The potential for neutrino physics at muon colliders and dedicated high current muon storage rings

Conceptual design studies are underway for muon colliders and other high-current muon storage rings that have the potential to become the first true “neutrino factories”. Muon decays in long straight sections of the storage rings would produce precisely characterized beams of electron and muon type neutrinos of unprecedented intensity. This article reviews the prospects for these facilities to greatly extend our capabilities for neutrino experiments, largely emphasizing the physics of neutrino interactions.     

On synchrotron radiation in non-uniform magnetic fields

We study the conditions in which a charged particle in an inhomogeneous magnetic field (particularly at the edges of a “long” uniform magnet or in a “short” magnet) can emit synchrotron radiation with a spectrum extending beyond the “critical frequency”. We suggest that this effect should be clearly visible (and also useful) in the case of very high energy proton storage rings.     

Renormalized Fokker-Planck equation for the problem of the beam-beam interaction in electron storage rings

It is shown that the beam-beam interaction in electron storage rings is equivalent to an additional source of noise for the particle betatron oscillations. A weak white noise acting upon a nonlinear oscillator causes a fast loss of coherence in its phase. This loss of coherence induces a broadening of the resonances, thus avoiding the problem of the divergent perturbative series which arises in the study of nonintegrable Hamiltonian systems. A “renormalized” Fokker-Planck equation is established which contains new diffusive terms corresponding to the presence of resonances. The solution of this equation is exhibited explicitly in a simplified case. This allows an analytical approach to the problem of the beam-beam instability, which sets an upper limit to the maximum attainable luminosity in storage rings.     

How it All Started at DESY in 1964

To put it bluntly, synchrotrons and storage rings were originally not intended to become light sources for synchrotron radiation (SR). If particle physicists had not driven this development for their own needs, we would not yet have these sources available at their present level of sophistication. In 1964, when the then-6 GeV synchrotron DESY at the newly founded Hamburg institution of the same name started operating, SR was considered at best a nuisance. Accelerating an electron to 6 GeV was accompanied by a loss of 9.35 GeV on its way due to this radiation, and later, at 7.5 GeV, the loss amounted to 22.8 GeV. How could it then happen that today all of the DESY storage rings and linear accelerators are devoted to SR?     

On the way towards crystallized beams: the transverse temperature of particle beams

The cooling of particles in storage rings depends on the coupling between the longitudinal and transverse “temperatures” of the stored beam. This coupling is studied in the limit of relatively sparse beams, and is found to depend sensitively on the relative strengths of the focusing forces in the two transverse dimensions, which determine the ratio of the periods of the betatron oscillations.     

Feed forward rings

Military and other critical (life-threatening/life-saving) systems require performance evaluations from a survivability, reliability, maintainability, and availability (SRMA) perspective. Applying SRMA concepts to commercial token passing ring local area networks (LANs) (e.g., IEEE-802.5, FDDI, SAE-9B) has uncovered several design issues that could impact the utility of these networks in a critical system. This article discloses a new architecture for token passing rings, called “feed forward rings” (FFR), which provides a significant improvement in system survivability, can eliminate “jabber mode” induced ring failures, and provides for passive optical bridging between rings.

The basic “feed forward” concept is that LANs, based on token passing protocols and utilizing multiple, physically separated, fiber optic rings, should have the serial data stream on each ring flowing in the same direction of rotation. This article provides qualitative observations on the performance of current commercial rings and discusses the advantages of several FFR topologies. Implementation issues related to FFRs are also discussed. It is recommended that FFR alternatives to counterrotating rings (CRR) with separated cables be considered for inclusion in LAN standards.     

Quantum-mechanical splitters: How should one understand them?

To describe quantum oscillations on metallic rings and similar effects, some authors introduced recently an ideal device which “splits” the electron wavefunction at the junction of three “wires”. A proper quantum-mechanical treatment requires, however, that the splitting procedure is described by a hamiltonian. In this Letter we show how this can be achieved in the framework of the self-adjoint-extension theory.     

