The European Spallation Source (ESS) is a European project with 13 members states and two host states. In this talk, Mats Lindroos will give examples of the science that will be done at ESS both in applied physics and fundamental physics. He will speak about the in-kind model, which made it possible to build this facility on a greenfield site in a country without any previous experience of much of the required technology.

Also reviewed will be the status of the project with beam on target planned for 2025 and the start of the full user programme in 2027.

Mats Lindroos has a PhD in subatomic physics from Chalmers University of technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, and since 2014, is adjunct professor at Lund’s university. He worked at CERN from 1993–2009 starting as a research fellow at the ISOLDE facility and from 1995 as a staff member in the CERN accelerator sector. He has among other tasks been responsible for PS Booster operation and technical coordination of the CERN ISOLDE facility. He has also been project leader of several CERN projects and had leading roles in several EC-supported design studies for future nuclear physics and neutrino facilities. Mats co-authored a book in 2009 on a future neutrino beam concept, beta-beams. Since 2009 he has been head of the accelerator division and sub-project leader at the European Spallation Source ERIC (ESS) in Lund.

The post An insight into the European Spallation Source appeared first on CERN Courier.

This webinar will give a high-level overview of how scientists can model particle accelerators using Sirepo, an open-source scientific computing gateway.

The speaker, Jonathan Edelen, will work through examples using three of Sirepo’s applications that best highlight the different modelling regimes for simulating a free-electron laser.

Jonathan Edelen, president, earned a PhD in accelerator physics from Colorado State University, after which he was selected for the prestigious Bardeen Fellowship at Fermilab. While at Fermilab he worked on RF systems and thermionic cathode sources at the Advanced Photon Source. Currently, Jon is focused on building advanced control algorithms for particle accelerators including solutions involving machine learning.

The post End-to-end simulation of particle accelerators using Sirepo appeared first on CERN Courier.

This year, SLAC celebrates its remarkable past while continuing its quest for a bright future. This presentation takes a look at how it all started with the lab’s two-mile-long linear accelerator and accompanying groundbreaking discoveries in particle physics; explores how the lab’s scientific mission has evolved over time to include many disciplines ranging from X-ray science to cosmology; and discusses the most exciting perspectives for future research, from developing new quantum technology to pushing the frontiers of our understanding of the universe on its largest scales.

JoAnne Hewett is a world-class theoretical physicist with well over 100 publications in theoretical high-energy physics. Her research probes the fundamental nature of space, matter and energy, where she most enjoys devising experimental tests for preposterous theoretical ideas. She is best known for her work on the possible existence of extra spatial dimensions. She has twice been a member of the HEPAP advisory panel and made major contribution to the recent Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (“P5”) plan, which defines US high-energy physics research priorities for the next 10 years.

Since joining the SLAC faculty in 1994, JoAnne has served in key leadership roles here at SLAC, including head of the theoretical physics group, deputy director of the Science Directorate and Director of SLAC’s Elementary Particle Physics (EPP) Division. During her tenure as EPP Division director, JoAnne aligned the program with the highest P5 priorities by establishing a neutrino theory program and extending SLAC’s experimental efforts work in accelerator-based neutrino physics and neutrinoless double-beta decay. She was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2008 and named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2009, and served as chair of the American Physical Society’s Division of Particles & Fields in 2016.

The post SLAC at 60: past, present, future appeared first on CERN Courier.

The worldwide interest in axions and other weakly interacting slim particles (WISPs) as constituents of a dark sector of nature has strongly increased over the last years. A vibrant community is developing, constructing and operating corresponding experiments, so that most promising parameter regions will be probed within the next 15 years.

Many of these approaches rely on WISPs converting to photons. At DESY in Hamburg, larger-scale projects are pursued: the “light-shining-through-a-wall” experiment, ALPS II in the HERA tunnel, will start data taking soon. The solar helioscope BabyIAXO is nearly ready to start construction, while the dark matter haloscope MADMAX is in the prototyping phase.

This webinar will introduce the physics cases and focus on the axion search activities ongoing at DESY.

Axel Lindner was working in accelerator-based particle physics, astroparticle physics and management before he engaged in WISP searches in 2007 as the spokesperson of the ALPS I experiment. Since 2018 he has been leading a new experimental group at DESY in Hamburg in charge of realizing non-accelerator-based particle physics experiments on-site. Axel has been a member of the MADMAX and IAXO collaborations and spokesperson of ALPS II since 2012.

