The conference was attended by 18 ASTeC staff covering all ASTeC facilities, ASTeC’s contributions to international projects, science and underpinning technology aspects as well as industrial engagement.
James Jones and Julien McKenzie discussing an ASTeC poster
(Credit: Lee Jones)
Stephen Brookes (formerly Intense Beams Group ASTeC, now at BNL) gave an invited oral presentation on Vertical Fixed Field Alternating Gradient Accelerators. A key part of IPAC conferences are the poster sessions, at which ASTeC presented 40 papers as either lead or contributing author.
The contributions reflected the diverse range of research and technology development carried out in the centre. A number of papers highlighted the first beam characterisation and industrial engagement on VELA (versatile electron linear accelerator), design of High Repetition Rate Gun, CLARA front end and simulations. Technological developments are an integral part of ASTeC’s research and were described in papers on permanent magnet quadruples 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.
One of the two superconducting RF accelerating modules and the cryogenic plant
(Credit: HZDR Rossendorf)
The organising committee, the Scientific Programme Committee and the local organising committee are responsible for overall organisation and the scientific programme of the conference. The organising Committee chair was Andy Wolski from the Liverpool University and the Cockcroft Institute. Deepa Angal-Kalinin, ASTeC Accelerator Physics Group leader was co-ordinator of the Main Classification on Particle Sources and Alternative Acceleration Techniques. The conference wouldn’t run so smoothly without the contributions of staff to assist in its running. As a member of the JACOW publishing team, Sue Waller supported the publication of the paper submissions, throughout the duration of the conference.
View looking back along the ELBE accelerator towards the twin electron sources
(Credit: HZDR Rossendorf)
As part of the conference, trips to several German accelerator facilities were organised. Lee Jones visited the HZDR Rossendorf (link opens in a new window) laboratory to view the ELBE facility, located just outside of Dresden. This is a mid-range facility based on a 40 MeV superconducting electron linac which can be driven using either a pulsed thermionic gun or a superconducting RF electron gun.
The electron beam is used to drive a pair of Free-Electron-Lasers covering the wavelength range 4 to 250 mm, as well as generating coherent terahertz radiation, bremsstrahlung and gamma rays, and neutrons for nuclear physics research, and the accelerator is further complement by a high-power laser laboratory which will support X-ray production through Thompson scattering.
The facility is well laid-out and beautifully presented, and is typically over-subscribed by a factor of 2 or 3 in terms of user demand.
