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EuCARD-2 achievements and prospects

Livia Lapadatescu — Wed, 11 Oct 2017 13:03:41 +0000

EuCARD-2 achievements and prospects
by Panos Charitos (CERN)

Some EuCARD-2 results in numbers, showing the impact on European science and society.
(Image credit: EuCARD-2 collaboration)

Accelerators are our only key to accessing the subatomic world, concentrating huge amounts of energy in tiny particle beams that penetrate deeply into the matter revealing new structures and physics phenomena. By converting energy into matter following Einstein’s famous formula (E=mc²) they can produce new types of matter that may have existed just after the Big Bang, when our Universe was too hot and dense. Moreover, some accelerators can inspect molecular and atomic structures, thus finding many applications outside fundamental research, from material science to medical diagnostics and treatment.

To exploit the potential that particle accelerators can offer in different fields, inside and outside of particle physics, crucial technological advancements are needed. Future accelerators should be more compact, more sustainable and more affordable; these developments could endure their use for particle physics and unlock their huge transformative potential in other fields. Improving the present and future European accelerator-based Research Infrastructures was the main goal of EuCARD-2, the FP7 Integrating Activity project just completed after 4 years full of events and successful accomplishments. Maurizio Vretenar, the EuCARD-2 Project Coordinator, explains: “In exploring societal applications we tried to capitalise on our competences in scientific accelerators, at the same time identifying areas where the impact of accelerators could be the highest”.

EuCARD-2 focused on improving the performance of existing and future accelerators with the goal of making them more compact, economic and energy efficient. On top of that, new applications of accelerators were analysed by EuCARD-2 in collaboration with industry. Accelerator produced isotopes can open new perspectives in medical imaging and in fighting cancer, giving an important contribution to the new generation of personalised cancer therapies. In the environmental field, the treatment with particle accelerators of flue gases from coal plants or of exhaust gases from e.g. large marine engines will reduce the rejection of sulphur and nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere, thus improving the quality of air. The diffusion of industrial processes based on accelerators, like material analysis, inspection, treatment of plastics and ion implantation will increase competitiveness for European industry, resulting in job creation and economic growth.

EuCARD-2 also studied ways to maximise the energy efficiency of accelerator facilities, contributed to the development of new schemes for frontier accelerators and in coordinating the plasma accelerator community in Europe, which resulted in the EuPRAXIA Design Study.

Key scientific achievements of EuCARD-2 include the selection of the conductor, the cable geometry and magnet design for High Temperature superconductors for accelerator magnets that can be used in future colliders, aiming to push further the energy and intensity frontiers: a world record current density of 1338 A/mm² was reached in an YBCO tape. EuCARD-2 produced and tested novel collimation materials that will be used for the High Luminosity upgrade of the LHC. Finally, it played a pivotal role in the demonstration of high-brightness electron beams for laser plasma accelerators and contributed to the initial success of the AWAKE plasma-driven experiment at CERN.

Participants of the final Annual Meeting on 28-30 March 2017, hosted by the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow (Image credit: EuCARD-2 collaboration)

EuCARD-2 brought together 40 European universities, accelerator laboratories and technological institutes on a programme structured in 13 Work Packages. With clear objectives in mind, the EuCARD-2 team focused on obtaining results of direct benefit to both European science and European citizens. Vretenar explains: “We focused in structuring and supporting the existing accelerator community, contributing to the development of new ideas and technologies for the future accelerators for science, and to transferring these technologies to accelerators that could impact our everyday life.”

Reaching these goals called for the formation of a well-balanced international network of partners including research centres, universities and the industry. Modern scientific projects require collaboration and one of the key challenges of EuCARD-2 was to build across Europe a strong network of experts and young researchers who would share the same goal and remain motivated during this project. By promoting complementary expertise, cross-disciplinary fertilisation and a wider sharing of knowledge and technologies on strategic topics, EuCARD-2 succeeded in enhancing multidisciplinary R&D for European accelerators and prepared the ground for other EU funded accelerator projects.

Successful collaboration doesn’t come without problems and the coordination team of EuCARD-2 often had to tackle delicate technical problems. “Research is unforeseeable by definition and delays in the production of prototypes, unavailability of key people, unavailability of testing equipment forced us to change many times the schedule and to look for alternative solutions to keep our work plan and our engagements. Most of the times, the solutions consisted in a redistribution of the work among the partners that was possible only thanks to the good team spirit and to our culture of collaboration and exchange.”

