'Vague, but Exciting'
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I n t e r n at I o n a l Jo u r n a l o f HI g H -en e r g y PH y s I c s CERN COURIERV o l u m e 49 nu m b e r 4 ma y 2009 ‘Vague, but exciting’ ACCELERATORS COSMIC RAYS COLLABORATIONS FFAGs enter the era of PAMELA finds a ATLAS makes a smooth applications p5 positron excess p12 changeover at the top p31 CCMay09Cover.indd 1 14/4/09 09:44:43 CONTENTS Covering current developments in high- energy physics and related fields worldwide CERN Courier is distributed to member-state governments, institutes and laboratories affiliated with CERN, and to their personnel. It is published monthly, except for January and August. The views expressed are not necessarily those of the CERN management. Editor Christine Sutton Editorial assistant Carolyn Lee CERN CERN, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland E-mail [email protected] Fax +41 (0) 22 785 0247 Web cerncourier.com Advisory board James Gillies, Rolf Landua and Maximilian Metzger COURIERo l u m e u m b e r a y Laboratory correspondents: V 49 N 4 m 2009 Argonne National Laboratory (US) Cosmas Zachos Brookhaven National Laboratory (US) P Yamin Cornell University (US) D G Cassel DESY Laboratory (Germany) Ilka Flegel, Ute Wilhelmsen EMFCSC (Italy) Anna Cavallini Enrico Fermi Centre (Italy) Guido Piragino Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (US) Judy Jackson Forschungszentrum Jülich (Germany) Markus Buescher GSI Darmstadt (Germany) I Peter IHEP, Beijing (China) Tongzhou Xu IHEP, Serpukhov (Russia) Yu Ryabov INFN (Italy) Romeo Bassoli Jefferson Laboratory (US) Steven Corneliussen JINR Dubna (Russia) B Starchenko KEK National Laboratory (Japan) Youhei Morita Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (US) Spencer Klein Seeing beam once again p6 Dirac was right about antimatter p15 A new side to Peter Higgs p36 Los Alamos National Laboratory (US) C Hoffmann NIKHEF Laboratory (Netherlands) Paul de Jong Novosibirsk Institute (Russia) S Eidelman News 5 NCSL (US) Geoff Koch Orsay Laboratory (France) Anne-Marie Lutz FFAGs enter the applications era. Laser-pulse blasts set antiparticle PSI Laboratory (Switzerland) P-R Kettle production record. First sector is closer to cool down ... while the injection Saclay Laboratory (France) Elisabeth Locci Science and Technology Facilities Council (UK) Peter Barratt chain sees beam again. ALICE prepares for jet measurements. Editor’s TRIUMF Laboratory (Canada) Marcello Pavan note. NSCL researchers constrain nuclear symmetry energy at low density. Produced for CERN by IOP Publishing Ltd IOP Publishing Ltd, Dirac House, Temple Back, Sciencewatch 11 Bristol BS1 6BE, UK Tel +44 (0)117 929 7481 Astrowatch 12 Publisher Jo Nicholas CERN Courier Archive 13 Art director Andrew Giaquinto Production editor Jesse Karjalainen Technical illustrator Alison Tovey Features Advertising manager Ed Jost Why antihydrogen and antimatter are different 15 Recruitment advertisement manager Moo Ali Advertisement production Katie Graham As Dirac realized, there’s more to antimatter than antihydrogen. Marketing & Circulation Anastasia Ireland New Zealand meeting looks at dark matter 19 Advertising Tel +44 (0)117 930 1026 (for UK/Europe display advertising), The Dark 2009 conference took place in Christchurch earlier this year. +1 215 627 0880 (for North American display advertising), or +44 (0)117 930 1027 (for recruitment advertising); Study group considers how to preserve data 21 E-mail: [email protected]; fax +44 (0)117 930 1178 How can high-energy physics data best be saved for the future? General distribution Courrier Adressage, CERN, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland. E-mail: [email protected] Happy 20th birthday, World Wide Web 24 In certain countries, to request copies or to make address changes, Something happened at CERN in 1989 that changed the world forever. contact: China Keqing Ma, Library, Institute of High Energy Physics, PO Box 918, Beijing 100049, People’s Republic of China. Nara workshop looks at heavy quarkonia 27 E-mail: [email protected] A report from the latest meeting of the Quarkonium Working Group. Germany Veronika Werschner, DESY, Notkestr. 