The post The axion search programme at DESY appeared first on CERN Courier.

The cryogenic infrastructure of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is the most complex helium refrigeration system of all the world’s research facilities.

The operation of the LHC’s cryogenic system was initiated in 2008 after reception testing and a first cool down to 1.9 K. This webinar will cover information on the design, operational experiences and main challenges linked to the accelerator, along with the physics requirements.

During the first stage, the operation team had to learn about the responsivity and limitations of the system. They then had to manage stable operation by maintaining the necessary conditions for the superconducting magnets, RF cavities, electrical feed boxes, power links and detector devices, thus contributing to the physics programme and the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012.

One of the most challenging parameters impacting the cryogenics was the beam-induced heat load that was taken up, beginning during the second operation period (Run 2) of the LHC in 2015 with increased beam parameters. A complicated optimisation of the configuration of the cryogenic system was successfully applied to cope with these requirements.

Run 3 (preparation for which started in 2020) required the handling of several hundred magnet training quenches towards the nominal beam energy for physics production.

Now, after several years of operational experience with steady state and transient handling, the cryogenic system is being optimised to provide the necessary refrigeration, whilst incorporating the all-important aspect of energy preservation.

In conclusion, there will be a brief discussion of the next four years of operation.

Krzysztof Brodzinski is a senior staff member in the cryogenics group at the technology department at CERN. He is a mechanical engineer with a specialisation in refrigeration equipment, and graduated from Cracow University of Technology in Poland. Krzysztof  joined the LHC cryogenic design team in 2001, has been a member of the cryogenic operation team since 2009 and in 2019 was mandated as a section leader of the cryogenic operation team for the LHC, ATLAS and CMS. He is also involved in the engineering of the cryogenic system for the HiLumi LHC RF deflecting cavities project, as well as participating in the ongoing FCC cryogenics study.

The post The LHC cryogenics and its adaptation to the operational parameters for beams, related physics and energy preservation appeared first on CERN Courier.

This webinar is focused on the technology of the superconducting magnets used in the LHC. After reviewing the equations for an electromagnet, we show how superconductivity enables much larger magnetic fields in very compact devices, thanks to the possibility of increasing the current density in the windings by more than two order of magnitudes with respect to resistive conductors. We then outline the development of superconducting accelerator magnets from the ISR quadrupoles, up to the LHC and beyond.

We conclude by describing the successive increases of LHC energy since 2008 up to the 6.8 TeV per beam recently achieved, and show how the control of field imperfections has been an essential element for reaching the ultimate luminosity.

Ezio Todesco was born in Bologna Italy, where he got a PhD in physics. In the 90’s, after a master thesis at CERN, he worked at the Italian national institute of nuclear physics (INFN) on topics related to nonlinear dynamics of particle accelerators, and long-term stability in the planned Large Hadron Collider. He joined the magnet group at CERN in 1998, and has been in charge of the field quality follow-up of the LHC main dipoles and quadrupole during the five-year-long magnet production. After the completion of the production phase, he has been in charge of the magnetic field model of the LHC, following the initial commissioning and the successive energy increases up to 13 TeV centre of mass. Then, he has been involved in the studies of the LHC luminosity upgrade, and he leads the interaction region magnets for HL-LHC since the beginning of the project in 2015.

The post Superconducting magnets: an enabling technology for the discovery of the Higgs boson appeared first on CERN Courier.

This webinar, presented by Frank Gerigk, will provide an overview of the LHC RF system, its superconducting cavities and RF power system. It also introduce the changes, which will be implemented to accelerate the high-intensity beams of the HL-LHC era.

Join this webinar to:
• Learn about the technology that accelerates LHC protons from 450 GeV to 7 TeV.
• Appreciate the development of the superconducting cavities used in the LHC.
• Understand how the LHC system will be modified for HL-LHC and how crab cavities will increase the number of collisions.

Frank Gerigk is the leader of the Radio Frequency (RF) Group at CERN. After graduating at the Technical University Berlin in 1999, he came to CERN as a fellow to work on RF and beam dynamics for linear accelerators. In 2002, he became staff member at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the UK, continuing with beam dynamics and focussing on halo development in hadron beams. After his return to CERN in 2005, Frank joined the RF group and soon became responsible for the Linac4 RF cavities. He became section leader for Linac RF in 2012, and then for Superconducting RF in 2018. Since 2020 he has been leading the RF group in the new Systems Department.

