Perrine Royole-Degieux | 10 July 2008The future Director-General of CERN Rolf Heuer, currently Research Director at DESY, presented his personal vision of the future of particle physics in Europe at the ILC-ECFA meeting in Warsaw, Poland. Heuer emphasised the exciting times the community is now entering with the LHC start-up. The exploration of our mysterious "Dark Universe" is the main motivation for present and future astronomy and particle physics projects, and with the LHC and its highest collision energy ever, we are on the verge to explore it. After reviewing many possible scenarios and options for the after-LHC phase, Heuer said he hoped that particle physics research will continue with the same momentum for future projects, in particular for a future e+-e- collider. He hopes that the community will make use of these exciting times to establish a sustainable and global partnership between the labs, "of which CERN could be the catalyst."
Category: Feature | Tagged: CERN, ECFA, Heuer, ILC-ECFA
3 July 2008The partners of the 'ILC-HiGrade' proposal for the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme have just started a contract for five million Euros funding over the next four years with the European Commission. 'ILC-HiGrade' stands for 'International Linear Collider and High Gradient Superconducting RF-Cavities.' One of the main objectives of the proposal is a small serial production of accelerating cavities, superconducting components made of pure niobium for the planned International Linear Collider (ILC), that reach the high technical standards needed for the planned particle physics project. Other objectives of the ILC-HiGrade proposal are the development of a possible organisation and governance for the ILC and measures to prepare for the actual construction of the machine, including a detailed study on possible sites in Europe.
Category: Feature | Tagged: Europe, ILC HiGrade
Barbara Warmbein | 26 June 2008“Our superconducting technology group here at Cornell is doing some very fundamental R&D,” says Hasan Padamsee, physics professor at Cornell university and expert in superconducting rf technology. “Note that the stress is on the fun in fundamentals.” Students are even allowed to drill holes into cavity prototypes in order to find out what makes certain areas in the material behave differently from others. A new mapping technique, invented by Cornell's Don Hartill, Zach Conway and Eric Smith, could make it possible to locate quenches during cavity tests with just eight (instead of up to 180) thermometers.
Category: Feature | Tagged: accelerator R&D, cavity temperature mapping, Cornell University, oscillating superleak transducers, secound sound
Rika Takahashi | 19 June 2008On June 11, the executive officers of leading Japanese companies, important dignitaries, and a physics Nobel Prize winner gathered at Kasumigaseki, Tokyo, Japan to celebrate the establishment of a forum for promotion of advanced accelerator technology and science (official English name yet to be determined). The forum aims to develop the structure which will be the core of the industry- government-academia alliance to pursue R&D for next- generation accelerators. The organising committee was formed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industrial Ltd. (MHI), Toshiba, Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric Co., and KEK. Companies from across various industries, laboratories and universities
Category: Feature | Tagged: AAA, Accelerator Association Promoting Science and Technology, Japan
Rika Takahashi and Nobuko Kobayashi | 5 June 2008On the last day of May, ILC scientists and engineers enjoyed a barbecue, sushi and Ton-jiru miso soup with pork and vegetables in front of the ATF (Accelerator Test Facility at KEK) container. This gathering, called the ATF end-of-run party, has been a routine event for over ten years.
Category: Feature | Tagged: ATF, KEK
Barbara Warmbein | 29 May 2008Sometimes even pretty straightforward and remarkably logical ideas take several moves before they become a reality. Take the planned damping rings for the ILC, for example. In the ILC, compact bunches of electrons and positrons are made to collide at very high energy. In order to ensure a high rate of particle collisions, the bunches are cooled in damping rings prior to acceleration. In a cold bunch, the particles are all very close together and travelling in very nearly the same direction with very nearly the same velocity. (In a hot bunch, as in a hot pot of water, the particles are more dispersed and are all moving in different directions.)
Category: Feature | Tagged: CESR, CesrTA, Cornell University, electron cloud, United States
Barbara Warmbein | 22 May 2008Hamburg isn't exactly known for its good weather and hours of sunshine per year. So when the sun is out and nature is exploding with spring leaves and early summer blossoms, Hamburgers go to every length to spend those precious times outside. Spending a day in a conference room darkened for better presentations, hunched over microphones to listen to colleagues at the other end of the world doesn't normally rank high on the list of things to do in Hamburg when the weather is nice. Nevertheless one of the participants of last week's cost management meeting described their three days as "very enjoyable", meaning it. One has to work on the ILC to appreciate the spirit...
Category: Feature | Tagged: cost estimate, DESY
8 May 2008One of Fermilab's most distinct buildings now has a new resident. Last month, members of the CALICE collaboration moved their calorimeters into the newly renovated Meson Test Beam Facility. They will test the calorimeters with low- and high-energy particle beams during the next two years.
Category: Feature | Tagged: CALICE, Fermilab, Meson Test Beam Facility
1 May 2008The SiD detector concept community met last week at the STFC's Cosener's House in Abingdon, UK. This was the first meeting after SiD submitted its Expression of Interest (EoI) and also the first SiD Workshop outside of the Americas. Hosted jointly by the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory and Oxford University, the workshop attracted around 65 participants, mainly from the US and Europe. The focus of the meeting was on the status of the Particle Flow Algorithms (PFA) and on optimising the SiD Detector. Norman McCubbin, the head of Particle Physics division at Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, opened the workshop and welcomed the SiD community to Cosener's House. John Jaros (SLAC) then outlined the goals of the workshop in his opening talk.
Category: Feature | Tagged: Rutherford-Appleton, SiD, SiD workshop, United Kingdom
17 April 2008Being the new CERN/LHC Communicator for Germany but not having a degree in physics (I worked at the press office of the Centre for European Economic Research in Mannheim, Germany, for the past ten years), the CERN Open Day was an excellent opportunity to learn more about particle physics and "the world's largest particle physics laboratory" that I wouldn't have wanted to miss. The crowds were massive, but with the help of a press badge I managed to see a good variety of events and places.
Category: Feature | Tagged: CERN, CERN open day, LHC, LHC communication
