From 12th to 17th May a group of 16 staff and students represented ASTeC at the International Particle Accelerator Conference (IPAC ‘13) in Shanghai, China. This is the largest annual international conference in accelerator science, with over 1000 delegates.
ASTeC facilities and science were well represented in the main sessions of the conference. Detailed measurements using the ALICE (Accelerators and Lasers in Combined Experiments) and EMMA (Electron Machine with Many Applications) accelerators were the main topic of a talk by Kai Hock from the University of Liverpool. ALICE, one a few operating ERLs worldwide, also featured in another talk by R. Hajima from the Japanese Atomic Energy Authority on “Beam Commissioning of Energy Recovery Linacs”.
James Jones with his poster
Recent publications from N. Thompson and D. Dunning from the MARS (Magnets and Radiation Sources) group on novel free electron laser design schemes featured in talks by S. Reiche and J. Wu from Paul Scherrer Institute and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Centre.
Apart from the main oral sessions, a key part of IPAC conferences are the poster sessions, at which ASTeC presented around 35 papers as either lead or contributing author.
The contributions reflected the diverse range of research and technology development carried out in the center. A number of papers highlighted the recent achievement of first beam on VELA (Versatile Electron Linear Accelerator) at Daresbury Laboratory in April this year. Progress on the design of a proposed advanced test facility for future light sources ‘CLARA’ (Compact Linear Accelerator for Research and Applications) was also covered in detail.
ASTeC’s strong knowledge base in FFAG (Fixed Field Alternating Gradient) accelerators was strongly represented with papers on lattice and beam dynamics both in EMMA and for future accelerators. Hadron and muon accelerator expertise was represented in papers on the Front End Test Stand developments at RAL, ASTeC’s contributions to ISIS upgrades and designs for the Neutrino Factory. The status and recent achievements of the Muon Ionisation and Cooling Experiment (MICE) at RAL was also presented.
ASTeC participants Philippe Goudket and Reza Valizadeh
Technological developments are an integral part of ASTeC’s research and were described in papers on permanent magnet quadrupoles for the Compact Linear Collider project, the UK superconducting planar undulator project, Crab Cavities for the Large Hadron Collider High Luminosity Upgrade and the Daresbury International Cryomodule Project.
The conference wouldn’t run so smoothly without the contributions of staff to assist in it’s running. As a member of the JACOW publishing team, Sue Waller supported the publication of the paper submissions, throughout the duration of the conference. Deepa Angal-Kalinin, leader of the Accelerator Physics Group, chaired the contributed oral session on beam instrumentation and feedback.
