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EuCARD reviews progress at annual meeting

19 July 2011

The second annual meeting of the European Co-ordination for Accelerator Research and Development (EuCARD) project took place on 11–13 May at the headquarters of the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique in Paris, attended by more than 120 participants. EuCARD is a four-year project co-funded by the European Union’s Framework Programme 7 and involves 37 European partners.

Among the many results and issues discussed was the progress of the engineering design for a 13 T niobium-tin (Nb3Sn) dipole. The first results on its high-temperature superconductor coil insert showed the need for a second iteration; the Nb3Sn undulator also requires optimization with respect to instabilities. New materials have been identified for more robust collimators; intelligent collimators for the LHC and cold collimators for the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research are undergoing beam tests.

Linear collider technologies are on the move as well and new findings were reported on the origin of breakdowns in cavities. Stabilization to below 0.5 nm at 1 Hz has been demonstrated and there have been advances in instrumentation and femtosecond synchronization. Several superconducting bulk or coated cavities are in either final design, construction or test stages. These include crab cavities for both the LHC and the Compact Linear Collider study. Finally, novel concepts are progressing, including the new crab-waist crossing being tested at DAFNE, the commissioning of EMMA (the fixed-field alternating gradient machine at Daresbury) and the emittance measurement of tiny laser-driven, plasma-accelerated beams.

The networking activities in neutrino facilities, accelerator performance and RF technologies have confirmed their efficiency as exchange platforms. They have made the case for their expansion in the EuCARD2 proposal, which is under preparation and will be submitted by November 2011. Transnational access to the UK Science and Technology Facilities Council’s MICE facility (precision beams and muon-ionization cooling equipment) is continuing. HiRadMat at CERN, which offers pulsed irradiation, will open this autumn. Potential external users can benefit from financial support from the European Commission.

This year, the meeting dedicated one day to accelerator research and development in France, as well as to topics outside the scope of EuCARD, including the SuperB project (SuperB Factory set to be built at the University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’), neutrino facilities and Siemens medical accelerators. There was also a visit to the large accelerator platforms at the Institut de Physique Nucléaire d’Orsay and CEA-Saclay.

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