accelerating-news-arc.web.cern.ch - issue 16

ICTR-PHE2016: Accelerators for health

Agnes Szeberenyi — Tue, 05 Apr 2016 09:12:41 +0000

ICTR-PHE2016: Accelerators for health
by Manjit Dosanjh & Panos Charitos (CERN)

The third International Conference on Translational Research in Radio-Oncology and Physics for Health (ICTR-PHE) was held in Geneva over the 15-19th February providing a unique place for international researchers to share knowledge and build bridges between disciplines. Over 400 participants from across the world met during the five days of the conference before returning to their home institutes with new ideas, collaboration prospects, and optimistic visions of the future of cancer therapy.

A large spectrum of topics were covered across the conference, from radiobiology, nuclear medicine, detectors and imaging, and accelerators and medical treatment, in addition to the presentations of new research by attendees.

Bleddyn Jones and Jens Overgaard chaired a session dedicated to the OPENMED project, which aims at establishing an open-access facility for biomedical research based on the existing LEIR (Low Energy Ion Ring) at CERN. Ghislain Roy and Mike Waligorski stressed the need for a facility able to provide particle beams of different types and energies to external users for radiobiology, fragmentation studies and detector development with access to sufficient amount of beam time.

Hadron therapy facilities were also discussed with a number of speakers covering developments from around the world. Thomas DeLaney, presented the case of the Massachusetts General Hospital, in Boston where a cyclotron of 230 MeV has treated more than 8350 patients over its 15 years of operation. Johanna Salinger discussed the current status of MedAustron in Wiener Neustadt in Austria; the fourth dual ion hadron therapy facility in Europe that is about to start treatment with a horizontal proton beam. It is worth noting that soon MedAustron also expects to start treating patients with carbon ions. Finally, Zhen Zhang from China presented the very first dual ion hadron therapy centre in China built by Siemens at the Fudan University Shanghai Cancer Centre that opened in May 2015. Participants also discussed the optimisation of treatment planning and delivery with the protection of normal tissues during x-ray- and hadron- therapy being one of the top priorities.

Finally, the last morning of the conference featured presentations on the MEDICIS and PROMED programmes, MEDICIS-Produced Radioisotope Beams for Medicine. The PROMED project officially started in April 2015 and just concluded its kick-off week at CERN. Johanna Pitters, one of the 15 young researchers recruited for the project, and John Prior, from the CHUV Hospital of Lausanne, explained the main goals. MEDICIS plans to use radioactive ion beams of CERN’s ISOLDE facility to produce specific ions to be used in innovative radiopharmaceuticals or to perform hadron therapy treatments.

ICTR-PHE also featured the work of many younger researchers: more than 100 of them presented their latest research in the poster sessions.

Finally, in line with its goal of merging different approaches and disciplines, the conference was host to a public talk titled “Sound for Health – from Astronomy to Biomedical Sciences: Music and Sound as Tools for Scientific Investigation” by Domenico Vicinanza and Genevieve Williams, from Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge.

For further information of the 2016 ICTR-PHE presentations, please refer to the ICTR-PHE blog.

Watch the video and find out more

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ICTR-PHE

accelerators

medical applications

Conference

issue 16

Tests of 11T dipole at CERN

Jennifer Toes — Mon, 04 Apr 2016 10:28:49 +0000

Successful tests of 11T dipole at CERN
By Panos Charitos with Lucio Rossi (CERN)

The 5.5m long prototype being assembled at CERN (Image: CERN)

As part of the LHC upgrade, the HL-LHC will need a more efficient collimation system to be able to handle the two-fold increase in beam intensity compared to the original LHC design value.

Powerful dipoles will be installed at point 7 of the LHC ring (dispersion suppression region, DS). They are foreseen to increase the 8T field of the current machine up to 11T.

The idea is to replace the present 8T, 15 meter-long LHC dipole magnet with a new 11T, 11 meter-long one (built in two segments of 5.5-m each). The installation of the new dipole will free 4 meters of space in the tunnel, which can be used to insert a cold-to-warm-to-cold bypass module.

