The European Physical Society Accelerator Group announced that Shin-ichi Kurokawa, professor emeritus at KEK, Japan, and vice president of Cosylab, was awarded the Rolf Widerøe Prize, which is given to an individual for his or her outstanding work in the particle accelerator field. Kurokawa has been working in the accelerator field for 37 years. “I […]
News from KEK: Damage caused by the recent earthquake and recovery prospects
Reports on the main damage and the recovery plan at KEK after Japan's major earthquake of 11 March and its consequences ever since
— by Atsuto Suzuki
Electron beam welding machine arrives at KEK
View more images of the machine delivery.
Power recovery at KEK, Japan
KEK continues to work for the ILC
Natural disasters have not deterred KEK from looking to the future of the ILC
Almost four weeks have passed since the worst disaster that has ever hit northeast Japan. KEK has been evaluating damage to its facilities and buildings and is planning to release the official disaster report soon. Recovery activities that do not require much electricity consumption have begun already as KEK employees work to return operations to […]
KEK earthquake report
KEK employees survey the damage to their laboratory after enduring the biggest earthquake in Japan's history
As many people in the world already know, Japan is currently dealing with its worst disaster: Japan’s biggest earthquake on record and the fourth largest in history. Thousands of lives have been lost. Tens of thousands people are forced to evacuate and live without basic necessities. Hundreds of thousands are still missing. KEK laboratory in […]
A scientist’s report on the earthquake and KEK’s accelerator test facility
The earthquake takes its toll on one of KEK's hallmark experiments
A huge 9.0-magnitude earthquake descended on us at about 14:46 on 11 March 2011 Japan standard time. The ATF (accelerator test facility) was operating for ATF2 beam-tuning and we were going to have a background study for the interaction point beam size monitor. Some of us, including me, were working in the electronics hut of […]
FALC discusses future programmes in particle physics
The Funding Agencies for Large Colliders (FALC), an informal committee of particle physics funding agency representatives, held their eighteenth meeting at SLAC on 22 January 2010. I previously reported on an interesting exchange meeting between the Global Design Effort Executive Committee and FALC that took advantage of the fact that their meeting immediately followed our […]
Many small klystrons for operability and flexibility
The design of the International Linear Collider has recently changed from featuring two tunnels to just one. This means many aspects of the tunnel design have to be re-thought – including the distribution of the radiofrequency power, the acceleration technology of choice for the ILC’s superconducting cavities. In addition to the klystron cluster scheme, the […]
From KEK: Japanese 9-cell SCRF cavity meets ILC specification
Designing and fabricating an optimal accelerating cavity is not so simple. There are two important parameters scientists are looking for: the gradient of 35 megavolts per meter (MV/m) and the quality factor (Q0) of greater than 0.8×1010. A Japanese cavity now fulfilled those requirements for the first time at a test which took place at […]