High-intensity particle beams enable researchers to probe rare physics phenomena. A proposed technique called optical stochastic cooling could achieve brighter beams 10,000 times faster than current technology allows. A proof-of-principle experiment to demonstrate OSC has begun at Fermilab’s Integrable Optics Test Accelerator.
here’s a chill in the air, and things are getting even cooler at IOTA/FAST. The research team is reconfiguring the facility for its next major experiment, the world’s first demonstration of optical stochastic cooling.
This shows the octupole channel in the Fermilab Integrable Optics Test Accelerator, or IOTA, in November. A set of 17 independently powered octupole magnets is installed in one of the straight sections of IOTA. The channel is used for experiments on nonlinear integrable optics and on the physics of dynamical systems. These experiments study new ways to stabilize high-intensity beams for research at the frontiers of particle physics.
The optical stochastic cooling experiment’s undulator magnet installed in the Fermilab Integrable Optics Test Accelerator, or IOTA, in November.
Jonathan Jarvis and Jamie Santucci install the apparatus for the new optical stochastic cooling experiment in the Fermilab Integrable Optics Test Accelerator, known as IOTA, in November. The experiment uses infrared light emitted by electrons in an undulator magnet to sense and to adjust their positions and velocities. The goal is to demonstrate for the first time a significant increase in the density and therefore in the quality of charged particle beams using this principle.
This award, totaling $2.5 million, will fund the development of a faster particle beam cooling method as well as the implementation of machine learning advancements to optimally control the system.
Fermilab researchers have announced first results from IOTA, the lab’s newest particle accelerator. The first run, which included observations of single electrons circulating in the ring, illustrates the exciting potential of the versatile machine, both in advancing quantum science and improving accelerator beams.
After the first electron beam was circulated in August 2018, the experimental program at the Fermilab Integrable Optics Test Accelerator (IOTA) continues with commissioning of machine and diagnostics and with the first beam-physics experiments.
One of the most interesting scientific topics at IOTA will be studies of beams made of a single electron.
From CERN Courier, Oct. 29, 2018: In late August, a beam of electrons successfully circulated for the first time through a new particle accelerator at Fermilab. The Integrable Optics Test Accelerator, a 40-meter-circumference storage ring, is one of only a handful of facilities worldwide dedicated to beam-physics studies.