This module will allow collimator (at room temperature) to be hosted to catch off momentum particles that otherwise could quench the superconducting magnets. The successful test of the first models magnets of this kind –with an approximate length of two meters- have been reported in a previous issue of Accelerating News.

In January 2016, a complete assembly of an 11T dipole (comprising two full apertures) was tested at the Superconducting Magnet Test Facility of CERN (SM18). Apart from its shorter length (2m vs 5.5 m) the cold mass is identical to the final magnet that will be used in the HL-LHC. Each single aperture magnet was already tested and reached ultimate field of 12 T.

“Not surprisingly, the double aperture dipole also behaved very well. Perhaps more surprising was the exceptional good memory of the magnets” said Frederic Savary, leader of the 11T team at CERN. The magnet reached the nominal 11.2 T field without quench allowing to achieve the ultimate field of 12 T with only two quenches.

Lucio Rossi, leader of the HL-LHC project, elaborated further: “It would have qualified as a “bonus magnet” during the LHC construction, when the ultimate field was 9 T and not 12 T.”

Figure 1: Graph showing the quench current of the dipole (Image: CERN)

Subsequently, the magnet passed 12.5 T (see Figure 1) for the training curve, a record for a double aperture accelerator quality magnets that could go in the tunnel to steer the HL-LHC beams. Within five years of its start “this project is one of the most successful ones in the history of high field magnets”, says Rossi.

The challenge now is to show reproducibility of these results and then to test the 5.5 m-long prototype, which is currently under construction (as can be seen in the picture above). Meanwhile the 11T team deserves the congratulations of the Management of the HL-LHC project and CERN: a further step forwards in the quest of increasing the frontier of high field magnets.

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HL-LHC

Hi Lumi LHC

11 Tesla Dipole Project

issue 16

FP7 CESSAMag and science diplomacy

Jennifer Toes — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 14:55:02 +0000

FP7 CESSAMag and science diplomacy
By Jennifer Toes & Livia Lapadatescu (CERN)

Visit to CERN by Carlos Moedas, European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation (Image: CERN)

The CESSAMag project has achieved key milestones this year, with the delivery of the magnets and power converters for the SESAME synchrotron light source in Jordan and the support for the installation and alignment of the first cell (consisting of magnets, vacuum chamber and a girder) in its final position (see video below).

Installation of SESAME’s Storage Ring Begins (Video: SESAME)

The installation of the first storage ring cell in February of this year heralds more than simply the next stage of construction in this scientific project. Indeed, SESAME will be the Middle East’s first major international research centre, and is the result of collaboration between its nine members in the Middle East and neighbouring countries on the model of CERN.

The road to a first international major scientific infrastructure serving the scientists of the region is a challenge, especially for researchers and institutions based in regions affected by particular political and cultural tensions. Several synchrotron laboratories in the world, international organizations and learned societies have given support to the SESAME members for this venture. FP7 CESSAMag is specific in that it combines science and diplomacy with the participation of CERN and the European Commission.

As part of the CESSAMag project, the dipoles, quadrupoles and sextupoles for SESAME were produced in Spain, UK, Cyprus and Pakistan. Switzerland, Italy and Israel provided the controllers and power supplies, while the coils for quadrupoles and sextupoles were produced in Turkey and France. This large participation, including companies in SESAME members, was allowed by ordering parts for the quadrupoles and sextupoles, rather than complete magnets. The coordination was provided by CERN experienced engineers, and led to outstanding products.

Fostering further science diplomacy, CERN also welcomed engineers and technicians from Iran, Jordan, Pakistan and Turkey to work on the design, production and testing of the power supplies, power supply racks and magnets assembly as part of the CESSAMag project.

Originally from Turkey, Evrim Onur Ari came to CERN as an Electronics Engineer in 2014 to work as part of the Storage Ring Magnet Power Supplies Team.

“I really got excited when I learned the details of it” says Onur Ari, explaining why the project appealed to him. “[It is] a science collaboration between countries which were counted as political rivals. The biggest motivation behind this collaboration was peace.”

This sentiment was shared by Ehsan Yousefi, an Electronics Engineer and Head of the Power Supply group at the Iranian Light Source Facility (ILSF) who came to CERN for seven months in 2015:

“Besides scientific achievements and improving skills in power supply design, I could learn how to live abroad, face new challenges and experience a different lifestyle where different cultures are respectful towards one another.”