85, 22607 Hamburg, Germany. E-mail: [email protected] 31 Italy Loredana Rum or Anna Pennacchietti, INFN, Casella Postale ATLAS makes a smooth changeover at the top 56, 00044 Frascati, Rome, Italy. E-mail: [email protected] Peter Jenni and Fabiola Gianotti reflect on the role of ATLAS spokesperson. UK Mark Wells, Science and Technology Facilities Council, Polaris House, North Star Avenue, Swindon, Wiltshire SN2 1SZ. Faces and Places 34 E-mail: [email protected] US/Canada Published by Cern Courier, 6N246 Willow Drive, St Charles, IL 60175, US. Periodical postage paid in St Charles, IL, Recruitment 40 US. Fax 630 377 1569. E-mail: [email protected] POSTMASTER: send address changes to: Creative Mailing Services, Bookshelf 43 PO Box 1147, St Charles, IL 60174, US Viewpoint 46 Published by European Organization for Nuclear Research, CERN, 1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland. Tel +41 (0) 22 767 61 11 Telefax +41 (0) 22 767 65 55 Printed by Warners (Midlands) plc, Bourne, Lincolnshire, UK © 2009 CERN ISSN 0304-288X Cover: In March 1989 Tim Berners-Lee, a physicist at CERN, handed a document to his supervisor Mike Sendall, titled “Information Management: a Proposal”. “Vague, but exciting”, were the words that Sendall wrote on the proposal, allowing Berners-Lee to continue with the project. This low-key beginning to the phenomenon that became the World Wide Web was celebrated at CERN in March (p24). CERN Courier May 2009 3 CCMay09Contents.indd 3 14/4/09 09:24:44 WIENER Magnet Power Supply Systems In addition to the standard power supplies PL (low voltage, high currents) and Mpod (High and low voltages, multichannel), W-Ie-Ne-R presents now PG 501 a 1,8 kW programmable bipolar current source for magnets in 3 U format. Main features Remote and local controls, ability to ramp from full negative current to full positive current going through zero without requiring operator intervention for changing output polarity once the ramp is initiated. Stable operation at zero current output. Adjustable slew rate, no overshot Magnet Load Range Resistance: 80 mȍ - 100ȍ Inductance: 0 - 2H Output Voltage: +/- 50 / 75 /100V (compliance voltage) Current: +/- 33 / 24 / 20A (16 bit setting resolution) Current cascading by parallel operation of several units Regulation and stability < 100 PPM (on full scale) Ripple and noise < 10mVpp Slew rate (user adj.) ~1-50A/s Control resolution 16 bit Interlocks Internal Protection Control interfaces Monitoring Over current Local Communication failure AC input under voltage Ethernet Control power OK Over voltage USB Regulation failure / status RS232 / 485 alternatively Current / Voltage / Temperature Over temperature / cooling fault Set points read back Ground fault detection Interlock fault status Summation fault Since 1959: www.wiener-d.com Plein & Baus GmbH, Muellersbaum 20, 51399 Burscheid, Germany Phone: (+49) 2174 6780, Fax: (+49) 2174 678 55 Bleed full page template.indt 1 7/4/09 10:59:48 NEWS ACCELERATORS FFAGs enter the applications era After a series of preliminary tests held on the FFAG accelerator provides a high-energy 26–27 February the Research Reactor proton beam to a heavy-metal target in the Institute of Kyoto University (KURRI) received KUCA to produce spallation neutrons, which a national licence to conduct experiments in turn drive fission chain reactions in the for an accelerator-driven subcritical reactor KUCA-A Core. (ADSR) using the Kyoto University Critical The aim is to examine the feasibility of Assembly (KUCA). The first ADSR experiment an ADSR and to lay the foundations for its began on 4 March using a newly developed development. The fact that the reactor is fixed-field alternating-gradient (FFAG) proton driven slightly below criticality makes this accelerator connected to the KUCA. This system intrinsically safe: as soon as the marks the first use of an FFAG accelerator The proton FFAG accelerator. (Courtesy KURRI.) external neutron supply is stopped, fission built for a specific application rather than as a chain reactions cease. ADSRs may also be prototype, and it heralds the start of a new era goal, was initiated in 2002 under a contract useful for the transmutation of long-lived (CERN Courier September 2008 p21). with the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, transuranic elements into shorter-lived or The Development of an Accelerator Driven Science and Technology (MEXT) as part of the stable elements. They therefore have the Subcritical Reactor using an FFAG Proton Technology Development Project for Innovative potential to be used as energy amplifiers, Accelerator project, which is now reaching its Nuclear Energy Systems. In the experiment neutron sources and transmutation systems. Laser-pulse blasts set antiparticle production record The latest record for antiparticle density created in the laboratory has not come from an accelerator facility but from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s Jupiter laser facility. Hui Chen and colleagues blasted picosecond laser pulses carrying 1020 Wc m –2 from the Titan laser onto gold targets some Hui Chen sets up targets for the antimatter experiment at the Jupiter laser facility. (Courtesy LLNL.) 1 mm thick. Part of each laser pulse created a plasma and part drove the plasma’s electrons In addition to being intrinsically interesting and pair-creation from high-energy photons at into the gold. The gold nuclei then slowed this work could aid better understanding of accelerators. down the electrons, producing photons that astrophysical