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Feature

Cryo conveyor belt

Industrial study looks at serial production of cryomodules

by Barbara Warmbein

An industrial study commissioned by the Global Design Effort in collaboration with experts from CERN gives a clearer picture of how cryomodules for the ILC could be mass-produced by industry. The study, whose results were recently presented at a meeting between accelerator experts from different labs. A similar study has looked at cavity serial production. One of the scientists leading the cryomodule study, Vittorio Parma from CERN, was the driving force behind the cryostat assembly for 2000 cryomagnets for CERN’s Large Hadron Collider between 2003 and 2008 and thus predestined to lend his experience to the project.

Feature

From Fermilab Today: This week’s FALC meeting

Pier Oddone reports from the latest meeting of FALC at Fermilab. "It is a particularly interesting time for this organization with the discovery at CERN of a Higgs-like particle and the statements by the Japanese high-energy physics community of their strong desire to host the International Linear Collider in Japan. While the Japanese government has not issued a formal statement inviting the world to help Japan build this global facility, the ILC clearly enjoys strong political support in Japan, where it is part of a broader effort to create a new global city. It is natural in the interim for our Japanese colleagues to seek support from the rest of the world, which would help convince their government to go ahead with such a project."

Director's Corner

Major goal achieved for high-gradient ILC SCRF cavities

by Barry Barish

One of the most important goals of the Global Design Effort has been to demonstrate that high-gradient cavities can be reliably produced in industry. We established two gradient goals: to produce cavities qualified at 35 Megavolts per metre (MV/m) in vertical tests and to demonstrate that an average gradient of 31.5 MV/m is achievable for ILC cryomodules. Furthermore, we set a goal of producing these high-gradient cavities in industry with 50% yield by 2010 and 90% yield by the end of 2012. We have recently achieved these ambitious goals!

Image of the week

Geometries of a future Higgs factory

Last week at Fermilab, a select group of experts discussed whether an accelerator to purely exploit the science around the Higgs(-like) particle found at the LHC should be linear, circular or something completely different. The participants compared the options of a linear 250-GeV electron-positron collider and a circular 125 GeV electron-positron collider from the accelerator point of view as well as physics requirements for a Higgs Factory and other options for a Higgs Factory, including a muon collider and a gamma-gamma collider. More about the workshop and an article in symmetry magazine.

In the News

  • from BBC World Service
    15 November 2012
    Is supersymmetry being squeezed?

    At a major gathering of particle physicists at the Hadron Collider Physics Symposium in Kyoto, researchers from the Large Hadron Collider Beauty collaboration presented evidence of one of the rarest particle decays ever observed.

  • from Scientific American
    14 November 2012
    New Higgs Results Bring Relief—and Disappointment

    Alas, most of the Higgs results being presented this week at the Hadron Collider Physics symposium in Kyoto, Japan, have been well within our standard understanding.

  • from New Scientist
    13 November 2012
    Time to think beyond the Large Hadron Collider

    In these straitened times that won’t be an easy sell, especially as the LHC still feels so shiny and new. But a successor was always part of the long-term plan and will eventually be needed to make more progress. Whatever the LHC found, the public was captivated. Now is a good time for physicists to start – subtly – making their case.