Iranian researchers in particular have felt the impact of the sanctions against Iran. Javad Rahighi, Professor of Experimental Physics and Director of the ILSF commented “On the example of CESSAMag, we would like to see SESAME and other collaborations utilising the expertise already existing in Iran."

Indeed, science diplomacy not only hopes to foster peace between nations, but provide the conditions to facilitate the flow of skills and information between them.

“Being involved in this project gave me a general view about specifications and design of dedicated power supplies” said Ehsan, noting his experience may now be utilised in his work at the ILSF.

In addition, Azhar Nawaz, a Mechanical Engineer working in Pakistan, notes that his company’s experience of manufacturing magnets for SESAME has given them the experience to participate in future CERN tenders and other projects.

Of course, due to the nature of science diplomacy the potential challenges for researchers extend beyond the technical. Whilst Azhar Nawaz states that assembling the sextupole magnets was a “very challenging job as magnet manufacturing was a new field” for his team, Evrim Onur Ari notes a further challenge of working internationally due to differing cultural practices: “Sunday is counted as a part of weekdays in Jordan, whereas it is a part of the weekend in European countries; the reverse is true for Friday. We had effectively four days in common during the week."

Indeed, whilst many international collaborations must overcome the impact of time zones, differences in the working week of different countries pose a further hurdle still, as despite both teams working full time, the potential days for collaboration are reduced.

The FP7 CESSAMag project has been acknowledged by the SESAME Council as a major influencing factor to its continued progression, and hopefully will be one of many efforts in the name of science diplomacy that allow excellence in physics and peace to go hand in hand.

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HL-LHC corrector magnet tested at LASA-INFN

Jennifer Toes — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 08:20:02 +0000

HiLumi HL-LHC Sextupole corrector magnet tested at LASA-INFN
By Antonella Del Rosso (CERN)

Assembly the first sextupole corrector of the HL-LHC at the LASA Laboratory (Image: INFN-Milan)

A sextupole superferric magnet for the High Luminosity upgrade of the LHC was successfully tested earlier in March, and demonstrated it can meet the requirements of the project.

The prototype of the corrector magnet was designed and built at LASA laboratory of the Milan section of INFN. This is the first of a number of magnets developed within a CERN-INFN Collaboration Agreement for the HL-LHC project signed in 2013. The LASA laboratory will further develop high-order magnets from quadrupoles up to dodecapoles.

A superferric magnet is an iron-dominated window frame magnet. The iron shapes the overall field while the coils are made of superconducting material that is kept at cryogenic temperatures to reduce power losses to a minimum.

Though they are low-field magnets and can’t reach the high magnetic fields of the main dipole magnets, the corrector magnets are important as the high-intensity beams will have to complete hundreds of millions of turns in stable conditions before being safely dumped by the operators. The design of these magnets took into account considerations for higher reliability that is critical for the High Luminosity upgrade of the LHC.

The results achieved so far look promising and the magnets will be further tested at CERN. CERN together with INFN will continue working on the design and testing of higher-order corrector magnets before moving to the industrialization phase.

For further information on this corrector magnet you can read more here.

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Accelerator Reliability and Availability Training

Jennifer Toes — Wed, 30 Mar 2016 07:50:14 +0000

Accelerator Reliability and Availability Training
By Johannes Gutleber (CERN)

Participants of the Accelerator Reliability and Availability (ARA) training programme trial in March 2016 (Image: CERN)

Reliability and sustainability is a key issue for present and future accelerators. The Future Circular Collider (FCC) study launched a training programme on Accelerator Reliability and Availability (ARA) engineering at CERN. The goal is to build a common foundation in the field of reliability engineering for particle accelerators and to create an active network of accelerator engineers who can assess and address reliability topics. Within the next three years a community of about 150 accelerator experts will be trained in reliability engineering.

A trial session was organized end Februaruary 2016 at CERN, which was attended by more than 20 engineers currently involved in the operation of the LHC, the HL-LHC construction, as well as in the conceptual design study of a post-LHC circular collider.