As Vretenar points out, “There is a brave new world of applications in front of us, with many opportunities to exploit, but as well, many challenges to face in promoting scientific innovation in our complex European society”. EuCARD-2 has identified a number of promising technologies that could be exploited to improve European science and to address our societal challenges, such as providing better medicine for an aging population, reducing the environmental impact related to high living standards, and increasing technological content and competitiveness of industry. Some of these steps are part of the successor to EuCARD-2, the new ARIES (Accelerator Research and Innovation for European Science and Society) project that will continue the exploratory work of EuCARD-2, but at the same time will push forward selected key technologies in collaboration with industry.

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More information on the EuCARD-2 results can be found in the Final Project Report.

EuCARD-2

impact

results

Accelerator Applications

issue 22

The road to accelerator energy efficiency

Jennifer Toes — Tue, 04 Jul 2017 09:17:20 +0000

The road to accelerator energy efficiency

by Jennifer Toes (CERN)

Construction at CERN of a prototype of a 144:1 power combiner to combine 144 solid-state amplifiers
of 1 kW each (Image: Eric Montesinos)

As accelerators change, grow and advance to continue to make scientific discoveries, so too does their need for energy.

Keeping particle accelerators sustainable, minimising their cost and impact on the public energy grid and environment, is a current goal for many particle physicists and engineers. Work Package 3 (WP3) of the EuCARD-2 project, which ended in April 2017, produced a dedicated report on maximising the energy efficiency of certain accelerator systems and alternate uses for energy wasted in the form of heat.

Radiofrequency (RF) systems, commonly used in accelerators to drive accelerating structures in accelerating particles, are prone to energy wastage and often contribute to the overall energy inefficiency of accelerator facilities. As such, WP3’s Task 3 reviewed concepts and designs for more efficient RF systems, whilst Task 2 investigated avenues for making use of or recovering lost energy by other means.

When considering more efficient RF systems, Task 3 focused on supporting the development of three technologies: 1) multi-beam Inductive Output Tubes (IOTs), 2) an improved bunching mechanism for klystrons, and 3) efficient power combiners for use with solid-state power amplifiers in large accelerators.

Compared to klystrons, IOTs have lower losses of energy between pulses or at low input power. However, klystrons may still be improved with new bunching schemes which would extract the RF power from accelerated electron beams more efficiently. In addition, solid state amplifiers can be realised using a single state power combiner, which combine a large number of transistors for higher RF power.

Whilst minimising the initial energy waste is important, so too is identifying how to recover wasted energy, or how to repurpose potential waste for other uses.

Mike Seidel, WP3 Coordinator and head of Accelerator Operation and Development at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), commented, “Energy efficiency and sustainability is becoming an important consideration for modern accelerator based research infrastructures. During EuCARD-2 we found that even matured technologies, such as klystrons, have significant potential for efficiency improvements. At large facilities wasted energy can be used very beneficially for heating purposes, and as the example of ESS shows, the best concepts can be realised if these are included in the planning of a project from the very beginning.”

The members of WP3 Task 2 surveyed 12 accelerator facilities from seven different European countries on their energy consumption and cost as well as cooling and heat recovery methods. The task aimed to obtain an overall understanding of the energy consumption in accelerator facilities and identify beneficial aspects of various set-ups as well as areas requiring improvement.

Both RF and cryogenic systems (the latter of which uses very low temperature liquids for cooling) contribute large levels of energy wastage in the form of heat. Recovering this heat or harnessing its power for additional applications, such as heating treating wastewater, may help further efficiency efforts.

WP3 has identified the need to develop new technology, improve current systems, and pursue methods to recover or repurpose lost energy to ensure the particle accelerators of tomorrow are as efficient as possible.

Accelerator applications for a better future

Livia Lapadatescu — Tue, 04 Jul 2017 07:56:21 +0000

Accelerator applications for a better future
by Jennifer Toes (CERN)

As some of the largest and most complex types of machinery in existence, particle accelerators have a huge role to play in scientific research, technological advancements, and across all of society through many different applications.

Since their creation some 90 years ago, particle accelerators have changed in size and shape and have increased both their complexity and power. In that time, accelerators have made many groundbreaking scientific discoveries and produced large amounts of information about the natural world.

Beyond basic science, accelerators are responsible for advances far outside the realm of physics. Spearheaded by Angeles Faus-Golfe (IFIC-LAL) and Rob Edgecock (University of Huddersfield), Work Package 4 of the EuCARD-2 project has produced a report entitled “Applications of Particle Accelerators in Europe (APAE)”. The report details the many applications of accelerators and related technology, with a specific focus on European requirements and competences.

Rob Edgecock said, “with nearly 40,000 in use around the world for a wide range of applications, particle accelerators already play an important role in everyday life. The APAE report documents these applications, and uses the expertise in EuCARD-2 to identify areas for improvement and potential new applications based on research technology.”

Europe is home to many world-renowned accelerator laboratories, including the most powerful accelerator in existence: the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, in Switzerland. Europe remains a key actor at the forefront of accelerator science and is well positioned to advance the field further.

