The Accelerator Group a rapid overview Roger Barlow Christmas Meeting Tuesday December 21 st 2010

Who Academics: Roger Barlow, Rob Appleby, Roger Jones, Hywel Owen Postdocs: Cristian Bungau, Alessandro D’Elia, Inna Nesmiyan, Ian Shinton, Adina Toader Students: David Brett, Narong Chanlek, Hugo Day, Matthew Fraser, Jimmy Garland, Chris Glasman, James Jones, Nawin Juntong, Vasim Khan, Anna Kolano, James Molson, Mike Salt, Tony Scarfe, Nick Shipman, Luke Thomson, Sam Tygier, Pei Zhang

RF acceleration HIE-ISOLDE HIE-LINAC Upgrade RF power (from klystron etc) converted to EM field in resonant cavity. Study field shape, resonant frequencies, Q value, and beam dynamics. Superconducting: Niobium sputtered on Copper

RF acceleration ILC (500 GeV) RF power (from klystron etc) converted to EM field in resonant cavity. Study field shape, resonant frequencies, Q value, and beam dynamics using ME solvers, models and measurements. ‘Ichiro’ Cavity fabricated at KEK Trapped mode ~2.4498GHz Multi-cavity mode ~2.6420GHz

RF acceleration CLIC (1.5 TeV) By specific detuning of cavities one can get acceptably low wakefields with acceptably high Q values Need to detune cavities to avoid wakefields Also designing the Crab Cavity for CLIC

RF acceleration Light Source Tests being done at the FLASH facility at DESY 3 rd Harmonic cavity to flatten field shape

FP420/ATLASFP Clean signal. Scattered protons go down beam pipe and are detected later Higgs can be produced diffractively at the LHC beam p’ AFP Detector LHC magnets

The LHC: Backgrounds Rob Appleby at CERN for 2 years, making the LHC work. (Also working on CLIC and LHeC – not covered here) Machine Induced Backgrounds (beam-gas, collimators, beam halo...) increasingly important as Luminosity (and energy) ramp up. Losses shorten beam lifetime, can swamp experiments, can quench magnets. Includes working with Dave Bailey on backgrounds in the LHCb experiment. Picture shows online Beam Loss Monitor display

The LHC: Backgrounds What happens if a vacuum valve between ring sections is closed while the beam is stored? Rob’s simulations show that the monitors trigger a controlled beam loss before the superconducting magnets quench

LHC Collimators Collimators vital to ensure that particles are lost where they will do no harm – not in the superconducting magnets! Present collimation system known to be inadequate for future beam currents and luminosities. Understanding and modelling need to handle tails of distributions. Codes generally ancient and impossible to update Adapting modern code (Merlin) for collimation: benchmark against existing codes. Manchester now centre for Merlin code support and development

EMMA: the first nsFFAG FFAG is a cross between a cyclotron and a synchrotron – able to provide high currents at high energies. Conventional FFAG has slowly varying field and wide beam pipe. Non- scaling FFAG has rapidly varying field and narrow beam pipe. Simpler and more compact. World’s first nsFFAG constructed at Daresbury. Manchester-led CONFORM project

EMMA studies Ring complete – Thousands of turns No demonstration yet of successful acceleration Next run January

Thorium Power A smaller cheaper more reliable proton accelerator makes a Thorium-powered ADSR reactor a more practical possibility. Lots of interest – and it’s growing Founded ThorEA – the Thorium Energy Amplifier Association. UK-wide workshops ~ 4-5 times a year. Talking to colleagues in the Dalton Institute

Proton Therapy Another possible application. Protons are a better tool for radiotherapy than X rays – certainly in some cases, perhaps in many. Other charged particles (He, C ions?) may be better yet. Important part of CONFORM project Looking to 2 nd generation machines that can paint tumour precisely with voxels Need to know where the dose is going – detector group has ideas Talking to colleagues at the Christie Hospital, supporting their bid to the NHS

Light Sources Involved in design of Diamond, 4GLS, and NLS Now working with MAXlab (LUND)

Impact 25 Manchester posters at IPAC and lots of posters and talks at other conferences Posters win prizes (Matt, Sam, Vasim) Leading Workpackages in EUCard Conferences and meetings organised IoP PAB Annual Meeting (Manchester, July) – Hywel Owen and Adina Toader XB2010 (Cockcroft, December) - Roger Jones

Conclusion Lots of good science – Studying the Higgs Boson Treating Cancer Saving the planet through sustainable Nuclear energy And much more: ESS, LHeC, SuperB