Collaboration between Fermilab, Indian institutions sets stage for future accelerators

Interactions News Wire #07-09

10 February 2009

http://www.interactions.org

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Source: Fermilab

Content: Press Release

Date Issued: 10 February 2009

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Collaboration between Fermilab, Indian institutions sets stage for future accelerators

INDORE, India (February 10, 2009) - The Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Ill., today announced the signing of a new Memorandum of Understanding with four Indian institutions. The MOU establishes collaboration in the areas of superconducting acceleration science and technology and in research and development of superconducting materials.

"Ushering in the next generation of accelerator projects requires an international effort," said Dr. Pier Oddone, director of Fermilab. "The collaboration between U.S. and Indian scientists helps set the stage for the global coordination required for future particle accelerators."

Dr. Oddone signed the MOU in Indore, India, on Feb. 10 along with Dr. Srikumar Banerjee, director of the Bhabha Atomic Research Center; Dr. Bikash Sinha, director of the Variable Energy Cyclotron Center; Dr. Amit Roy, director of the Inter University Accelerator Center; and Dr. Vinod C. Sahni, director of the Raja Ramanna Center of Advanced Technologies.

The MOU focuses on the development of state-of-the-art superconducting radio-frequency cavities and associated components for future accelerators. The electric field inside a radio-frequency cavity accelerates particles as they pass through. Superconducting radio-frequency cavities create radio-frequency fields without electric resistance when cooled to temperatures close to absolute zero. Stringing many of these cavities together, physicists can accelerate particles quickly and efficiently to close to the speed of light.

"Collaboration with Fermilab has been an excellent experience for us both in terms of opportunities for scientific research as well as for building equipment for such research," said Dr. Anil Kadokar, Secretary of the Department of Atomic Energy in India. "An added advantage is that this partnership will encourage young people to join such scientific endeavors in greater numbers. We welcome this collaboration for its mutual benefits."

Proposed accelerators such as Project X at Fermilab will rely on the superconducting radio-frequency cavities to accelerate beams of protons. Project X would accelerate protons through an accelerator about 700 meters long, about the length of seven football fields. The accelerator would connect with the existing Fermilab accelerator complex and provide high-intensity proton beams to probe the quantum structure of the universe and its influence on matter at the smallest level.

"Superconducting radio frequency particle acceleration will play a critical role in future particle accelerators," Oddone said. "This technology will take us to the next level of discovery in the fields of neutrino science and precision physics."

Fermilab and the Indian institutions will work together on research, design, development and construction to develop the capability to initiate a project like Project X. The Indian institutions also plan to build a proton accelerator using superconducting radio-frequency technology.

Both Fermilab and the Indian institutions plan to develop the technical knowledge that could, in the long term, aid them in the construction of the International Linear Collider. Whereas Project X would use about 475 superconducting radio-frequency cavities, the ILC would be about 20 miles long and use about 16,000 cavities to accelerate electrons to unprecedented energy.

Fermilab has been collaborating with the Indian institutions on high-energy physics experiments since 1985, first on the Fermilab fixed-target experiment E706 and then on the DZero collider experiment. During the last two years, Indian scientists have made significant progress on the cavity and cryomodule design and fabrication work in collaboration with Fermilab.

"International collaboration not only helps attract the best minds to address a gamut of tasks, but it also is necessary to raise the resources required for mega-projects, as exemplified by the Large Hadron Collider in Europe," said RRCAT Director Sahni. "The MOU between Fermilab and Indian accelerator labs reinforces that trend and also reflects the strong partnership that the two sides have built up over the years. I am sure that by working together we will be able to break new ground and achieve rapid progress in the use of superconductivity for accelerator science."

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.