The APAE report considered applications for health, industry, energy, security, and photon and neutron sources, and made recommendations to optimise accelerator science and technology in the future.

Accelerators play a role in healthcare, particularly in cancer diagnosis and treatment. Cancer is responsible for around a quarter of the deaths in Europe, and new diagnostic tests and treatments are always required.

Radiotherapy via the use of x-rays or particles allows both imaging and delivery of anti-cancer treatment deep into biological tissue. X-rays are produced by accelerating electrons in linear accelerators (linacs) to 4-20 MeV, while charged particles are accelerated to 230+ MeV by circular accelerators and used directly for therapy.

Radionuclides (radioactive isotopes) are also used for imaging techniques such as Positron Emission Tomography (PET) and can be used to target specific types of cancer. New types of accelerators are required to fully exploit a number of exciting novel radionuclides for both imaging and therapy.

Several European studies have demonstrated that the number and capability of facilities able to offer radiotherapy and radionuclide treatment must be increased to meet the growing demand. To achieve this, new approaches and technologies must be developed, including more accurate imaging techniques and cost-effective accelerator components.

Industry make use of many technologies developed for, or as a result of, accelerator research. Accelerator beams are able to penetrate the surfaces of many materials, providing detailed insight and analysis.

Indeed, accelerators are able to sterilise equipment and surfaces, useful in clinical medical settings, as well as disinfect seeds and grains, which is crucial for food security. Some seeds are already treated with electron beams in Germany.

Accelerator beams also possess attractive thermal qualities, offering the ability to heat, melt and evaporate materials as required. Many industrial facilities across the globe make use of European electron beam accelerators: from melting metals to produce alloys, to evaporating materials to create surface coatings resistant to corrosion.

Beyond manufacturing, accelerators have the potential for a range of environmental benefits, including the treatment of wastewater, sewage and flue gases. Low energy electron beams can remove pollutants from the gases produced by industry, and ion beams can help analyse particles which may contribute to air pollution.

Analysis can also be carried out for cultural heritage purposes, for studying the composition, structure and providence of art and antiquities. In fact, the Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France (C2RMF) hosts the Accélérateur Grand Louvre d'Analyse Elémentaire (AGLAE), which is dedicated to study and analysis for French museums.

The Ritratto Trivulzio by Antonello da Messina being analysed with an ion beam (credit: LABEC, INFN's Laboratory for Cultural Heritage and Environment, Italy)

Accelerators are a crucial source of high energy photons and intense neutron beams, both of which offer their own analytical abilities relevant for fields in both academia and industry.

Photon sources, such as the ALBA light source in Spain, are able to provide x-rays for use in biology, chemistry, environmental and materials science. Neutron sources, such as the European Spallation Source (ESS) in Sweden, which is currently under construction, offer similar capabilities, including the neutron scattering technique.

The analytical power provided by accelerators also lends itself to security functions, particularly for air, sea and rail border security. These security measures can help prevent the transport of illegal or stolen goods, identify crimes such as money laundering, and even be used for counter-terrorism.

X-ray screening of a truck

Accelerators also have applications for energy as the demand for it continues to grow. More efficient, sustainable, affordable and safer energy is also crucial in meeting this demand.

Nuclear power offers one such solution, but brings its own challenge via the production of nuclear waste. Accelerator Driven Systems (ADS) can be used for nuclear waste disposal, and several European designs have already been conceived.

By identifying challenges in accelerator research and applications, the APAE report makes recommendations for how best to tackle these issues. This lays the groundwork for advancing both the role of accelerator science in society and European accelerator science across the globe.

In summary, APAE co-coordinator Angeles Faus-Golfe said, “Coordinating this effort has been enriching and rewarding. The main European experts in accelerator applications have contributed to the document and identified the key aims for European R&D into accelerator applications. The field has made an impressive progress in the last decade and has plenty of opportunities for the younger generations of researchers.”

From EuCARD-2 to ARIES

Sabrina El Yacoubi — Mon, 03 Jul 2017 14:29:31 +0000

From EuCARD-2 to ARIES
Jennifer Toes (CERN)

ARIES project members attend the kick-off meeting talks at CERN, 4-5^th May 2017 (Image: CERN)

As the particle accelerator R&D project EuCARD-2 comes to an end, its entrepreneurial and collaborative spirit lives on in ARIES, Accelerator Research and Innovation for European Science and Society, which kicked off at CERN in May 2017.

EuCARD-2 officially ended its activity in April 2017, after four years of international collaboration between academics and members of industry. The project aimed to connect different European actors in accelerator science, enhance collaboration and concentrate common resources on shared goals.

