About thirty scientists from around the world attended the ATF welcome party.

In Japan, springtime is the start of the new year for schools and offices, and spring without an entrance ceremony is unimaginable. A lot of freshmen begin their new career in new places at this time of year. KEK meets with new companies. In celebration, the Accelerator Test Facility team has a new-comer welcome party.

ATF was constructed in 1997 at KEK. The facility aims to study the technical challenges of ultra-narrow emmittance. A lot of accelerator physicists around the world do research using ATF and test the performance of their equipment in make-shift operations. A team of such international accelerator physicists held the welcome party in front of the second container of ATF on 9 May. About thirty scientists attended the festivities, and each one brought a favorite food.

"It was fantastic," said Sanjay Chouksey and Kamal Kumar Pant who enjoyed fried noodles with sauce (yakisoba). As physicists at Raja Ramanna Centre for Advanced Technology (RRCAT) in India since April, the gathering gave Chouksey and Pant the chance to meet other ATF colleagues. "It was the first opportunity to meet other team members of ATF. I made friends with a lot of them, and I think this kind of party is a
good way to get to know each other outside the lab," Chouksey said. Liu Shengguang also stressed the positive effect that such a party can have for an experiment. He belongs to Institute of High Energy Physics Chinese Academy of Science (IHEP) in China and if familiar with welcome parties. "When we are studying at the lab, we mainly talk about our research; however any topic is welcomed today. I wish I could attend all of these kinds of parties."

From its global aspects to being an active group in particle physics, several aspects about ATF appeal to researchers from all around the globe. "It is a great thing for me to see wonderful things taking place in an international collaborative framework like ATF in which all countries participate," Kumar said. Shengguang had another reason for choosing ATF. "I chose ATF because it is an active research group in
the accelerator field," Shengguang said.

A graduate student at Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS), Philippe Doublet was sent by LAL-Orsey to KEK for an internship. "My goal is to get involved in the ILC," he said. "I think that ATF is one of the best facilities to work on experiments related to the ILC." The ILC is also on Kamal’s mind as he does his ATF research. "India has not participated in the ILC formally yet, but we hope it will soon be," he said.

Through this party, the scientists seem to gain a better understanding for each other. As the research pushes forward with future studies, such good relations will be useful.

-- Nobuko Kobayashi, KEK