Barbara Warmbein | 5 November 2009Even though University of Oregon professor and Americas regional contact for the ILC physics and detectors studies Jim Brau had specifically invited a young audience to his public lecture on 1 October in the University of Albuquerque, he thought of teenagers and university students rather than seven–year–olds. But Brau gave particle physics one of its youngest fans — little Abigail Zwartz was so gripped by his talk that she took notes eagerly and even presented them in school the next day.
Category: Feature | Tagged: outreach, public event, public lecture
Barbara Warmbein | 29 October 2009The idea sounds simple enough: collect all the data that exist in the world on cavities – nine-cell TESLA-style cavities, to be precise – including all tests, manufacturers and achieved gradients and merge it into a common format so that all cavity professionals around the world can extract the data they need to compare cavity performance and learn. Anyone who has ever set up a database and tried to merge existing data sets into one knows: it's not that easy. However, the ILC's accelerator experts have just decided that they will all use a database system developed by DESY to set up the world's first global cavity database.
Category: Feature | Tagged: cavity database, DESY
Perrine Royole-Degieux | 22 October 2009Just after the ILC concept detector validation report was released, the CALICE (Calorimeter for the linear collider experiment) Collaboration met from 16 to 18 September in Lyon, France. This meeting was the place of lively discussions on the most recent test beam results and strategies for the R&D and studies for the future as the collaboration is entering now a crucial and intense new phase. It was the most attended CALICE meeting ever and nearly all participating countries were represented.
Category: Feature | Tagged: CALICE
15 October 2009Since beginning his career in 1986, SLAC senior scientist and project manager for FACET Andrei Seryi has worked at five labs in three countries, with the last 10 years at SLAC. In this decade, Seryi has led international collaborations to design and build linear accelerator experimental facilities, all while continuing his accelerator research and design projects at SLAC.
Category: Feature | Tagged: ATF2, SLAC
Barbara Warmbein | 8 October 2009The new group for linear collider detector development at CERN is less than a year old, but it is growing fast: a number of students and fellows are already working on simulations, and as of next year there will be funds for actual hardware development. The linear collider detector R&D group (LCD) is led by Lucie Linssen. As a group based at CERN, home of the Compact Linear Collider study CLIC, its main focus is on detectors that record the collisions that CLIC would produce. At three TeV these have a much higher energy than the 500-GeV collisions at the ILC, higher backgrounds and very different timing: whereas there are 340 nanoseconds between two particles bunches colliding in the ILC, at CLIC the plan is to have electron-positron collisions every half a nanosecond.
Category: Feature | Tagged: detector development, LCD
1 October 2009At SLAC, accelerator physicists Chris Adolphsen and Chris Nantista are working on one point that has proven to be particularly prickly: figuring out how to provide the accelerator with the power needed to drive the machine's high-energy particle collisions.
Category: Feature | Tagged: coaxial tap off, klystron, SLAC
Barbara Warmbein | 24 September 2009The last two weeks were two of the most important (and intense) weeks for accelerator specialists working on the ILC. After a long period of preparation and a series of first tests, they have just finished a period of successfully running the superconducting linear accelerator FLASH at DESY under ILC-like conditions to demonstrate that a long train of electron bunches with high charge can be produced in and travel through the accelerator – and stay there, too. After the ILC-like run, which ended on Monday after long day and night shifts in the control room, FLASH will receive a major upgrade to improve capabilities and performance for the users of the laser light generated by FLASH.
Category: Feature | Tagged: DESY, FLASH
Perrine Royole-Degieux | 24 September 2009For the third time, the NewsLine team conducted a survey this summer. Who are our readers? Are they satisfied with the content? The survey says that you read us more often, that you are generally satisfied with the balance of the subjects and that you are enthusiastic about NewsLine's new thematic issues. However you would like to see more science and expect more stories about the connections between the ILC and other particle physics or accelerator projects.
Category: Feature | Tagged: survey
Barbara Warmbein | 17 September 2009ILD and SiD, two of the three detector concepts that submitted Letters of Intent, have been recommended for validation to Research Director Sakue Yamada by the International Detector Advisory Group (IDAG), chaired by Michel Davier. At their recent meeting in Hamburg, the ILC's Steering Committee endorsed the IDAG recommendations. This means that the R&D collaborations working on detector technologies and prototypes for the two ILC detector concepts ILD, the International Large Detector concept, and SiD, the Silicon Detector Design Study, will continue under full steam in their work towards the best design for detectors to understand collisions at the future ILC. The third detector concept that submitted an LOI, called '4th', was not validated. However, IDAG recommended that R&D on dual readout calorimetry done for 4th in a collaboration of many institutes should be supported in view of its potential for higher energy colliders.
Category: Feature | Tagged: IDAG, ILC, LOI, SiD
Rika Takahashi | 10 September 2009One of the most important subject in future high-energy experiments is to search and investigate the Higgs particle – the last missing piece of the Standard Model. Another important subject is the investigation of physics beyond the Standard Model such as supersymmetry. From 31 August to 3 September, the first “GRACE school”, the school for one of the important tools for quests in high-energy physics, was held at KEK in Tsukuba, Japan in cooperation with Kogakuin University.
Category: Feature | Tagged: GRACE, KEK, school, Tsukuba
