DESY and India to collaborate in advanced materials research

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-Source: Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) 

-Date issued: January 29, 2009 

-Contact: Thomas Zoufal, +49 40 8998-1666, -3613, presse@desy.de 

-Link: http://www.lightsources.org/cms/?pid=1003254 

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DESY and India to collaborate in advanced materials research

DESY has welcomed India as a new partner for a close collaboration in photon science at DESY's light sources FLASH and PETRA III. On 28 January 2009, a delegation of scientists and Government representatives from India and the DESY Directorate signed a Letter of Intent to establish a scientific collaboration in nano science, nano technology, and advanced materials research. India will have access to DESY's cutting-edge light sources and in return contribute hardware, manpower and services.

During their visit to DESY, the high-level delegation led by Professor C.N.R. Rao, Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India, discussed an Indian engagement in the world's most brilliant source for hard X-rays, PETRA III, and the soft X-ray laser FLASH.

"This is a great moment for Indian science, and the collaboration between Indian institutions and DESY will significantly add value to the excellent research being done by Indian scientists in nano science, nano technology and advanced materials. The PETRA III and FLASH facilities will open new windows for scientific enquiries and novel scientific results," said Professor Rao.

"We are delighted to welcome India as a partner in our projects PETRA III and FLASH. We are sure that Indian scientists can make important contributions to the scientific results at these light sources," said Professor Albrecht Wagner, Chairman of the DESY Board of Directors.

The Indian delegation's visit to DESY followed a meeting between India and a delegation from DESY in Bangalore in September 2008. The discussions in India and at DESY led to the following key agreements for collaboration:

In order to serve the diverse scientific interests of its scientific community, India is interested in having privileged access to the beamlines of PETRA III.

India will make substantial contributions towards hardware, manpower and other services.

The formal agreement will be signed shortly at Government level.

DESY is one of the world's leading centres for the investigation of the structure of matter. DESY develops, runs and uses accelerators and detectors for photon science and particle physics. DESY is a national research centre supported by public funds and member of the Helmholtz Association

First digital self-excited loop (SEL)

The first digital self-excited loop (SEL) for radiofrequency (rf) controls has been developed as part of the 12 GeV R&D. The SEL is of interest to the 12 GeV Project, because it can energize a cavity even if it is not on resonance. Use of an SEL would thus eliminate the cavity turn-on challenge created by the large Lorentz-force detuning seen with cavities operating at the gradients planned for 12 GeV. The demonstrator has been able to achieve phase control in closed loop over a limited detuning range during this portion of the R&D work. Further development is planned to demonstrate the final phase and amplitude control specifications for 12 GeV.

Source - JLab

Inner space, outer space: quantum space

Craig Hogan, head of the Center for Particle Astrophysics, wrote this week’s column.

“Inner space, outer space” is Fermilab’s term for the observation that everything in the universe is connected to everything else. Experiments have found that even the biggest and smallest things in the universe depend on each other in surprising, profound and sometimes subtle ways.

Fermilab’s Tevatron, the best operating microscope in the world, allows us to study inner space. The Dark Energy Survey, for which Fermilab is building a giant camera, will map quantum effects on the largest cosmic scales of outer space. Now interferometers, a new kind of instrument to detect gravitational waves, promise to scrutinize inner space and outer space at the same time in the same apparatus. They’ll possibly allow a glimpse of a new kind of big-small interconnectedness: quantum space.

Interferometers such as the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory in the U.S. and the GEO600 project in Germany use laser cavities to create a coherent quantum state that spans several kilometers. They look with extraordinary precision for tiny distortions of space--even smaller than the distances accessible by the Tevatron. Their precision is like measuring the position of Mars to within the diameter of an atom.

Interferometers were built to study gravitational radiation. But recently we realized they could also discover new physics they were not designed to detect--including phenomena at the Planck scale, the smallest fundamental interval of space and time.

Black hole physics and string theory suggest that quantum spacetime might be holographic: Our familiar three dimensions of space might be the result of a quantum theory that only has two large spatial dimensions. The third dimension emerges as time evolves: picture a two-dimensional sheet sweeping through space at the speed of light.

Such a holographic universe would have a kind of quantum blurriness in its geometry that would appear in interferometers as "holographic noise.” There are hints that this excess noise might already appear in data recorded by interferometers. We may soon have the first direct evidence for the quantum geometry of our universe and obtain a precise determination of the smallest fundamental interval of time. If so, this measurement could revolutionize our understanding of the universe, similar to the measurement of “noise” that led to the discovery of the cosmic microwave background in 1965.

Excerpted: Fermilab Today

LHC Grid Fest + Webcast

When the Large Hadron Collider comes into operation, it will begin to produce an expected 15 million gigabytes of data every year, enough information to create a 21-kilometre-high stack of CDs annually.  

On 3rd October, the Worldwide Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid consortium announce the readiness of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG), an e-infrastructure conceived and designed to support this data challenge, and with it the research of more than 9000 physicists around the globe.

"The Worldwide LHC Computing Grid is generating the technology for tomorrow's science needs. We are witnessing a unique collaboration on an international scale, with vast potential for accelerating discoveries in physics and other fields of science." Ian Bird, WLCG project leader.

