Three boards of the EUDET telescope passed the test. Those scientists who develop detectors know a few magic words. Test beam is one, chip is one, DAQ is one. Telescope is another – and a prototype of one of these detector R&D ‘wands’ has just been tested in DESY’s 6-GeV electron beam as part of […]
German Research Minister launches XFEL
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 […]
Living the Standard Model and Beyond: DESY Theorist Peter Zerwas retires
In a packed auditorium many of world’s leading high-energy physics brains celebrated ‘one of the sculptors of the physics of the ILC which wouldn’t be doable without him’, said Rolf-Dieter Heuer, DESY, and ‘not just a colleague, more of a friend’, said Siegfried Bethke, Max Planck Institute for Physics. Last Tuesday, a day before the […]
Sports car treatment for cavities
Challenges are all around for cavities that want to perform well. The material they are made of, the way they have been cleaned, they way they are shaped and they way their cells are welded together all influence the way the electrons fly through them. A process called hydroforming might be a means to tackle […]
Germany goes Tera
All German universities and research institutes involved in the LHC and ILC have just pocketed 25 million Euros – and the prospect of a bright future at the Terascale. A DESY-driven funding proposal for the project ‘Helmholtz Alliance: Physics at the Terascale’ was approved by the senate of the Helmholtz Association on Tuesday this week. […]
Interactions: It works!
Interactions members now officially classify as a tribe: flocking round the warming fire against the Californian chill they shared a goat during their meeting at SLAC last week. But though food may be memorable during the meetings of the InterAction collaboration, discussions and strategic plans are even more important for the communication representatives of particle […]
How a calorimeter could save your life
Not many people see an immediate connection between exploring the origins of the Universe and finding cancer cells. Nicola d’Ascenzo and his colleagues sure do. In their work to test photo sensors as potential candidates for an ILC hadronic calorimeter they have come across a sensor that could be extremely interesting for positron emission tomography […]
Test Beam Encounters: ECal meets HCal
Team in the beam: Asian ECal makes measurements in the test beam at DESY Layers of the electromagnetic calorimeter in the test beam When scientists take their detector prototypes to a test beam they enter a parallel world. Many basic needs are put on hold – the need for sunlight, regular meals or eight hours […]
Spotting the Movers and Shakers
Not all vibrations are good. With their 600 nanometres in width and only 6 nanometres in height, the ILC’s particle beams could easily be veered off course if parts in the accelerating modules, for example the final focus quadrupole, moved by only a few nanometers. Monitoring and feedback systems will make sure that this doesn’t […]
Testing, Testing
A brand-new test stand at DESY puts complete modules under the test. The performance of the module, its cavities, couplers and cables can be examined in great detail. Module 6 has had a bit of a break since we last reported on its progress (NewsLine 11 May 2006 and NewsLine 15 June 2006). It spent […]