15 October 2009What do you visualise when you are asked about a sensor? There are many sensors around us. For example, CCDs (Charge Coupled Device), which is the basis of today’s digital camera, and the technology for this year's Nobel Prize in Physics are also sensors. Thus, sensors are absolutely necessary devices for our daily life and also important technologies for the International Liner Collider. In the last years, many new sensors have been developed for the ILC, one of them being pixel sensors using Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI) technology for particle detectors, under development at KEK’s Detector Technology Project Office. This sensor is expected to serve as one of the alternatives for particle sensors used in such parts as the silicon vertex detector.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: CMOS, detector R&D, KEK, monolithic pixel detector, pixel sensors, sensor, silicon-on-insulator, SOI technology
8 October 2009Scientists at Kyoto university are testing a new type of thermal sensor for superconducting cavities on the vertical test for ILC at the Superconducting radiofrequency Test Facility (STF) at KEK. This sensor is under development by a Kyoto-KEK collaboration The team is developing this new device to address issues in the components of the sensor – tangled wires and resistors. At STF, a carbon resistor is used for vertical testing of nine-cell cavities. They have already installed 350 sensors on the outer surface of the nine-cell cavity, and 700 lead wires were needed to connect both ends of sensors through cryogenic area and outside, in order to measure the temperature. “For a shorter developing time, I have chosen carbon resistor which is technologically proven in the past superconducting cavity R&D. This structure is simple, not so sophisticated.” said Yasuchika 'Kirk' Yamamoto, the scientist at KEK who designed the present system. When the cavity is being tested, it is cooled to 2 kelvins, and has to stay at that temperature as much as possible. In general, it is best to use the smallest possible number of lead wires to prevent heat invasion to the cryogenic area. “The current system needs too many lead wires, and the production of the carbon resistor has been discontinued, we thought we should develop a new thermal sensor to replace it,” he said.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: KEK, STF, thermal sensors, vertical test
Barbara Warmbein | 1 October 2009A cryomodule prototype for the European XFEL has set the world gradient record for cryomodules built with superconducting radiofrequency technology, reaching an average accelerating gradient of more than 32 megavolts per metre (MV/m) in recent tests. This is an important step towards major goals set for the ILC’s Technical Design Phase (TDP), which include demonstrating system performance of fully fitted cryomodules like the record prototype. The accelerator module will be built into the FLASH free-electron laser at DESY, making it possible to increase the FLASH energy to 1.2 GeV. This means that even shorter wavelengths down to 4.5 nanometers will be available for experiments starting next year.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: cryomodule, FLASH, XFEL
Elizabeth Clements | 10 September 2009In August, the Department of Energy announced that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act will provide Fermilab with $52.7 million to test and develop superconducting radio frequency cavities, a key technology for next-generation accelerators and the future of particle physics. The funds provide a significant boost to the SRF program at Fermilab, allowing the laboratory to expand its test facilities and strengthen American manufacturing capabilities.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: ARRA, Fermilab, Recovery Act, SRF technology, United States
Barbara Warmbein | 3 September 2009It 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 have to reflect for very long: acceleration, competition, goals? An accelerator module test facility of course! It’s only a small step to the next vision: an accelerator module test facility for the ILC…
Category: Around the World | Tagged: DESY, XFEL
Gerrit Hörentrup (DESY) | 27 August 2009When groups from different countries work together the usual procedure is to send the people to the machines they are working on. A team of engineers and technicians from DESY, Fermilab and KEK decided to do the exact opposite: they sent the machines to the people. On 3 August two machines constructed at DESY embarked on a voyage to Fermilab in the US.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: cavity tuning, DESY, Fermilab, KEK
Rika Takahashi | 13 August 2009A total of 182 high school and university students from 19 Asian countries and regions relished the life-changing opportunity to learn directly from eminent scientists, including seven Nobel laureates in the fields of physics and chemistry: the Asian Science Camp 2009 was held from 2 to 8 August at Tsukuba International Congress Center, Ibaraki, Japan. It was hosted by the Heisei Foundation for Basic Science, KEK and the International Center for Elementary Particle Physics (ICEPP) at the University of Tokyo.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: Asian Science Camp, ICEPP, Japan, Tokyo
6 August 2009Canada is proposing to build an accelerator, called e-linac, that would reconstruct the reactions that took place after the Big Bang. The e-linac design uses SCRF cavities similar to those the ILC will use.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: Canada, e-linac, SRF technology, TRIUMF
30 July 2009From 25 to 26 June, about 40 attendees gathered at the Industrial and Labor Relations Conference Center at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, to attend a workshop on the Cornell Electron Storage Ring Test Accelerator programme and to discuss R&D progress on the damping rings and electron clouds. It was the first dedicated workshop for interested and participating researchers, students, and physicists to talk about the state of the CesrTA project since its debut last year.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: CesrTA, Cornell University, damping ring, electron cloud
23 July 2009Imagine a world existing parallel to our world that we practically do not perceive at all. Some scientific theories suggest that such a world exists, but nobody has ever seen it. With unprecedented accuracy, the ALPS (Any Light Particle Search) experiment is now searching for particles from such a world. In case it does exist, this would immediately support new theory models like string theory and also explain unresolved phenomena like dark matter and dark energy.
Category: Around the World | Tagged: ALPS, HEAR, WISP
