Director’s Corner 2 October 2008 Barry Barish Achieving tiny beam spot sizes with ATF2 The ILC’s beams pass through each accelerating element once before they are directed to collide with the beam travelling in the opposite direction. This poses the two main challenges in the ILC: to achieve a very high gradient in the accelerator […]
Accelerator community communicates
On Wednesday, 24 September, KEK held a symposium entitled “Starting up the world’s most powerful accelerators: LHC and J-PARC” in Tokyo. This symposium was the second one in a series of symposiums aiming for gaining more understanding of accelerator science. The main audience of this symposium was the industry. “We would like to place an […]
Science Fiction meets Science Non-Fiction
Group picture taken at KEK. On 18 and 19 August, a total of 38 leading Japanese creators, including science-fiction and fantasy writers, animation movie directors, comic artists, illustrators, and photographers, visited J-PARC (Japan Proton Accelerator Complex) in Tokai-village and KEK Tsukuba campus. This visit was coordinated by Junpei Fujimoto, a KEK scientist who is active […]
Enjoying cool science
On the first day of a three-day weekend with a Japanese national holiday, Day of the Sea, about 300 people changed their destination from seaside to science. They enjoyed talks on cool science on a hot Saturday afternoon in Tokyo at a symposium called “Denshi-koraidah ga toku ucyu sousei no puzzle (Solving the puzzle of […]
A personal tribute to Yoji Totsuka
Director’s Corner 17 July 2008 Barry Barish A personal tribute to Yoji Totsuka High-energy physics lost a giant in our field – and I lost a very good personal friend – when Yoji Totsuka, the former Director General of KEK, died of cancer at the age of 66 last week. I would like to pay […]
ATF shuts down for summer
On 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. “We have this kind of party […]
Globalising R&D
Director’s Corner 15 May 2008 Barry Barish Globalising R&D The coordination of superconducting radiofrequency R&D is central to the Global Design Effort’s mission of bringing the design for the ILC to the point we can make a robust proposal to our governments. Our efforts are becoming globalised more rapidly than we had envisioned. To achieve […]
The art of decision making: STF phase-2 cavity choice
Director’s Corner 1 May 2008 Barry Barish The art of decision making: STF phase-2 cavity choice One of the more difficult problems in conducting large-scale science projects is the process of decision making. The ability to make good decisions in a timely way can be an enormous challenge and can differentiate good management from not-so-good […]
Polishing the safety standards
Superconducting cavities are the core, the heartbeat of the International Linear Collider. Their inside will be polished to literally make them sparkle without any speck of dust or crack because these could cause a decline of performance of the accelerator. There are several methods to polish the inside of the cavities, and electropolishing (EP) is […]
Meet Kazuko Toyomura
Kazuko Toyomura has been assisting KEK’s ILC activity for four years, and since Sakue Yamada was appointed as a Research Director last October, her involvement has become even deeper. “She is not ‘officially’ assigned as secretary for the International Detector Advisory Group (IDAG), but she has been taking care of my activities,” says Yamada. Toyomura […]