News and Views: Two Years of the Website lightsources.org

The “Helmholtz-Zentrum für Materialien und Energie,” HZB, in Berlin looks back on a long and successful history in the development and operation of storage ring (SR)-based synchrotron radiation sources, starting in the early 1980s with BESSY I, followed by BESSY II in the late 1990s and the Metrology Light Source set up for the PTB (Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt) in 2008. Novel concepts to better tailor the radiation properties of storage rings to the user's demands (e.g., for short pulses such as low alpha optics and femto-slicing facility) have been pioneered or improved at the HZB. Despite these efforts and the recent progress made in the development towards diffraction-limited SR, it seems right to look into alternative accelerator technologies providing high average current and short-pulsed (sub-ps) beams of exceptional brilliance and low energy spread without the fundamental restrictions of a beam circulating in an equilibrium state of the phase-space distribution.     

Status of the MAX IV Laboratory

On the day of the 2016 summer solstice, June 21, MAX IV, the new synchrotron radiation facility in Lund, Sweden, will be inaugurated. MAX IV is setting a new standard in terms of emittance, thereby providing beamlines with the best possible brilliance and coherence. At the same time, MAX IV continues a more than three-decades-long successful history of Swedish synchrotron-radiation-based research. The activities at the present MAX-lab, which officially started when the MAX I storage ring opened for users in 1986, have been concluded with a “last beamdump” ceremony for the MAX II and MAX III storage rings on December 13, 2015, Saint Lucy's Day. In Sweden, the winter solstice is celebrated with a festival of light.     

The mathematical background of chemical reactor analysis: I. Preliminaries. Batch reactors

The name “chemical reaction engineering” has been given to the branch of chemical engineering that focusses on the conditions which make for useful chemical transformation. Within this subdiscipline there are studies related primarily to the static and dynamic behavior of the reactor and of these the more analytical are rich in mathematical problems. In this paper the preliminary considerations of stoicheiometry, thermodynamics and chemical kinetics are outlined as background to a discussion of the batch reactor. The characteristic problems of other important reactor types will be taken up in a sequel.     

DICSI station at KCSR and NT: Determination of optimal requirements to the formation of an SR beam using cylindrical x-ray optical zoom lenses

To modernize the DICSI station, new hardware and software have been created according to the conditions of the operating storage ring “Sibir’-2” beam channel. The recording system has been successfully tested on the operating channel of the storage ring VEPP-3 (Budker Institute of Nuclear Physics Siberian Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk) using the time-resolved “diffraction cinema” technique in studying real biological objects in the static and dynamic modes of data accumulation. At the DICSI station, structural changes in medical and biological objects are permanently investigated. The specific structure dimensions of these objects are in the nanometric range.     

Empirical reality,empirical causality,and the measurement problem

Does physics describe anything that can meaningfully be called “independent reality,” or is it merely operational? Most physicists implicitly favor an intermediate standpoint, which takes quantum physics into account, but which nevertheless strongly holds fast to quite strictly realistic ideas about apparently “obvious facts” concerning the macro-objects. Part 1 of this article, which is a survey of recent measurement theories, shows that, when made explicit, the standpoint in question cannot be upheld. Part 2 brings forward a proposal for making minimal changes to this standpoint in such a way as to remove such objections. The “empirical reality” thus constructed is a notion that, to some extent,does ultimately refer to the human means of apprehension and of data processing. It nevertheless cannot be said that it reduces to a mere name just labelling a “set of recipes that never fail.” It is shown that our usual notion of macroscopic causality must be endowed with similar features.     

Are interaction-free measurements interaction free?

In 1993, Elitzur and Vaidman introduced the concept of interaction-free measurements, which allowed finding objects without “touching” them. In the proposed method, since the objects were not touched, even by photons, thus, the interaction-free measurements can be called “seeing in the dark.” Since then, several experiments have been successfully performed and various modifications were suggested. Recently, however, the validity of the term “interaction-free” has been questioned. The criticism of the name is briefly reviewed and the meaning of the interaction-free measurements is clarified.     

Correction to: Effects of the Coherence on the Parameter Estimation in a Quantum Metrology Scheme with Driving Fields

International Journal of Theoretical Physics - The author found a mistake in their published article. The author wants to correct the presentation of his name from “Yuq-iang Liu” to...     

