NewsLine

Creating polarised positron beams

Today's issue features a story from Tohru Takahashi, a particle physicist and associate professor at Hiroshima University. He is the co-author of "Big-Bang wo tsukuridase" (Making the Big-Bang), a book about the ILC.

| 3 July 2008

The PosiPol2008 workshop was held from 16 to 18 June in Hiroshima, Japan. An unfamiliar word, “PosiPol” stands for “polarised positrons”, meaning that the “spins” of positrons are aligned when they meet electrons at the centre of a linear collider. The electron beam is designed to be polarised at the ILC, but according to the […]

An alternative with many applications

| 8 November 2007

The R&D for an ILC positron source using a laser-compton scheme is ongoing around the world. The efforts in Europe and Asia complement each other. In Europe, scientists are pursuing R&D for the laser path stacking cavity, a complicated, highly sophisticated system with four mirrors. In Asia, scientists aim to accumulate experience in gamma ray […]

The power of X rays for the ILC

| 19 July 2007

Producing intense polarised positrons for the ILC is very challenging. Stability, energy, luminosity are the key words. Parallel to the baseline studies on a helical undulator-based source (see NewsLine from 19 October 2006), other groups, like the laser group at LAL (IN2P3/CNRS), Orsay (France), pursue R&D on a Compton positron source. The Orsay team recently […]

Positron Production

| 27 October 2005

Director’s Corner27 October 2005 Barry Barish Last week I discussed the recommendation from Snowmass for the baseline electron source to be used for the linear collider reference design, and today I will briefly discuss the more challenging positron source. One of the consequences of having made the choice of superconducting RF technology for the main […]