for the European XFEL started on 8 January, the building site sees a steady flow of visitors stopping by on or from their way to the shops, checking on progress, curious about their new neighbour. While the whole ILC project can learn a lot from this curiosity (namely establishing good contact with neighbours when construction for the collider starts), one specific group is digging deeper: the 'conventional facilities and siting (CF&S)' team is establishing close contacts to experts working on the European XFEL to learn from them and to help when possible. Category: Feature | Tagged: , , ,

A tunnel for (module) dummies

30 October 2008 It feels like the real accelerator tunnel, but it’s only building 71 at DESY in Hamburg. It’s basically a tube made of concrete, 51 metres long and 5.20 metres in diameter. One accelerator module hangs from the top of the tube, water pipes, cable trays and ventilation ducts are installed and other accelerator parts stand around on the tunnel floor. All these are dummies, some even made of wood, but they are life-size dummies in building 71: the European XFEL mock-up tunnel. Category: Feature | Tagged: , ,

Cryo crash test

| 12 June 2008 Particle physicists have the reputation that they need to smash things up in order to find out what they are about. Sometimes accelerator physicists get to smash stuff up, too: a group of engineers and technicians recently crash-tested a full cryomodule. They wanted to find out what the 12-metre piece of kit would look like if somebody happened to use the beam pipe as a stepladder, drive a tunnel vehicle into a flange or decide to rip out a vacuum pump. Category: Around the World | Tagged: , , , ,

A horizontal challenge

| 17 January 2008 The world’s first horizontal multi-beam klystron has started its site acceptance test at DESY. Built by the Japanese company Toshiba, it is the first of three prototypes from different companies to arrive for the test that will determine whether the new klystron design works. The 10-megawatt horizontal klystron was developed for the European X-ray Free Electron Laser (XFEL) and is also part of the reference design for the ILC. Category: Around the World | Tagged: , , , ,

XFEL coupler industrialisation at LAL

| 23 August 2007 During an XFEL (European X-ray laser facility) project meeting, on 2 July at DESY, the main European contributors discussed in-kind contributions for the project. The meeting attendees agreed that France would play a large role in the production of power couplers for the XFEL. The LAL coupler group, at Orsay, will therefore be responsible for following the coupler production, their commissioning and delivery to DESY. To accomplish these tasks, the lab is now pursuing a big effort focused on coupler industrialisation. “This effort will be an exemplary exercise for ILC couplers production,” said Alessandro Variola, head of the LAL group. Category: Feature | Tagged: , ,

German Research Minister launches XFEL

| 7 June 2007 On Tuesday 5 June, the German Federal Minister of Education and Research Annette Schavan officially launched the European X-ray laser facility XFEL. Using essentially the same uperconducting accelerator technology that is planned for the ILC, the 3.4-kilometre XFEL (for X-ray free-electron laser) will produce high-intensity ultra-short X-ray flashes with the properties of laser light. This will open up a whole range of new perspectives for fundamental research and for industrial users. Category: Around the World | Tagged: ,

Unprecedented: 13.1 nm for FLASH!

4 May 2006 When Albrecht Wagner, Chairman of the DESY Directorate, opened his mailbox in the morning of 27 April and found an email about FLASH’s 13.1-nm success, he replied immediately: "This is exciting and fantastic news! Congratulations to the entire team!" FLASH, DESY’s pilot facility for the future European XFEL, produced the shortest wavelength yet. This success was celebrated with a party in DESY’s accelerator control room the night before at 22:10 h. Already after three hours, when the superconducting TESLA Test Facility Linac, equipped with five accelerator modules, reached the designated energy of 700 MeV, the electron bunches that traversed the undulator emitted laser flashes with a wavelength of only 13.1 nm (there’s a plot from the logbook for those who don’t believe it). This is an important step on the way to reach the design value of 6 nm planned for the FLASH facility. With the sixth module which will be installed in the second quarter of 2007, it will be possible to accelerate the electron bunches to 1 GeV and to generate wavelengths of 6 nm. Category: Feature | Tagged: , ,
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