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posted by martyb on Wednesday May 27 2020, @06:04AM   Printer-friendly
from the getting-more-for-less dept.

Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

As physicists developed plans for building an electron-ion collider (EIC)—a next-generation nuclear physics facility to be built at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory for nuclear physics research—they explored various options for accelerating the beams of electrons. One approach, developed by scientists at Brookhaven Lab and Stony Brook University, was to use an energy-recovery linear accelerator (ERL). The ERL would bring the electrons up to the energy needed to probe the inner structure of protons and atomic nuclei, and then decelerate the electrons and reuse most of their energy. The R&D to develop the innovative ERL may end up having a major impact in a different area of physics—high-energy particle physics, where the power needs make its energy-saving features particularly attractive.

"The power consumption of scientific instruments for particle physics experiments has steadily increased. To perform sustainable research, physicists are investigating ways to reduce that power consumption," said Thomas Roser, head of Brookhaven Lab's Collider-Accelerator Department, one of the scientists developing the ERL approach.

In a paper just published in the journal Physics Letters B, the authors describe how their innovations could tame the power requirements of an electron-positron (e-e+) collider—a next-generation high-energy particle physics research facility under discussion for possible future construction in Europe.

[...] The Brookhaven and Stony Brook physicists say their energy-recovery and beam-recycling ERL components could solve key problems of both alternate designs. As described in the new paper, it would cut the electric power needed to operate the 100-km ring-shaped facility under discussion in Europe to one third of what would be required without an ERL. And, by refreshing particle beams while recovering and reusing their energy, it would eliminate the need to dump and replace beams while still allowing single-pass collisions of tightly packed particles for maximum physics impact.

Journal Reference:
Vladimir N. Litvinenko et al. High-energy high-luminosity e+e− collider using energy-recovery linacs, Physics Letters B (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.physletb.2020.135394


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by PiMuNu on Wednesday May 27 2020, @12:39PM

    by PiMuNu (3823) on Wednesday May 27 2020, @12:39PM (#999579)

    The idea is to reduce the current by a factor 4, but maintain the total number of Higgs particles (or t tbar) produced, by squeezing the beams more tightly so the chances of a proton hitting another proton are just about the same.

    Normally, the beams crash into each other and cause some natural expansion, preventing this approach from working; but using the ERL technology, they can dump the beams and reaccelerate much more frequently. This means that beam expansion is not such a big problem.

    Because the current is much lower, the amount of synchrotron radiation is much lower so the overall power consumption of the accelerator is lower.

    ==

    Note that it doesn't deal with the main problem of this project - namely, constructing the biggest tunnel in the world and filling it with extremely sensitive electronic equipment without screwing anything up.

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