Click here if you’d like to receive our bimonthly newsletter. The past week brought exciting news to ATAP: the DOE funded two areas of our research through their accelerator stewardship program. One grant will partner us with Paul Scherrer Institute and Varian Medical Technologies to apply our superconducting magnet expertise to beam delivery for cancer […]
Read More »ATAP Newsletter, December 2014
BELLA Accelerates Electrons Beyond 4 GeV
The Berkeley Lab Laser Accelerator (BELLA) has boosted electrons to an energy of 4.2 GeV, setting a new energy record for these ultra-compact accelerators.
A 9 cm-long capillary discharge waveguide used in BELLA experiments to generate multi-GeV electron beams. The plasma plume has been made more prominent with the use of HDR photography. (Roy Kaltschmidt, LBNL Public Affairs Creative Services.)
ATAP Newsletter, October 2014
Tests of HQ02a and HQ02b show performance that even in the worst cases was in excess of the needs of a high-luminosity LHC (lower dashed line) and in most cases far exceeded the need. The data points are quenches (transitions from superconductivity to normal conductivity in part of the magnet, requiring its energy to be removed). Quenches are thought to result from local movement of part of the superconductor. As shown in these “training curves,” such magnets achieve their full field over the course of several quenches — a sort of break-in process that beds the superconducting coils down into a highly stable position. A trained magnet can be relied upon to deliver a certain magnetic field in an operating accelerator.