The post RF technology for LHC and HL-LHC appeared first on CERN Courier.

Multi-bend achromat (MBA) lattices have initiated a fourth generation for storage-ring light sources with orders of magnitude increase in brightness and transverse coherence. A few MBA rings have been built, and many others are in design or construction worldwide, including upgrades of APS and ALS in the US.

The HMBA (hybrid MBA), developed for the successful ESRF–EBS MBA upgrade has proven to be very effective in addressing the nonlinear dynamics challenges associated with pushing the emittance toward the diffraction limit. The evolution of the HMBA ring designs will be described in this seminar. The new designs are consistent with the breaking of the lattice periodicity found in traditional circular light sources, inserting dedicated sections for efficient injection and additional emittance damping.

Techniques developed for high-energy physics rings to mitigate nonlinear dynamics challenges associated with breaking periodicity at collision points were applied in the HMBA designs for the injection and damping sections. These techniques were also used to optimise the individual HMBA cell nonlinear dynamics. The resulting HMBA can deliver the long-sought diffraction limited source while maintaining the temporal and transverse stability of third-generation light sources due to the long lifetime and traditional off-axis injection enabled by nonlinear dynamics optimisation, thus improving upon the performance of rings now under construction.

Pantaleo Raimondi, professor at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, research technical manager, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and previously director, Accelerator and Source Division, ESRF.

The post Toward a diffraction limited storage-ring-based X-ray source appeared first on CERN Courier.

ITER has now reached the stage where about half of the large magnet components have arrived on site and many more are nearing completion at manufacturing locations distributed throughout the ITER partners. Although we still have several years of challenging on-site assembly ahead, the acceptance tests and first-of-a-kind assembly are teaching us a lot about the magnet quality and possible improvements for future tokamaks.

The webinar, presented by Neil Mitchell, will summarise the present status of manufacturing and assembly. Neil will then chose three areas, critical to magnet and tokamak performance, to describe in more detail:

1. Development of Nb₃Sn strands for fusion applications started in the 1980s and the selection of the material for the Toroidal and Central Solenoid Coils in the first phase of ITER 1988–1991 was a key driver of the overall tokamak parameters. The development, qualification and procurement, both before and after the decision to use it, gives us an unusual opportunity to look at the implementation of a novel technology in its entirety, with the expected and unexpected problems we encountered and how they were solved – or tolerated.

2. High-voltage insulation in superconducting magnets is a frequently overlooked area that demands many new technologies. It is the area in the ITER magnets that has created the most quality issues on magnet acceptance and is clearly an area where more engineering attention is required.

3. The need for improvements in overall integration of the magnets into the tokamak, and in particular maintainability and repairability, is being demonstrated as we assemble components into the cryostat. The assembly is proceeding well in terms of quality but at the same time, the complexity shows that for a nuclear power plant, we need improvements.

After completing his PhD at Cambridge University on the fluid mechanics of turbomachinery, Neil Mitchell entered the nuclear fusion world in 1981 during the completion of the JET tokamak, and participated extensively in the early superconducting strand and conductor development programme of the EU in the 1980s, as well as in the design/manufacturing of several small copper-magnet-based magnetic fusion devices, including COMPASS at UKAEA. He was involved in the prototype manufacturing and testing of the superconductors that eventually became the main building blocks of the ITER magnets, and participated in the development and first tests of facilities such as Fenix at LLNL and Sultan at PSI. He has filled several positions within the ITER project after joining as one of the founder members in 1988, in particular, as the section leader for the ITER conductor in the 1990s with the highly successful construction and test of the CSMC in Japan and TFMC in Europe, and then after as division head responsible for the magnet procurement. He was responsible for finalising the magnet design, negotiating the magnet in-kind procurement agreements with the ITER Home Institutes and direct contracts, following and assisting the industrial production qualification and ramp up in multiple suppliers in EU, Japan, Korea, China, US and Russia. The ITER conductor production was completed in 2016 and now with the completion of the first-of-kind magnets, the delivery to the site of several coils and the placement of the first PF coil in the cryostat, he is working as an advisor to the ITER director. He is deeply involved in problem solving in the interfaces to the ITER on-site construction as the ITER magnets are delivered, contributing to the magnet control and commissioning plans, and advising the EU on the design of a next-generation fusion reactor.