The training establishes a common terminology and set of methods used by experts from different technical domains, ranging from mechanical engineering, electronics, and software to cryogenics, superconductivity, vacuum, radiofrequency, and power engineering. The course conveys the mathematical foundations of reliability analysis and creates a sensibility to the importance of gathering field data and controlling the data quality as the pre-requisite for any reliability engineering activity. Over the coming six months, the course organisers will further develop the practical examples from the particle accelerator domain ranging from modelling vacuum systems, cryogenics supply, machine protection to beam production. This will allow the participants to profit from the methods and tools taught in their everyday operation and design work. The organizers also put special focus on equal opportunities which was already reflected in the attendance of the trial session with an outstanding 25% of female participation. The training is provided by University of Stuttgart, Tampere University of Technology and spin-off company Ramentor.

The “Foundations in Accelerator Reliability and Availability Engineering” course will start in autumn 2016 and it will run twice a year until 2018. The course will be free of charge for personnel involved in the conceptualisation and design of future circular colliders at CERN.

Read more about the training programme here.

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RAMS

accelerator reliability

FCC

issue 16

EuCARD2 WP3 Workshop on the Energy Efficiency of Proton Driver Accelerators

Panagiotis Charitos — Thu, 24 Mar 2016 16:50:30 +0000

EuCARD2 WP3 Workshop on Proton Driver Accelerator Energy Efficiency
by Jennifer Toes (CERN)

The Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) in Villigen, Switzerland hosted a workshop on the energy efficiency of proton driver accelerators in late February.

Proton driver accelerators have a broad range of applications, ranging from neutron sources over accelerator driven systems for transmutation to particle physics, muon and neutrino production. As these accelerators consume large amounts of electricity, improving their energy efficiency is crucial in addressing the economic and environmental concerns of both the public and research funding agencies.

The goal of the workshop was to bring together experts to collaborate and exchange ideas and research in pursuit of higher efficiency proton drivers. Over four sessions, the participants discussed four topics of particular interest: beam targets, RF generation, accelerator concepts and auxiliary systems..

The workshop identified several promising technologies for improving the energy efficiency on which future R&D should be focused:

Neutron Spallation Targets and associated components like moderators and neutron guides have a potential for efficiency improvements by large factors for certain applications. The studies on a second target station for SNS give an example for such optimizations.

Magnetrons as RF sources exhibit a high efficiency but currently aren’t well suited for use in accelerators due to their instable phase and amplitude behaviour. Ongoing studies at Fermilab show promising results to overcome these problems. Eighty years after its invention the Klystron represents a matured and widely used concept. Nevertheless, new ideas on improving the electron beam dynamics in klystrons may boost the efficiency towards 90%.

The cryogenic systems used in continuous wave superconducting linacs represent a major contribution to the energy balance of the entire facility. The recent success in producing High Q0 Superconducting Cavities may help to reduce the cryogenic power significantly.

Energy Management should be coordinated in a comprehensive way at larger research facilities. Important parts are cryogenic plants but also conventional cooling and air conditioning. With large fluctuations from sustainable power production flexible and intelligent operating scenarios may become important for energy intensive research facilities.

Mike Seidel, the workshop chair said: “A common meeting for experts on such diverse fields as beam targets, RF generation or conventional facilities was an experiment. But all these areas contribute to energy efficiency. We received a lot of positive feedback from the participants and finally one can say: the workshop was a success and the community will benefit from the outcome.”

EuCARD-2

Energy Management

Neutron Spallation Targets

Magnetrons

issue 16

LINAC4 ready to go up in energy

Panagiotis Charitos — Thu, 24 Mar 2016 16:41:35 +0000

LINAC4 ready to go up in energy
By Jennifer Toes (CERN)

The DTL section of the LINAC4 (Image: CERN)

The LINAC4 linear accelerator has recently achieved beam commissioning of 50MeV and is now almost ready for the next step of increasing the beam energy even further up to 100MeV. This project is part of the LHC Injectors Upgrade (LIU) required for the needs of the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC).

