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 […]
Polarimeter on the electron stretcher
Detector prototype proves itself in the testbeam
What is a polarimeter? A polarimeter measures the combined spins (polarisation) of particles in a particle bunch, by using the effect that photons from a laser beam can knock single electrons out of a particle bunch. These ‘Compton-scattered’ electrons are sent through a magnetic chicane where they are deflected. The degree of deflection depends on […]
Spiralling under control
Positron source R&D makes progress
The team developing the ILC’s positron source have every reason to be positive. Recent tests have shown both that the four-meter helical undulator prototype – a device that will produce an intense beam of polarised gamma rays – works in its cryomodule, and that the target that will produce the positrons themselves can reach its […]
“Well done, now do some more”
Accelerator Advisory Panel publishes results from the first review
A few weeks after the first big Accelerator Advisory Panel (AAP) review at the TILC09 meeting in Tsukuba, Japan, the panel has published its review results (see also the two most recent Director’s Corners on this topic). After two months of preparation, an intense week of presentations and another few weeks of writing up the […]
Writing the LOI is like ‘creating a painting’
LOI editors are proud of their work – and glad it's over
Some 400 pages of calculations, simulations, detector descriptions, estimates, some 1000 signatories from all round the world, hours spent on the phone or clustered around conference tables – a lot of hard work and careful thinking went into the Letters of Intent (LOI). Each of the three submitted letters – for ILD, for SiD and […]
Angels and Positrons
Antimatter at the ILC
Antimatter is likely to matter quite a lot in the next weeks. Hollywood has made its movie version of Dan Brown’s thriller Angels and Demons, directed by Ron Howard and starring Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon, and the film will hit cinemas around the world starting on 13 May. If you know the book you’ll […]
Let me not to the marriage of three CADs…
Engineers and scientists look at the ILC in three dimensions
In order to have a detailed and visual model of the ILC tunnels, shafts, accelerator components, beam pipes and support lines, a team from around the world has just shown that they can produce three-dimensional ILC models. These will be crucial for efficient future planning and integration and will now be extended to other areas […]
ILC: Innovation-Led Cooperation?
Study and brochure highlight potential technological benefits
New science project in their planning stages are a bit of a hothouse for new ideas, innovative solutions and maybe even breakthroughs in technology. The ILC is right in the middle of this stage: R&D is in full swing, scientists pursue various solutions to meeting the high demands of the machine and detectors. No wonder […]
In the beginning, there was… Susanna
A profile of Susanna Guiducci, ILC damping ring group leader
Susanna Guiducci has her head in the clouds – electron clouds, that is. (Sometimes she sits in clouds that gather around the Frascati hills south of Rome where she is based at the INFN Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati or LNF, but that is not really relevant to this story – just very picturesque.) As new […]
Spring-scrubbing the beam pipe
How CERN’s accelerator complex fights electron clouds
The ILC is not the only accelerator that has to struggle against electron clouds and their distracting effect on the particle beam. Even the Large Hadron Collider LHC at CERN may suffer from it, and tests on two of its pre-accelerators, the PS and the SPS, have already proven several techniques with which the electron-cloud […]