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Tag archive: Germany

Spin doctors

| 8 May 2008 Theorists and experimentalists aren't always of the same opinion. There is one thing on which opinions aren't polarised though, and that is polarisation. Polarisation is a special characteristic of a particle bunch – a sort of measure of the particles’ combined spin – that, when studied in the right sort of detector at the ILC, is supposed to give clues and answers on phenomena like the Higgs, supersymmetry or searches for new physics and extra dimensions. To study the collisions, and also to understand polarisation better, a few groups of a total of about 30 people around the world are designing and building polarimeters that measure the degree of polsarisation of the particles before and after collisions. They have just had their first 'collaboration' meeting at DESY in Zeuthen, near Berlin, Germany. Category: Around the World | Tagged: , , , , , ,

Learning to accelerate

| 10 April 2008 When your day job means measuring the F2 structure function of the proton or hunting for the Higgs boson, you don't usually stop and wonder how exactly the ingredients of your events reached their collision point. Some 30 junior researchers have just learnt to do just this: at the recent 'Terascale Accelerator School', the first of its kind organised in Germany and a project of the Helmholtz Alliance, physics students turned into nuts-and-bolts accelerator experts for a week. Category: Around the World | Tagged: , , , ,

German Research Minister launches XFEL

| 7 June 2007 On Tuesday 5 June, the German Federal Minister of Education and Research Annette Schavan officially launched the European X-ray laser facility XFEL. Using essentially the same uperconducting accelerator technology that is planned for the ILC, the 3.4-kilometre XFEL (for X-ray free-electron laser) will produce high-intensity ultra-short X-ray flashes with the properties of laser light. This will open up a whole range of new perspectives for fundamental research and for industrial users. Category: Around the World | Tagged: ,

LCWS 2007 & ILC 2007

| 7 June 2007 Hamburg put on its best face to greet the more than 600 registered guests who arrived at DESY last week for the big annual ILC get-together. Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: , , , , , ,

Germany goes Tera

| 17 May 2007 All German universities and research institutes involved in the LHC and ILC have just pocketed 25 million Euros – and the prospect of a bright future at the Terascale. A DESY-driven funding proposal for the project ‘Helmholtz Alliance: Physics at the Terascale’ was approved by the senate of the Helmholtz Association on Tuesday this week. It bundles resources and expertise in German particle physics to allow scientists to play leading roles in particular in the LHC– and of course also the ILC. Category: Around the World | Tagged: , ,