Mobilising more than 350 people, EuCARD-2 produced a wealth of novel ideas for future accelerators and their energy management and applications. Highlights of the final results include patents and crucial advances in four fields: high-temperature superconductivity, materials for accelerators, superconducting coatings, and high-quality plasma-accelerated beams.

EuCARD-2 results in numbers (Image: CERN)

Building on the knowledge, technology and partnerships established under EuCARD-2, ARIES will bring together 41 participants from 18 European countries, including 7 industrial partners. The project officially launched its four-year activity programme as of 1^st May 2017 and gathered at CERN over 4-5^th May for a kick-off meeting. The project is co-funded via a contribution of €10 million from the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 programme.

The project participants include major European accelerator laboratories, universities, scientific and technical institutes, and industrial partners. This consortium increases the opportunities for international collaboration, knowledge and technology transfer across different fields of scientific research and to society, and puts particular focus on innovation of new technology, with a view to maximising its attractiveness to industry.

This effort ultimately aims to upgrade and enhance current accelerator infrastructures and their related technology, secure the sustainability of accelerator science for the future, and further integrate the accelerator research community in Europe.

The work programme of the project will pay particular attention to developing new accelerator concepts, creating new technology for superconductors and superconducting coatings, and optimising accelerator energy efficiency and thermal management.

The ARIES Coordinator, Maurizio Vretenar (CERN), said, “ARIES is a new major step in collaborative research for particle accelerator R&D. By integrating more countries and more industry and by enhancing innovation, training, access to test facilities and societal applications, the project will have a strong and long-term impact on European science and society.”

Under the ARIES Transnational Access programme, 14 facilities will be made available to researchers for material, magnet, radio-frequency, plasma acceleration, and electron and proton beam testing.

Transnational Access facilities

Developing partnerships with industry and understanding areas of common interest is crucial for transferring knowledge and technology between fields, and ensuring future technologies are viable in the market.

As such, ARIES will organise a series of “Academia meets Industry” events, and will provide of a “Proof of Concept” innovation fund, which will offer researchers the opportunity to develop spin-off technology with societal applications.

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SuShi: a Superconducting Shield Septum

Sabrina El Yacoubi — Mon, 03 Jul 2017 13:32:10 +0000

SuShi: a Superconducting Shield Septum
by Panos Charitos (CERN)

High-energy colliders have time and again proven their potential for making breakthrough discoveries and exploring some of the biggest questions in physics, the most prominent example being the discovery of the Higgs boson at the LHC in 2013. Given that the time-span from design to construction of an accelerator of this complexity is about 25 years, and to ensure the continuity of CERN's diverse scientific programme, the Future Circular Collider (FCC) Study was launched in 2014 to explore scenarios for post-LHC circular colliders. The unprecedented parameters of this future machine create exciting technological challenges, as it requires novel concepts for many of its key subsystems including the beam injection and extraction.

Given the extremely destructive energy stored in the circulating beams (8.4 GJ, corresponding to the kinetic energy of 24 TGV trains at a speed of 150 km/h), the extraction system is crucial for machine protection, as the beam must be safely disposed in case of any failure, or at the end of an experimental cycle. The extracted beam is first deflected by a fast-pulsed kicker magnet, and then it runs into the high magnetic field region of the static septum magnet, which provides the final, and significant, deflection towards an external beam dump. At the same time this magnet must realize a very low field at the position of the circulating beam. The transition between the two regions must be as thin as possible to reduce the required strength of the upstream kicker system.

A passive superconducting shield can create a zero-field region inside a strong external magnetic field by inducing persistent eddy currents on its surface, automatically arranged in a way to fully cancel the field in its interior (Figure 1).

Figure 1: The SuShi septum principle where the black arrows indicate the shielding currents in the superconductor and the red arrows indicate the magnetic field in the midplane of the device (Image: SuShi/ CERN)

A collaboration between CERN and Wigner Institute for Physics (Budapest, Hungary) was established under the framework of the FCC Study to evaluate the feasibility of this concept in a high-energy accelerator and propose realistic materials and technologies.

Three possible candidates have been selected for the first tests: a bulk MgB₂ tube (Figure 2a), a multilayer helically wrapped GdBCO tape on a copper tube (Figure 2b), and a multilayer NbTi/Nb/Cu sheet. The first prototype was successfully tested in February 2017 at CERN's SM18 facility, and could shield 2.6 T at its surface with a wall thickness of 8.5 mm. This is already a factor of about 2.5 improvement over the Lambertson septa of the LHC.

Tests for the two other prototypes are foreseen for later this year. Once the performance of all three prototypes has been evaluated, the best candidate technology will be chosen for more sophisticated tests and further prototyping.

For more information, visit the project website.

