The European Physical Society Accelerator Group announced that Shin-ichi Kurokawa, professor emeritus at KEK, Japan, and vice president of Cosylab, was awarded the Rolf Widerøe Prize, which is given to an individual for his or her outstanding work in the particle accelerator field. Kurokawa has been working in the accelerator field for 37 years. “I […]
KEK continues to work for the ILC
Natural disasters have not deterred KEK from looking to the future of the ILC
Almost four weeks have passed since the worst disaster that has ever hit northeast Japan. KEK has been evaluating damage to its facilities and buildings and is planning to release the official disaster report soon. Recovery activities that do not require much electricity consumption have begun already as KEK employees work to return operations to […]
KEK earthquake report
KEK employees survey the damage to their laboratory after enduring the biggest earthquake in Japan's history
As many people in the world already know, Japan is currently dealing with its worst disaster: Japan’s biggest earthquake on record and the fourth largest in history. Thousands of lives have been lost. Tens of thousands people are forced to evacuate and live without basic necessities. Hundreds of thousands are still missing. KEK laboratory in […]
Many small klystrons for operability and flexibility
The design of the International Linear Collider has recently changed from featuring two tunnels to just one. This means many aspects of the tunnel design have to be re-thought – including the distribution of the radiofrequency power, the acceleration technology of choice for the ILC’s superconducting cavities. In addition to the klystron cluster scheme, the […]
Is accelerator research useful?
This story first appeared on 15 January in the ILC Tsushin, the Japanese ILC newsletter, published every month by KEK
There is a question almost always asked when talking about science – “OK, this is interesting. But is it useful for something?” Not too many scientists working on basic science are good at answering this question. “Dr. Masatoshi Koshiba sometimes says that the neutrino, his main research subject, is not useful at all. Well, a […]
From KEK: Japanese 9-cell SCRF cavity meets ILC specification
Designing and fabricating an optimal accelerating cavity is not so simple. There are two important parameters scientists are looking for: the gradient of 35 megavolts per meter (MV/m) and the quality factor (Q0) of greater than 0.8×1010. A Japanese cavity now fulfilled those requirements for the first time at a test which took place at […]
The future city of the ILC
What will happen when the ILC is built? One hopes discoveries will change the way we see the universe. It will answer the questions about what the universe is made of. And maybe it will help generate new Nobel Prize winners… “OK, I understand that something great will happen in the academic world. But I […]
“Set it and forget it!”
Fermilab and KEK scientists recently hooked up a new cavity tuning system to the various cavities in the so-called cavity-tuner zoo at KEK. This zoo, comprising eight superconducting radiofrequency cavities fabricated by four different vendors from three different regions, was the testing ground for a new development in what is called Lorentz force detuning (LFD) […]
Working through the weekend at the ATF
On 27 September, the Japan’s local winners of the first Global Particle Photo Walk were announced. This Photowalk was held at five particle physics laboratories in the world on 7 August (see Feature Story this week). The winning photo taken by Yuki Hayashi features scientists working at the Accelerator Test Facility (ATF) at KEK. But […]
From KEK Highlights: Deepen the bonds: collaboration between Vietnam and KEK
Vietnam and Japan have been nurturing cooperative relationship in many fields for many years. For the field of science and technology, both governments signed the Japan-Vietnam Science and Technology Co-operation Agreement to promote and deepen the co-operation in science and technology in 2006. Following year, Shinzo Abe, then Prime minister of Japan, proposed at the […]