The post Overview of the ITER project, and our variable experiences in the development of some critical components of the magnets appeared first on CERN Courier.

Future scientific breakthroughs in high-energy physics will require unprecedented levels of international engagement, building on the successful model of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Joe Lykken, Fermilab deputy director for research, will describe how Fermilab is moving forward rapidly with CERN and other international partners to realise this vision.

The questions under scrutiny range from the nature of the Higgs field to the question of whether neutrinos play a role in the matter-antimatter asymmetry observed in the universe. PIP-II, an upgrade to the Fermilab accelerator complex that includes a leading-edge superconducting linear accelerator, is already under construction, with major “in-kind” contributions and expertise from partners in India, Italy, the UK, France and Poland. PIP-II will enable the world’s most intense beam of neutrinos for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE), which will deploy 70,000 tonnes of liquid argon detectors in a deep underground site 1300 km from Fermilab. DUNE was formulated as an international project from the start, and now includes more than a thousand collaborators from 30 countries. Two large prototype detectors for DUNE have been successfully constructed and tested at the CERN Neutrino Platform. DUNE will have remarkable capabilities to determine how the properties of neutrinos have shaped our universe. At the same time, Fermilab has been developing and building next-generation superconducting magnets that will be deployed in the HL-LHC accelerator at CERN, and is the US lead for ambitious upgrades to the CMS experiment for the HL-LHC era. These technological capabilities will also make Fermilab an important partner for the proposed Future Circular Collider.

Joseph Lykken is Fermilab’s deputy director of research and leads the Fermilab Quantum Institute. A distinguished scientist at the laboratory, Lykken was a former member of the Theory Department, researching string theory and phenomenology, and is a member of the CMS experiment on the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. He received his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has previously worked for the Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics and the University of Chicago. Lykken began his tenure at Fermilab in 1989. He is a former member of the High Energy Physics Advisory Panel, which advises both the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, and served on the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel, developing a road map for the next 20 years of US particle physics. Lykken is a fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

The post Fermilab: a future built on international engagement appeared first on CERN Courier.

Three expert panellists will introduce the motivation for and status of the proposed Future Circular Collider at CERN, followed by a discussion and live questions from the audience, moderated by CERN Courier editor Matthew Chalmers.

» Accelerator physicist and FCC study leader Michael Benedikt (CERN/Vienna University of Technology) will report on the status and scope of the FCC Innovation Study, a European Union-funded project to assess the technical and financial feasibility of a 100 km electron-positron and proton-proton collider in the Geneva region.

» Experimental particle physicist Beate Heinemann (DESY/Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg) will explain how the Higgs boson opens a new window on fundamental physics, and why a post-LHC collider is essential to explore this and other hot topics such as flavour physics.

» Theoretical physicist Matthew McCullough (CERN) will explore the potential of a future circular collider to address the dark sector of the universe, and explain the importance of striving for the highest energies possible.

Michael Benedikt (left) completed his PhD on medical accelerators as a member of the CERN Proton-Ion Medical Machine Study group. He joined CERN’s accelerator operation group in 1997, where he headed different sections before becoming deputy group leader from 2006 to 2013. From 2008 to 2013, he was project leader for the accelerator complex for the MedAustron hadron therapy in Austria, and since 2013 he has led the Future Circular Collider Study at CERN.

Beate Heinemann (middle) completed her PhD at the University of Hamburg in 1999 in experimental particle physics at the HERA collider in Hamburg. She became a lecturer at the University of Liverpool in 2003, a professor at UC Berkeley in 2006 and a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. She was deputy spokesperson of the ATLAS collaboration from 2013 to 2017, and since 2016 she is a leading scientist at DESY and W3 professor at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg.

Matthew Mccullough (right) is a senior staff member in the CERN Theory Department. He completed his undergraduate and PhD degrees at the University of Oxford, followed by postdocs at MIT and CERN. His research interests cover physics beyond the Standard Model, from the origins of the Higgs boson to the nature of dark matter.

The post Future Circular Collider: what, why and how? appeared first on CERN Courier.