Figure 2a: The MgB₂ prototype (Image: SuShi/ CERN)

Figure 2b: The HTS prototype (Image: SuShi/ CERN)

Figure 3: The SuShi team during the test of the MgB₂ prototype (Image credit: Daniel Barna)

The research group is grateful for the support of the SM18 and the Magnetic Measurements teams, the CERN TE-ABT group and the FCC Study Coordination group.

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Commission under the FP7 Research Infrastructures project EUCARD-2, grant agreement no. 312453, and the FCC Study group.

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Fourth meeting on innovative RF technologies

Jennifer Toes — Mon, 03 Jul 2017 07:42:41 +0000

Fourth meeting on innovative RF technologies
by Peter McIntosh (STFC)

Participants of the EuCARD-2 WP12 gathered at NCBJ in Warsaw, Poland (Image: Peter McIntosh)

As EuCARD-2 came to the end of its four-year duration, the Work Package 12 (WP12) Innovative Radiofrequency (RF) Technologies activity held its fourth and final group meeting at the National Centre for Nuclear Research (NCBJ) in Warsaw, Poland in March 2017.

The group organised previous Annual Meetings at CEA Saclay in France, DESY in Germany, and the STFC Daresbury Laboratory in the United Kingdom. The events aimed to provide specific updates on its areas of activity, which included: Superconducting RF Thin Films, High Gradient Normal Conducting Technologies, Superconducting RF Higher Order Mode Diagnostics, and RF Photocathodes.

The 2017 meeting drew 23 participants from 11 of the 13 collaborating organisations, encompassing representation from the UK, France, Germany, Poland and Sweden. In terms of the diversity balance of the attendees, five (22%) attendees were women and three (13%) were from ethnic minority groups.

It was coordinated by Peter McIntosh (STFC Daresbury Laboratory), who has led the 5M€ WP12 delivery programme since its inception in 2013. The meeting itself was organised by Robert Nietubyć (NCBJ) who provided all of the local logistics.

Professor Krzysztof Kurek addresses participants of the EUCARD-2 WP12 2017 Annual Meeting
(Image: Peter McIntosh)

The event kicked off with an opening address and welcome from the NCBJ Director, Professor Krzysztof Kurek, who placed the capabilities of NCBJ firmly in the context of Innovative RF and accelerator technologies. Peter McIntosh then gave a management overview for the WP12 project as the EuCARD-2 programme comes to an end, before each of the WP12 task leaders presented their respective activity areas.

In the activity focused on SRF Thin films, the first high temperature SRF thin film deposition using Nb3Sn was realised at CERN. In addition, the highest Tc ever reached achieved 17.06K using CVD deposition of NbN by INP Grenoble. A new high precision magnetometry system for larger RF samples was validated at CEA Saclay.

For High Gradient Normal Conducting Technologies, University of Manchester developed an optimised X-band Damped Detuned Structure for the 380 GeV CLIC facility, whilst the first high efficiency ‘Kladistron’ developed by CEA Saclay began fabrication with Thales. Lancaster University also contributed in the development of a new high precision RF distribution system, able to provide ultra-precise timing synchronisation for a pair of CLIC X-band crab cavities.

Regarding the SRF HOM Diagnostics task, the Universities of Rostock and Manchester reported on the optimisation of simulation tools able to model very long linac structures using concatenated analysis and generalised scattering matrix techniques. In addition, the electronics needed to monitor cavity HOM signals have been prototyped and tested on FLASH, and have been implemented on XFEL by DESY.

For the RF Photocathodes activity, STFC has installed a new High Repetition Rate RF gun and cathode exchange system at the CLARA FEL test facility at Daresbury Laboratory. In addition, NCBJ has made optimised lead photocathode surfaces, and their operation was validated by DESY. Furthermore, the performance of magnesium photocathodes was demonstrated at HZDR-Rossendorf.

The local NCBJ organiser also invited the participants to visit the Warsaw Neon Muzeum as well as to tour the NCBJ facilities, including radiotherapy systems developed by NCBJ specialists and provided to commercial organisations.

In the summary of the final WP12 meeting, Peter McIntosh stated that he was tremendously impressed by the depth and breadth of work undertaken over the past four years by the collaborating institutes. The objectives of WP12 to break new ground on RF technologies were certainly ambitious when set-out back in 2013, yet in many areas the teams involved succeeded, laying the groundwork for a long-standing legacy for the international RF and accelerator communities for years to come.

