Barbara Warmbein | 29 March 2007When scientists take their detector prototypes to a test beam they enter a parallel world. Many basic needs are put on hold - the need for sunlight, regular meals or eight hours of sleep, for example. What counts is the beam time: you have three days, weeks or months to test your equipment, and you have to make the best of it because you might not get another chance. A team from Japan and Korea have just reached the halfway point of their time in the DESY test beam, calibrating, checking and recording data with their electromagnetic calorimeter prototype.
Category: Feature | Tagged: CALICE, DESY, detector R&D, ECal, HCal
22 March 2007While it's said that opposites attract, particle physicists are taking no chances. In hopes of learning what the universe is made of, they're preparing to build a machine that will accelerate and smash together electrons and their opposites, positrons, 14,000 times every second. Like Jefferson Lab's Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF), the proposed new machine, the International Linear Collider (ILC), is being designed to use superconducting radiofrequency (SRF) cavity technology.
Category: Feature | Tagged: cavity, CEBAF, JLab, SRF technology
Elizabeth Clements | 15 March 2007Recent results from Cornell University demonstrated that a new method of electropolishing superconducting cavities may hold promise for the International Linear Collider. For the past two years, Cornell scientists have been developing an electropolishing method that treats cavities vertically as opposed to the traditional horizontal orientation developed by KEK. Cornell recently applied this new vertical method to a nine-cell ILC cavity for the first time and achieved positive results. “This is the first step to show the viability of the new method,” says Cornell physicist Hasan Padamsee.
Category: Feature | Tagged: Cornell University, electropolishing, vertical electropolishing
Perrine Royole-Degieux | 15 March 2007Last January, engineers from the DAPNIA laboratory in Saclay France qualified a new electropolishing facility for single cell cavities. Their first electropolished cavity reaches a promising result, above 42 MV/m (megavolts per metre) of accelerating gradient. It allows them to join the global R&D effort on these cavity treatments.
Category: Feature | Tagged: accelerating gradient, cavity gradient, DAPNIA, France, Saclay
Elizabeth Clements | 8 March 2007As physicists and engineers devise ways to make the International Linear Collider perform better at a lower cost, the design evolves, sometimes with tweaks but at other times with major reconfigurations.
Category: Feature | Tagged: ILC design
Elizabeth Clements | 8 March 2007Last week on 28 February, U.S. industry members and scientists gathered at the Linear Collider Forum of America meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. to start a dialogue with congressmen and senate and house staffers about the International Linear Collider. The recent publication of the Reference Design Report made the meeting a timely venue to discuss plans to increase worldwide ILC R&D, a programme that will require participation from industry members around the globe.
Category: Feature | Tagged: LCFOA, Linear Collider Forum of America, United States
Barbara Warmbein | 1 March 2007Module 6 has had a bit of a break since we last reported on its progress (NewsLine 11 May 2006 and NewsLine 15 June 2006). It spent the last few months in DESY’s new module test stand in a brand-new building – as sparkling as new buildings in research centres get – and hasn’t been idle. Several cooling cycles and all sorts of tests over several months made sure that its creators knew the exact behaviour of all cavities, cables and couplers, the slow and fast tuners and the magnet.
Category: Feature | Tagged: DESY, FLASH, horizontal test stand, module 6
Nobuko Kobayashi | 1 March 2007An important prerequisite for building the ILC is to establish the design and manufacturing of major and vital components, such as cryomodules for the main linacs through realistic operating conditions. The Tesla Test Facility (FLASH) at DESY and Fermilab’s ILC Test Area have been pursued to play critical roles in the European and American regions to this end. KEK also aims to serve as an Asian regional center for the main linac technology, and their STF (Superconducting RF Test Facility) and R&D programs are a manifestation of its endeavour. Many members of STF from KEK are active members in the GDE and in close collaborative relationships with colleagues from DESY, INFN, Orsay, FNAL, JLab, Cornell and SLAC. Major laboratories from China, Korea, and India, have expressed their interests or have already begun interactions with the programme at STF in various forms also.
Category: Feature | Tagged: DESY, FLASH, KEK, STF, Superconducting RF Test Facility
22 February 2007In the end of January, the Laboratory for Elementary Particle Physics (LEPP) at Cornell University hosted collaborators from KEK, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory and Alfred University (an undergraduate University in New York State) to conduct electron cloud studies using the CESR storage ring. CESR is unique in that it is a “wiggler dominated” storage ring capable of storing intense beams of both electrons and positrons, singly or simultaneously.
Category: Feature | Tagged: CESR, Cornell University, damping ring, electron cloud
15 February 2007On June 15 last year, the Japanese "Federation of Diet members to promote the realisation of ILC" was formed (See NewsLine from 22 June 2006). The Diet members of the federation held a workshop with ILC researchers on 22 January 2007 in Nagatacho near Tokyo. Nobel laureate Masatoshi Koshiba and Professor Kazuo Nishimura (Kyoto University), who is a famous economist and author of the book "University students who cannot calculate fraction numbers", gave a lecture to the Diet members.
Category: Feature | Tagged: Federation of Diet members, Japan
