Fermilab, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have achieved a milestone in magnet technology. Earlier this year, their new magnet reached the highest field strength ever recorded for an accelerator focusing magnet. It will also be the first niobium-tin quadrupole magnet to operate in a particle accelerator — in this case, the future High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider at CERN.
Giaccone’s research focuses on particle accelerator cavities — the structures that transfer energy to particle beams as the beams race through them. She and her team use plasma to process the inner surface of the cavities in order to remove contaminations. This new technique results in a better-performing accelerator. Her work was recently recognized at the International Conference on RF Superconductivity.