Incident in the LHC - Sector 34

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Source: CERN
Content: Press Release
Date Issued: 20 September 2008
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Incident in LHC sector 34

Geneva, 20 September 2008. During commissioning (without beam) of the final LHC sector (sector 34) at high current for operation at 5 TeV, an incident occurred at mid-day on Friday 19 September resulting in a large helium leak into the tunnel. Preliminary investigations indicate that the most likely cause of the problem was a faulty electrical connection between two magnets, which probably melted at high current leading to mechanical failure. CERN[1]’s strict safety regulations ensured that at no time was there any risk to people.

A full investigation is underway, but it is already clear that the sector will have to be warmed up for repairs to take place. This implies a minimum of two months down time for LHC operation. For the same fault, not uncommon in a normally conducting machine, the repair time would be a matter of days.

Further details will be made available as soon as they are known.

Contact information:
James.Gillies@cern.ch
+ 41 22 767 4101

1 CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the world's leading laboratory for particle physics. It has its headquarters in Geneva. At present, its Member States are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. India, Israel, Japan, the Russian Federation, the United States of America, Turkey, the European Commission and UNESCO have Observer status.

CERN Opens Its Doors to the World - April 06, 2008

On 6 April 2008, CERN will open its doors to the public, offering a unique chance to visit its newest and largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), before it goes into operation later this year. This scientific instrument, the largest and most complex in the world, is installed in a 27km tunnel, 100 metres underground in the Swiss canton of Geneva and neighbouring France. CERN will open all access points around the ring for visits underground, to the tunnel and the experiment caverns. On the surface, a wide-ranging programme will be on offer, allowing people to learn about the physics for which this huge instrument is being installed, the technology underlying it, and applications in other fields.

In the LHC, particles such as protons or heavy ions will be accelerated to close to the speed of light in two tubes. At four intersection points the particles will collide at an energy never before reached in a particle accelerator to study new areas of physics that so far have not been accessible. Experiments at the LHC expect to be able to answer a number of fundamental questions, such as the origin of mass or the nature of the so-called “dark matter”. However, since the LHC will explore a new energy range, there will also be unexpected results, resulting in new questions and new physics.

On the Open Day, many visitors to CERN will be able to descend and see the LHC and its big experiments, ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb in place in their underground caverns.

A central theme apart from the LHC, its magnets and experiments, will be superconductivity, the principle on which the operation of the LHC is based. At the heart of the LHC magnets lie 7000 kilometres of superconducting cables, cooled to a temperature close to absolute zero,
which are able to conduct electricity without resistance. Spectacular experiments, exhibitions and films will introduce the public to this exciting phenomenon, visitors will be able to meet physicists to “ask an expert” and there will be the chance for an encounter with two Nobel laureates who will give lectures about their prize-winning discoveries.

Research overturns accepted notion of neutron's electrical properties

For two generations of physicists, it has been a standard belief that the neutron, an electrically neutral elementary particle and a primary component of an atom, actually carries a positive charge at its center and an offsetting negative charge at its outer edge.

The notion was first put forth in 1947 by Enrico Fermi, a Nobel laureate noted for his role in developing the first nuclear reactor. But new research by a University of Washington physicist shows the neutron's charge is not quite as simple as Fermi believed.

Using precise data recently gathered at three different laboratories and some new theoretical tools, Gerald A. Miller, a UW physics professor, has found that the neutron has a negative charge both in its inner core and its outer edge, with a positive charge sandwiched in between to make the particle electrically neutral.

"Nobody realized this was the case," Miller said. "It is significant because it is a clear fact of nature that we didn't know before. Now we know it."

The discovery changes scientific understanding of how neutrons interact with negatively charged electrons and positively charged protons. Specifically, it has implications for understanding the strong force, one of the four fundamental forces of nature (the others are the weak force, electromagnetism and gravity).

The strong force binds atomic nuclei together, which makes it possible for atoms, the building blocks of all matter, to assemble into molecules.

"We have to understand exactly how the strong force works, because it is the strongest force we know in the universe," Miller said.

The findings are based on data collected at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Va., the Bates Linear Accelerator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Mainz Microtron at Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany.

The three labs examine various aspects of the properties and behavior of subatomic particles, and Miller studied data they collected about neutrons. His analysis was published online Sept. 13 in Physical Review Letters. The work was funded in part by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Since the analysis is based on data gathered from direct observations, the picture could change even more as more data are collected, Miller said.

"A particle can be electrically neutral and still have properties related to charge. We've known for a long time that the neutron has those properties, but now we understand them more clearly," he said.

He noted that the most important aspect of the finding confirms that a neutron carries a negative charge at its outer edge, a key piece of Fermi's original idea.

The strong force that binds atomic nuclei is related to nuclear energy and nuclear weapons, and so it is possible the research could have practical applications in those areas.

It also could lend to greater understanding of the interactions that take place in our sun's nuclear furnace, and a greater understanding of the strong force in general, Miller said.

"We already know that without the strong force you wouldn't have atoms -- or anything else that follows from atoms," he said.

Source: University of Washington