LINAC4 aims to replace the ageing LINAC2 linear accelerator, going from the present 50 MeV proton beam injection into the Proton Synchrotron Booster (PSB), the first ring in the CERN accelerator chain, to a modern H- ion beam injection at 160 MeV, more the three times the Linac2 energy.

“CERN is one of the few laboratories in the world that has not yet implemented H- injection” said Alessandra Lombardi, who is responsible for the beam commissioning of the LINAC4. Injecting H- at a higher energy results in a smaller emittance in the PSB.

Following the successful commissioning of the three newly designed Drift Tube Linac (DTL) tanks in November 2015, the team began its preparations for the installation of two key accelerating sectors: the Cell Coupled Drift Tube Linac (CCDTL) and PI-Mode Structures (PIMS).

Built in Russia by a collaboration of CERN with two Russian laboratories, VNIITF in Snezinsk and BINP in Novossibirsk, the CCDTL is the next structure to be conditioned and commissioned with beam in the LINAC4.

“The CERN CCDTL is composed of 7 modules of 3 tanklets each and it brings the energy of the beam from 50 to 100MeV” said Lombardi.

The main advantage of CCDTLs over standard DTLs is that their quadrupoles are external and therefore more accessible. The accessibility of these magnets makes the construction and alignment process much more straight forward.

The PIMS was constructed as part of a CERN-Poland (NCBJ Swierk) collaboration with contributions from FZ Jülich (Germany). The PIMS was assembled and tuned at CERN will bring up the beam energy from 100MeV to its final goal of 160MeV. It is composed of 12 modules for a total length of about 25m.

Currently, the installation and conditioning of all CCDTL tanks and of the first PIMS is being carried out before beam commissioning begins on April 11^th 2016. The commissioning of the remaining PIMS tanks expected to follow in October will allow reaching the final beam energy.

Scheduled to become operational by 2020, the LINAC4 is a crucial step towards the increase in the LHC luminosity that will allow CERN to remain at the pinnacle of high energy physics research.

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LINAC4

Accelerating Structures

beam injection

issue 16

HTS Tl-based coatings for FCC beam screens

Panagiotis Charitos — Thu, 24 Mar 2016 16:22:56 +0000

Collaboration to develop HTS Tl-based coatings for FCC beam screens
by Sergio Callatroni (CERN)

Critical field of several HTS. Continuous lines indicate the maximum value as a function of temperature, where dashed lines indicate the maximum value at which these materials can be used as practical current carriers, such as in accelerator magnets. Image Credit: CNR-SPIN.

A recently formed collaboration aims at developing beam screens for the FCC study based on the little-known HTS thallium cuprate in order to drastically reduce the beam impedance.

The research on HTS (High-Temperature Superconductors) has mainly been focused on two different families of materials, YBCO and BSCCO, which differ in terms of composition and crystal structure. BSCCO is used for example for the current leads of the LHC superconducting magnets, while YBCO-coated ribbons are a potential candidate for winding magnets of accelerator-grade quality reaching 20 T, as needed for the future circular collider designs examined under the FCC study.

In addition, the FCC study demonstrated on theoretical grounds that HTS could also be used to minimize the electromagnetic interaction of the beam with the surrounding vacuum pipe.

The proton beams circulating in the accelerator will produce several tens of watts per meter of synchrotron radiation due to their 50 TeV energy. To prevent this power from impinging on the dipoles, which are cooled to 1.9 K, they have to be protected, like in the LHC, by a beam screen.

Other considerations related to vacuum stability dictate that the beam screen has to be kept at a temperature between 40 and 60 K. At these temperatures, common electrical conductors such as copper may have not low enough beam impedance. HTS materials offer the only viable solution to overcome this obstacle. However, a study of the required performance has shown that BSCCO would be inadequate for the FCC requirements. YBCO could cope with the requirements, but is currentlyavailable only in the form of thin coated ribbons. Scaling the YBCO fabrication procedure to the beam screen shape remains a tough challenge, and would require a thorough rethinking of the coating technology.

Example of a beam screen for the LHC. Image Credit: CERN

To address this problem, a new collaboration between CNR-SPIN (Superconductors, oxides and other innovative materials and devices), TU Wien (formerly Vienna University of Technology) and CERN has recently been formed, with the goal of developing HTS coatings based on the little-known superconductor thallium cuprate (Tl-1223 / Tl-1212).