Space charges can significantly affect the dynamics of accelerator maps

Space charge effects can be very important for the dynamics of intense particle beams, as they repeatedly pass through nonlinear focusing elements, aiming to maximize the beam's luminosity properties in the storage rings of a high energy accelerator. In the case of hadron beams, whose charge distribution can be considered as “frozen” within a cylindrical core of small radius compared to the beam's dynamical aperture, analytical formulas have been recently derived [C. Benedetti, G. Turchetti, Phys. Lett. A 340 (2005) 461] for the contribution of space charges within first order Hamiltonian perturbation theory. These formulas involve distribution functions which, in general, do not lead to expressions that can be evaluated in closed form. In this Letter, we apply this theory to an example of a charge distribution, whose effect on the dynamics can be derived explicitly and in closed form, both in the case of 2-dimensional as well as 4-dimensional mapping models of hadron beams. We find that, even for very small values of the “perveance” (strength of the space charge effect) the long term stability of the dynamics changes considerably. In the flat beam case, the outer invariant “tori” surrounding the origin disappear, decreasing the size of the beam's dynamical aperture, while beyond a certain threshold the beam is almost entirely lost. Analogous results in mapping models of beams with 2-dimensional cross section demonstrate that in that case also, even for weak tune depressions, orbital diffusion is enhanced and many particles whose motion was bounded now escape to infinity, indicating that space charges can impose significant limitations on the beam's luminosity.     

Planar rings in glasses

An energy minimization argument is used to predict that small order rings of bonds are likely to be planar in many glasses. The 606 and 495 cm^-1 Raman “defect” lines in fused silica are then shown to be consistent with small concentrations (?1%) of planar 3-fold and 4-fold rings, respectively. The argument predicts this form of intermediate range order at larger concentrations in several glasses, including 3-fold planar rings in B₂O₃, while it predicts no planar rings in other glasses, including ZnCl₂.     

Self-trapping of electrons in vortex rings in liquid helium

A model according to which “fast” and “exotic” negative ions in superfluid helium are the localized states of electrons in vortex rings has been presented. The quantization of radial and longitudinal motions of electrons inside the vortex core and the quantization of the vortex motion of liquid helium lead to the existence of a whole family of excited states of electron vortices, in qualitative agreement with the experiments on the mobility of exotic ions. The possibility of the verification of conclusions of the model in optical experiments has been considered.     

Spatial mode cleaning in radically asymmetric strongly focused laser beams

We demonstrate that a femtosecond laser pulse strongly focused in air can produce a highly symmetric damage pattern on glass. This damage pattern contains a series of near-perfect radial rings, with diameters much larger than the predicted focal spot diameter. These rings disappear when the experiment is conducted in vacuum, indicating atmospheric involvement. Surprisingly, the shape and size of the rings seem to be nearly independent of the shape of the generating laser beam, showing dramatic spatial mode cleaning. A “half moon” initial laser mode created by obscuring one side of the round beam produces rings of similar quality to those obtained with the unclipped beam. While spatial mode cleaning has previously been reported in filaments, this is the most dramatic demonstration of the effect that we are aware of. We argue that the effect is due primarily to ionization, in contrast to studies in longer filaments that attribute it to self-focusing.     

Cryogenics for the future accelerator complex NICA at JINR

The NICA cryogenics will be based on the modernized liquid helium plant that was b uilt in the early 90’s for the superconducting synchrotron known as the Nuclotron. The main goals of the modernization are: increasing of the total refrigerator capacity from 4000 W to 8000 W at 4.5 K, making a new distribution system of liquid helium, and ensuring the shortest possible cool down time. These goals will be achieved by means of an additional 1000 l/hour helium liquefier and “satellite” refrigerators located near the accelerator rings. This report describes the design choices of the NICA, demonstrates helium flow diagrams with major new components and briefly informs of the liquid nitrogen system that will be used for shield cooling at 77 K and at the first stage of cooling down of three accelerator rings with the total length of about 1 km and “cold” mass of 290 tons.