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The millisecond challenge of the flux-concentrating magnet

Scientists complete the design of a crucial component of the ILC positron source, the flux-concentrating magnet.

by Leah Hesla

The ILC’s flux-concentrating magnet operates much like someone in a high-intensity interval workout: it fires for only a small fraction of the time, but when it does, it takes a beating. Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have finished the intense work of designing the flux concentrator, modelling its operation and potential hurdles.

Feature

From Symmetry Magazine: Global from the get-go?
Experiments in particle physics have decades of experience as thoroughly international collaborations. Can the giant accelerators that power these experiments make the leap to go global as well? The global physics community has kept the lessons of the Superconducting Super Collider and the LHC in mind while planning for the next international accelerator project. This time, countries are working together from the beginning and physicists have already demonstrated this attitude in developing future accelerators.
Read more in Symmetry Magazine.

Director's Corner

FALC discusses future programmes in particle physics

by Barry Barish

Representatives of particle physics funding agencies worldwide met at SLAC in January in an informal forum called FALC. This provided an opportunity to jointly discuss the worldwide program and plans in particle physics on the eve of the much anticipated next data run at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.

Image of the week

Today’s technology in 18th-century framework

Image: Nobu Toge

The TESLA Technology Collaboration Meeting was held from 28 February to 3 March, hosted by the University of Milan and INFN Sezione di Milano.

In the News

  • From New Scientist
    2 March 2011
    Tevatron closure: There’s life in the old dog yet
    …Although the Tevatron will stop collecting new data in September, that doesn’t mean we will run out of data to analyse. Over the Tevatron’s years of operation, the two main experiments, CDF and DZero, have gathered a formidable amount of data.
  • From UChicago News
    2 March 2011
    Bruce Winstein, physicist, 1943-2011
    Bruce Winstein, an experimental physicist who studied the afterglow of the universe’s birth, died Feb. 28 after a four-year battle with cancer. He was 67.
  • From Science
    4 March 2011
    Have Physicists Already Glimpsed Particles of Dark Matter?
    For decades, astronomers’ observations have indicated that some elusive “dark matter” provides most of the gravity needed to keep the stars from flying out of the galaxies. …Now, many physicists expect that within 5 to 10 years they will finally discover particles of dark matter—that is, if they haven’t already done so.
  • From physicsworld.com
    8 March 2011
    Simon van der Meer: 1925–2011
    Simon van der Meer, who shared the 1984 Nobel Prize for Physics with Carlo Rubbia, died on 4 March at the age of 85. The pair were awarded the prize for their roles in discovering the W and Z bosons – the particles that carry the weak force – at the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) at the CERN particle-physics lab near Geneva.

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