Tl-cuprates bear the potential for an exceptional performance. Their T_c (critical temperature) and H_c2(upper critical magnetic field) are among the highest found so far, and their thin film deposition properties should be scalable to large dimensions and complex geometries. This seemingly superior HTS is not widely used because the required texture could not be established in previous studies leading to an unsatisfactory in-field performance – and the toxicity of thallium did certainly not contribute to its popularity.

CNR-SPIN in Genova possesses comprehensive knowledge and in-house expertise regarding the preparation of this compound, and will explore new production routes aimed at the fabrication of Tl-based HTS with a significantly improved microstructure in order to overcome the previously found limitations. The feedback required for optimizing the production process will be supplied by TU Wien, where both the microstructure of the samples and the superconducting properties will be analysed. It is the possibility of using advanced characterization techniques to correlate the local superconducting properties (flux pinning, grain coupling, current percolation) with microstructural features, which fuels the hope of developing a Tl-based HTS coating with satisfactory performance.

Collaboration agreements have been signed mid-November, and a Kick-off meeting at CERN has successfully attracted all collaborators, helping finalize the work plan. Other institutes from Spain have also expressed their interest in collaborating with CERN on HTS coatings.

This R&D project and its direct application are at the crossroads of several fields: accelerator science and technology, RF and beam dynamics, vacuum and cryogenics, materials and surface science, and of course superconductor science and technology. Both CNR-SPIN and TU Wien are leaders in the superconductor R&D field and the ideal partners to carry out this work together with CERN, who will guarantee the final validation of the material for the accelerator environment. As a welcome side effect, this research project might open up the possibility of introducing Tl-based HTS into the mainstream domain of conductor cables for the fabrication of high power devices, such as magnets or motors.

First concept design for FCC-ee magnets

Panagiotis Charitos — Thu, 24 Mar 2016 15:54:37 +0000

First concept design for FCC-ee magnets

by Panos Charitos with Attilio Milanese (CERN)

A first concept for the FCC-ee main dipoles, with an X iron yoke (blue) and two aluminium busbars (red). The dimensions are about 40 cm wide per 12 cm high (Image: CERN).

The FCC-ee (Future Circular Collider lepton-lepton scenario) machine requires about 65 km of such magnets, to steer the counter-rotating electron and positron beams, before they collide at the energy of 350 GeV. As the preparation for the upcoming FCC week (11-15th April) is in full swing, researchers from CERN have presented a first concept for the main bending magnets for FCC-ee.

The proposed design for the FCC-ee main bending magnets features a twin aperture geometry, with a common iron yoke and two busbars, operated at room temperature. The dimensions are about 40 cm wide per 12 cm high. The design shows how compact these dipoles could be – at the moment their cross section fits on an A3 sheet. This concept will be further refined, to match the evolving requirements coming from the other FCC-ee work packages, including those on beam dynamics and vacuum.

The idea presented recently is based on a novel layout, where two classical C shapes are arranged back to back to create an unconventional X geometry. The great advantage of the novel design is that the magnetic field in one of the apertures comes at no extra cost, since it is generated by the return conductor of the other aperture. Compared to a system with separate magnets for the two rings, this solution reduces electrical consumption by 50% and of course the number of units to be manufactured, transported, installed and (eventually) removed, for the installation of FCC-hh.

The low fields needed in this case do not require superconducting technology for the magnets, like those used in the LHC and further developed for HL-LHC and FCC-hh (read more).

“The FCC-ee main dipoles require a different type of R&D,” says Attilio Milanese, the CERN engineer who proposed the concept. He explains “at the moment, the focus is to work on the design while optimising the costs and the environmental impact.”

The yoke can be assembled from sheets of electrical steel, of a similar kind used in electric machines like transformers or generators. The excitation current is provided by two busbars in aluminium, which is lighter and cheaper than copper for the same power consumption. Full recycling the raw materials after dismantling the collider is also an option explored, with the team running simulations to understand how these materials will be activated from the high synchrotron radiation emitted by the beams.

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