A successful test of a dressed 3.9 GHz superconducting radiofrequency cavity last week put Fermilab among an elite group that can produce cutting-edge, high-powered accelerator components. Fermilab employees need to test three more cavities before they can assemble a cryomodule for shipment to DESY for use in the laboratory’s free-electron laser accelerator. The collaboration with […]
It’s ladies’ night
Today’s issue features a story from Junpei Fujimoto, a particle simulation specialist at KEK, who is very active in ILC outreach in Japan. In Japan, several attempts are being made to bring accelerator science, such as the open house at KEK, a summer school for high school students, lectures in high schools and middle schools, […]
Learning to accelerate
When your day job means measuring the F2 structure function of the proton or hunting for the Higgs boson, you don’t usually stop and wonder how exactly the ingredients of your events reached their collision point. Some 30 junior researchers have just learnt to do just this: at the recent ‘Terascale Accelerator School’, the first […]
From SLAC Today: symmetry Magazine launches new online format
The latest issue of symmetry launches the next phase of the magazine’s development. Our readers now use the magazine in different ways, and we are reaching a much larger audience. While readers are outspoken in wanting to keep the print magazine, many of them are now more comfortable reading online. Starting from this issue, we will […]
Polishing the safety standards
Superconducting cavities are the core, the heartbeat of the International Linear Collider. Their inside will be polished to literally make them sparkle without any speck of dust or crack because these could cause a decline of performance of the accelerator. There are several methods to polish the inside of the cavities, and electropolishing (EP) is […]
A different kind of Terascale
Have you ever used a map to find an electron? Not possible, you say? Think again. Spell it slightly differently – MAPS – put it into an electromagnetic calorimeter, and you may well be able to track an electron in a calorimeter and see the single electrons in a particle shower. With a spatial granularity […]
TILC08 beyond the agenda
At the end of a productive working day, a long journey, a hard job or a rewarding week, Japanese people have a very useful phrase that expresses everything from gratitude and pride to exhaustion: Otsukare sama deshita, or simply otsukare. Even though not all participants of last week’s TILC08 meeting may be aware of the expression, all […]
SiD detector concept meeting at SLAC
The SiD detector concept collaboration met at SLAC from January 28 to 30. This meeting was planned last October at the ALCPG07 meeting at Fermilab, as part of the preparation for the Letter of Intent (LOI). Graphic from an engineering study of SiD on beamline. (credit: Marco Oriunno, SLAC) After the news about budget reductions, […]
Meet Kazuko Toyomura
Kazuko Toyomura has been assisting KEK’s ILC activity for four years, and since Sakue Yamada was appointed as a Research Director last October, her involvement has become even deeper. “She is not ‘officially’ assigned as secretary for the International Detector Advisory Group (IDAG), but she has been taking care of my activities,” says Yamada. Toyomura […]
Wise counsel for Europe
Even – or especially ? – directors cannot have their eyes everywhere. They need to gather information and be able to judge things – but how do you do this on a continent where labs can be 3,000 kilometres apart, every country has different forms of governance, and science policy and funding agencies couldn’t be […]