The 2017 EuCARD-2 WP12 Annual Meeting was covered in live time via the ASTeC Twitter account.

eeFACT2016 held in Daresbury UK

Jennifer Toes — Tue, 06 Dec 2016 13:41:30 +0000

eeFACT2016 held in Daresbury UK
by Ralph Aβmann (DESY), Peter Ratoff (Cockcroft Institute) and Frank Zimmermann (CERN)

eeFACT2016: Participants of eeFACT2016 on the Daresbury campus (Image: Cockcroft Institute)

From 24 to 27 October 2016, accelerator experts from around the world gathered in Daresbury, UK, to discuss the state of the art, the challenges and the future directions for circular high-luminosity electron-positron factories.

The eeFACT2016 workshop was organized under the umbrella of ICFA and co-sponsored by the EuCARD-2 “Extreme Beams” accelerator network. An international committee co-chaired by Yoshihiro Funakoshi from KEK, Qing Qin from IHEP, and Frank Zimmermann from CERN had assembled a programme reflecting the breadth of the ongoing worldwide efforts.

The Cockcroft Institute, with the hospitality of its Director Peter Ratoff and the outstanding support from Liz Kennedy and Sue Waller, proved a perfect host for this event. Participants hailing from China, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States appreciated the smooth organization, wonderful venue, plus the chance to visit nearby historical Chester. The timing of the workshop could not have been better, including for the weather: during all four days the sun was shining, in what seemed like a British Indian summer.

Circular colliders have been a frontier technology of particle physics for half a century, with more than a factor 10 luminosity increase every ten years. Several lower-energy factories are in operation, continually improving their performance: BEPC-II at IHEP Beijing, DAΦNE at INFN Frascati, and VEPP-2000 at BINP Novosibirsk.

The Super-B-factory SuperKEKB, presently under commissioning in Japan, will be the next big upward step in luminosity. Among other future projects, a Super-charm-tau factory is being developed in Russia, while two ambitious highest-energy circular Higgs-Z-W (and top) factories are under design: the Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC) in China, and the electron-positron version of the Future Circular Collider (FCC-ee) on the Franco-Swiss border.

At eeFACT2016, DESY leading scientist Ralph Assmann recognized the continuing high level of innovation, even after an already 50-year long history of colliders, and a wealth of novel concepts. Over the last couple of years, several game-changing schemes have been introduced, for example colliding beams with a crab waist, large Piwinski angle and extremely low emittance.

The crab-waist concept was presented by its inventor Pantaleo Raimondi, now Director of the Accelerator and Source Division at the ESRF. This crab-waist scheme has already demonstrated its great merits in actual beam operation at DAΦNE. Other novel concepts include the use of a double ring or partial double ring, magnet tapering for the energy sawtooth, top-up injection, cost-effective 2-in-1 magnets, ultra-low beta function, “virtual crab waist” and asymmetric interaction-region optics.

The last two concepts were rather recently developed by Katsunobu Oide, former Director of KEK’s Accelerator Laboratory. Upcoming colliders like SuperKEKB will test the limits of these new schemes and manifest their positive impact. The upgraded VEPP-2000 collider will push the concept of round beams. In parallel much progress is being made in the design and operation of storage-ring light sources. An excellent review by ESRF’s world expert Dieter Einfeld revealed numerous topics of common interest with the collider world. Lastly, not to be forgotten is the built-in synergy of a future large circular high-energy lepton collider, such as CEPC or FCC-ee, with a subsequent hadron collider installed in the same tunnel, called SPPC and FCC-hh, respectively – as was highlighted by Alain Blondel from the University of Geneva.

The projected performance of the future factories is further lifted by a dramatic progress in accelerator technology. An entire session, convened by JLAB’s Bob Rimmer, was devoted to the radiofrequency (RF) system, which, working in continuous wave mode, needs to transmit a large power and support high beam currents at a high efficiency.

An essential component of this system is superconducting RF (SRF) cavities, whose overall efficiency is revolutionized by novel production schemes such as nitrogen doping and thin-film Nb3Sn coating. Several novel klystron concepts are on track to boost the power conversion efficiency of RF power generators. Thanks to this type of innovation, when compared with previous colliders the next generation can be considered truly green facilities.

The luminosity-energy plane of past, present and proposed future e+e- colliders. Combining successful ingredients of recent colliders and adding further innovative concepts promises extremely high luminosities at energies ranging from the Z pole to the tt threshold as illustrated by the plotting symbols for FCC-ee and CEPC (Image: Marica Biagini and Frank Zimmermann).

Alex Chao, an eminent physicist from SLAC, summarized that with performance being pushed so hard at the future factories, more subtleties that were unimportant in the past now arise. Indeed new effects keep being discovered for the beam-beam effects, such as the requirement of crab waist, residual nonlinearities after the crab waist cancellation, beamstrahlung, 3D flip-flop instability, interplay with lattice nonlinearities, and the possible interplay with collective effects. Alex Chao underlined that the beam-beam issue will become more critical than ever.

