Barbara Warmbein | 6 March 2008What do you do when you are director of a lab and chairman of a large international committee and have been invited to different events on different continents on the same day, assuming you don't have clones? You try to attend both -- at least virtually. Albrecht Wagner, DG of DESY in Hamburg and chair of the International Committee for Future Accelerators (ICFA), gave an ICFA talk at the opening plenary of this week's TILC08 meeting that he had recorded earlier.
Category: Feature | Tagged: funding, ICFA, TILC08
1 May 2008Scientists from around the world work to develop components for future linear accelerators that use superconducting radiofrequency cavities. Research efforts should allow for a more efficient and cost-effective approach to furthering this technology.
Category: Feature | Tagged: Fermilab, plug compatibility, SRF technology
Perrine Royole-Degieux | 28 February 2008After the Large Hadron Collider, the science community agrees that particle physicists will need an electron-positron linear collider to fully understand and discover the potential new science at high energy regimes. Apart from the International Linear Collider - whose ‘cold’ accelerating technology is based on superconducting radiofrequency cavities – another variant of an electron collider, based on a warm accelerating technology is under study: the Compact Linear Collider Study (CLIC). The two teams held a meeting at CERN on 8 February to investigate the connections between the two projects and to list potential cooperative efforts on common activities.
Category: Feature | Tagged: CERN, CLIC, ILC-CLIC, ILC-CLIC collaboration
Rika Takahashi | 21 February 2008At the ILC, roughly 16,000 superconducting RF cavities made of pure niobium will accelerate electrons and positrons to the high energy of 500 GeV. Each one-metre-long cavity consists of nine cells, polished to provide micrometre-level surface smoothness and absolutely no impurities. The inside of the cavities need to literally sparkle since any surface blemishes or dust could cause them to lose their superconductivity, making them unable to sustain the electric field needed to accelerate particles. ILC scientists around the world are devoted to trying to get a higher yield rate for producing good-quality cavities by improving surface treatment methods and inspection procedures. A group of scientists from Kyoto University and KEK jointly developed the novel inspection system to take a close look at the interior surface of the cavities, and produced remarkable results.
Category: Feature | Tagged: cavity, cavity inspection, KEK, Kyoto camera, Kyoto University, superconducting cavity
Barbara Warmbein | 14 February 2008It was supposed be the wrap-up meeting of a successful accelerator physics project. However, when the news came that the EU-funded EUROTeV was going to be extended, the meeting in Frascati, Italy, from 23 to 25 January turned into both a summary and a future-planning session. “We've got another year to go and the project is as useful now as it was at the kick-off meeting in 2004,” says scientific coordinator Nick Walker from DESY. The collaboration contributed big chunks of R&D to the Reference Design Report and thinks that most of the work can prove useful for projects beyond the ILC. “With the collected EUROTeV expertise in beam dynamics, optics design, positron source R&D and much more we’re almost regarded as an institution,” adds project coordinator Eckhard Elsen.
Category: Feature | Tagged: EUROTeV
7 February 2008A global project like the ILC depends on global cooperation. The contributors are scattered all over the world. Researchers cannot simply walk down the hall to get advice from a colleague because he is likely to sit somewhere half a world away. However, there is technology that helps scientists to cover these distances virtually: discussions in internet forums and regular telephone and video conferences are part of any scientist’s everyday life.
Category: Feature | Tagged: ILD
31 January 2008With funding for ILC R&D cut this year, and the possible start of construction postponed, the ILC Citizens' Task Force could have turned their backs on the proposed project. They didn't.
Category: Feature | Tagged: citizen task force, Fermilab, United States
Elizabeth Clements | 13 December 2007I have three different routes to choose from when I drive to work in the morning. The first one is the interstate. It’s fast theoretically, but traffic and tolls can turn my 15 minute commute into 45 minutes. Back roads are another option, but the constant stop and go from traffic lights drain my gas tank. The scenic route is my third option and usually the one that I choose. This route goes slightly out of the way, but there is no traffic, tolls or stoplights. So I can drive at a relatively constant fast speed, and the rolling hills and farms along the way are relaxing. Every morning when I get into my car (usually 15 minutes later than I would like), I weigh the pros and cons and select one of these routes. Rick Lambert from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will tell you that this is a form of value engineering, and it is one way that the Global Design Effort will find ways to reduce costs for the proposed International Linear Collider.
Category: Feature | Tagged: value management
Perrine Royole-Degieux | 6 December 2007Physicists and engineers already know most of the empirical recipes to build very good accelerating cavities: highly pure niobium is essential, welding needs to be carefully controlled and surfaces undergo advanced cleaning and annealing procedures. But, as for every complex system, a lot of phenomena remain unexplained. The theoretical limits of RF superconductivity are not well known, and engineers also meet practical limitations to reach high gradients. Accelerator experts work very closely with material scientists to understand cavity properties better.
Category: Feature | Tagged: niobium
Barbara Warmbein | 29 November 2007People with big plans need time and space to make their dreams come true – assuming that they already have some money to get going. The time for the European-funded linear collider R&D consortium EUROTeV was almost up. Together with the CALICE collaboration, they were making plans for a virtual control room for next spring that would let them manage the experimental setup sitting in a testbeam at Fermilab remotely from a partitioned-off section of a corridor at DESY. This plan, along with many other tasks and plans run and made by EUROTeV people, is now reality: the European Commission extended the project by another year.
Category: Feature | Tagged: EUROTeV