Quantum technologies have the potential to revolutionise science and society, but are still in their infancy. In recent years, the growing importance and the potential impact of quantum technology development has been highlighted by increasing investments in R&D worldwide in both academia and industry.

Cutting-edge research in quantum systems has been performed at CERN for many years to investigate the many open questions in quantum mechanics and particle physics. However, only recently, the different ongoing activities in quantum computing, sensing communications and theory have been brought under a common strategy to assess the potential impact on future CERN experiments.

This webinar, presented by Alberto Di Meglio, will introduce the new CERN Quantum Technology Initiative, give an overview of the Laboratory’s R&D activities and plans in this field, and give examples of the potential impact on research. It will also touch upon the rich international network of activities and how CERN fosters research collaborations.

Alberto Di Meglio is the head of CERN openlab in the IT Department at CERN and co-ordinator of the CERN Quantum Technology Initiative. Alberto is an aerospace engineer (MEng) and electronic engineer (PhD) by education and has extensive experience in the design, development and deployment of distributed computing and data infrastructures and software services for both commercial and research applications.

He joined CERN in 1998 as data centre systems engineer. In 2004, he took part in the early stages of development of the High-Energy Physics Computing Grid. From 2010 to 2013, Alberto was project director of the European Middleware Initiative (EMI), a project responsible for developing and maintaining most of the software services powering the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid.

Since 2013, Alberto has been leading CERN openlab, a long-term initiative to organise public–private collaborative R&D projects between CERN, academia and industry in ICT, computer and data science, covering many aspects of today’s technology, from heterogenous architecture and distributed computing to AI and quantum technologies.

The post The CERN Quantum Technology Initiative appeared first on CERN Courier.

Besides the intrinsic worth of the knowledge that it generates, particle physics often acts as a trailblazer in developing cutting-edge technologies in the fields of accelerators, detectors and computing. These technologies, and the human expertise associated with them, find applications in a variety of areas, including the biomedical field, and can have a societal impact going way beyond their initial scope and expectations.

This webinar will introduce the knowledge-transfer goals of CERN, give an overview of the Laboratory’s medical-applications-related activities and give examples of the impact of CERN technologies on medtech: from hadrontherapy to medical imaging, flash radiotherapy, computing and simulation tools. It will also touch upon the challenges of transferring the technologies and know-how from CERN to the medtech industry and medical research.

Dr Manuela Cirilli is the deputy group leader of CERN’s Knowledge Transfer (KT) group, whose mission is to maximise the impact of CERN on society by creating opportunities for the transfer of the Laboratory’s technologies and know-how to fields outside particle physics. Manuela leads the Medical Applications section of the KT group and chairs the CERN Medical Applications Project Forum. She has an academic background in particle physics and science communication. In 1997, she started working on the NA48 experiment at CERN, designed to measure CP violation in the kaon system. In 2001, she began working on the construction, commissioning and calibration of the precision muon chambers of the ATLAS experiment at the LHC, until she joined CERN’s KT group in 2010.

In parallel to her career, Manuela has been actively engaging in science communication and popularisation since the early 2000s.

The post From CERN technologies to medical applications appeared first on CERN Courier.

This webinar will provide an overview of the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL–LHC) upgrade project with highlights of the main challenges and technical innovations.

Presented by Oliver Brüning, the webinar will cover:

• An introduction to the HL–LHC project.
• An overview of the challenges of a high-energy, high-luminosity hadron collider.
• An outline of the performance reach in HE colliders over the next two decades.

Dr Oliver Brüning is the project leader for the HL–LHC project, an upgrade project to the LHC that is scheduled to finish its implementation by 2026. Oliver has a background in accelerator design, beam dynamics and machine operation. He started his career in accelerator physics at DESY where he worked on non-linear beam dynamics studies for HERA and was part of the initial commissioning team of the HERA accelerator. He joined CERN in 1995 and became part of the LHC design team just before the formal LHC approval by the CERN council. Up to 2012, he was working on the design and commissioning of the LHC and from 2005 until 2015 he served as head of the CERN accelerator theory group. Since 2008 he has been co-ordinating the LHeC accelerator system studies and was the deputy project leader for the HL–LHC project between 2010–2020.

The post The High–Luminosity Large Hadron Collider Upgrade Project appeared first on CERN Courier.