The large future collider concepts FCC-ee and CEPC build upon the recent innovations and are planning to exploit their full potential at the precision frontier, measuring the properties, couplings and decays of the Higgs and several other high energy particles with extreme accuracy. New ideas for compact low-energy crab-waist colliders, possibly based at universities, are emerging as well and these might offer attractive alternative paths for research and science.

electron-positron factories

issue 19

Milestone for HTS coil at UNIGE

Panagiotis Charitos — Fri, 16 Sep 2016 10:48:49 +0000

New milestone for High Temperature Superconductors at UNIGE
by Carmine Senatore & Panos Charitos

Details of the innovative superconducting coil, conceived and manufactured by researchers from UNIGE and Bruker BioSpin. (Image: © L. Windels, UNIGE)

High field superconducting magnets are the enabling technology for particle colliders, modern magnetic medical imaging, magnetic resonance spectroscopy and fusion reactors. To further push the boundaries of science, enhancing resolution or energy, these devices call for ever increasing magnetic fields. However, solenoidal coils built with the Low Temperature Superconductors (LTS) NbTi and Nb3Sn are limited to around 23.5 T while accelerator dipole magnets based on LTS will most likely reach their ultimate performance at about 16 T.

Recent progresses in the technology of High Temperature Superconductors (HTS) and, in particular, in REBa2Cu3O7-x (REBCO, RE = rare earth) coated conductors (CCs) have paved a way for the development of all-superconducting solenoids capable of generating fields in the range of 30 T, i.e. well beyond the limits of the present technology. However, the development of REBCO magnets still poses several fundamental and engineering challenges.

Carmine Senatore, Professor at the University of Geneva (UNIGE) is actively working in the study of applied superconductivity and through EuroCirCol is working for the development of high-field magnets for a future circular collider based on Nb3Sn under the scope of the FCC Study and EuroCirCol project. Senarore, also works on the development of HTS magnets. He is deputy leader of one of the working packages of EuCARD2 (WP 10.2) exploring different HTS conductor concepts and aiming to manufacture conductor prototypes to feed the HTS accelerator magnet demonstration program, which is the scope of WP10.

Recently his research group in the University of Geneva achieved the goal of generating a magnetic field of 25 T and, thus, obtaining the European record of highest superconducting generated magnetic field. Researchers at UNIGE worked closely with Bruker BioSpin to combine a Bruker laboratory magnet producing 21 T, already installed at UNIGE, with an innovative superconducting insert coil that allowed to increase the field by an additional 4 T. This means that in total, a field well beyond the 23.5 T reachable with conventional superconducting coils could be generated.

Piotr Komorowski, R&D engineer at Bruker and Professor Carmine Senator (UNIGE) pointing to the record field of 25T (Credits: UNIGE)

Concerning the scope of the project, Senatore says: «high magnetic fields are an indispensable tool for research in physics and material science as well as medical applications. This technological need represents the driver for the development of HTS, as they are the only means to generate fields well above 20 T». Riccardo Tediosi, manager of Bruker BioSpin’s Superconducting Technologies group adds: "the successful test of the 25 T coil represents a positive test-bench of ideas that we are developing for the next-generation HTS-based NMR magnets. We see that commercial breakthroughs in this field are at reach and 2017-2018 is going to be a very exciting period for Bruker and the NMR community."

The REBCO tapes used to achieve the 25 T in the solenoidal magnet are also studied under EuCARD-2 to build a dipole demonstrator able to generate 5 T in standalone configuration. It is then planned to use the same dipole demonstrator in a background field allowing to reach fields of up to 20 T. The 20 T target in the dipole compared to the 25 T reached in the solenoid should not generate confusion. Compared to solenoids, accelerator magnets are different “animals”: they need compact windings for reason of efficiency and cost, very high currents to ease protection, and they experience large forces transverse to the cable. Simple electromagnetics tells us, they require the double of ampere-turns to generate the same field.

However, there is much in common between the 25 T development based on REBCO coils and the goals of EuCARD-2. Senatore explains: We investigated the electrical, mechanical and thermo-physical properties of commercial REBCO tapes from all over the world. The results of these studies guided the choice of the commercial tape to be used for our insert coil and at the same time provided important inputs to the development of the conductor for the dipole prototype of EuCARD-2. The EuCARD-2 dipole will use these tapes in the form of a Roebel cable, a century old technology used for electrical machines. First winding tests have been performed, in various geometries, and a small coil is presently in test at CERN to validate the manufacturing process that will be used for the final magnet, planned for 2017.

ARIES approved by European Commission

Jennifer Toes — Fri, 16 Sep 2016 10:04:03 +0000

ARIES approved by European Commission
by Jennifer Toes (CERN)

The ARIES project has been approved by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme for Research and Innovation and will receive €10M in EU funding as requested in its proposal.

The full title of the project is Accelerator Research and Innovation for European Science and Society. It will serve as the spiritual successor to the EuCARD-2 Integrating Activity project, which is due to end in April 2017. The start date for ARIES is yet to be agreed upon, but is foreseen for May 2017, to allow a smooth transition between the two projects.

The total budget of the project will be €24.8M over the four-year study period, which includes the EU contribution and €14.8 M from the involved beneficiaries. The overall evaluation score of ARIES was 14.5 out of 15. This is the highest score compared with previous EU funded accelerator R&D projects such as CARE, EuCARD and EuCARD-2.

ARIES aims to develop novel concepts and improve existing accelerator technologies; to provide access to top-class accelerator research and test infrastructures to European researchers and industry; to further integrate the European accelerator community; and to develop a joint strategy towards sustainable accelerator S&T.

ARIES will bring together 41 beneficiaries from 18 different European countries, one International European Interest Organization (CERN) and one European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ESS). The beneficiaries are based in the following 18 countries: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.

The evaluators of the project highlighted the clarity of the project’s innovation strategy, the integration such a large variety of partners, the extent of the Transnational Access programme, the intended creation of an e-learning course, the proof-of-concept fund, and the development of compact accelerators as particular areas of interest within the proposal.

During its grant preparation, the Project Coordinator, Maurizio Vretenar (CERN), will agree on a start date for the project with the European Commission and a kick-off meeting for all project collaborators will be arranged.

EuCARD-2 3rd Annual Meeting highlights

Jennifer Toes — Mon, 27 Jun 2016 13:06:21 +0000

EuCARD-2 3^rd Annual Meeting highlights
by Jennifer Toes (CERN)

EuCARD-2 Project Coordinator, Maurizio Vretenar, opens the 3rd Annual Meeting at University of Malta, April 2016 (Credit: CERN)

In the last week of April 2016 international collaborators of the EuCARD-2 project gathered in Malta to share their news and results from the past year.

The project’s 3rd Annual Meeting was hosted by the University of Malta, one of the project participants, and was attended by over 80 participants from 13 different European countries, the United States and Japan. The opening address to the meeting was given by the Foreign Minister of Malta and the French ambassador joined project participants at the evening dinner reception.

The meeting consisted of a series of plenary presentations from each Work Package (WP) to disseminate their work to other WPs, of invited presentations on recent important developments in accelerator R&D and dedicated sessions for members of each WP to meet and discuss results most relevant to their work.

The Networking activities (WPs 2-7 focused on catalysing innovation, energy efficiency, accelerator applications, extreme beams, low emittance rings, and novel accelerators) provided updates on their work from the past year, including the results of workshops and meetings set up by individual WPs.

Extreme Beams analysed the future operation of the LHC and effects relevant for future high-intensity storage rings, colliders, boson factories and lepton-hadron colliders. Low emittance rings identified and analysed techniques for increasing the brilliance of synchrotron light sources. Novel accelerators presented the strategy for the design and construction of a first pilot plasma accelerator laboratory in Europe. Energy efficiency presented a new generation of high-efficiency Radio-Frequency devices. Finally, Accelerator Applications presented the results of investigating applications of accelerator technology which may have practical use in society (such as waste water treatment, radioisotope production with compact accelerators, and novel techniques and delivery systems for cancer therapy).

All participants in the EuCARD-2 Annual Meeting at University of Malta

The three Transnational Access (TA) activities (WPs 8 and 9, ICTF at STFC and the HiRadMad and MagNet facilities at CERN) presented updates on the status of the uptake of the access units offered and the most recent developments made at the facilities. All facilities have proved popular and are already approaching the total number of access units offered within the proposal.

Finally, the four Joint Research activities (WPs 10-13, focused on future magnets, collimator materials for high density energy deposition, innovative radio frequency technologies and novel accelerator techniques) demonstrated their substantial progress in the development of advanced accelerator technologies over the past year.

These results included progress towards the first prototype magnet based on High-Temperature Superconductor (HTS) technology, and the production and testing of HTS tapes and cables. In addition, new material grades which may improve performance against irradiation and high-energy deposition for the LHC upgrade were identified and validated. New thin film superconducting coatings were developed and tested. Important achievements were registered in the experimental validation of Novel Acceleration Techniques.

As well as the spectrum of research news and results presented during both plenary and parallel sessions, during the meeting two outreach talks were given to the public by Maurizio Vretenar, Frank Zimmermann and Ralph Assmann. Both events were well attended. In addition, the Maltese television station ‘TV Malta’ invited the Project Coordinator and attendees from the University of Malta to be interviewed for their breakfast broadcast.

EuCARD-2

issue 17