John Adams Institute
for Accelerator Science

For questions related to this site, you can contact Nicolas Delerue: Oxford 73456.

Members of the institute are involved in several different research projects for the International Linear Collider (ILC) ,  the Neutrino Factory and to develop new types of accelerator for a variety of research purposes (CONFORM).

Posters prepared for the Oxford Physics advisory board.
The presentations given to the 2nd JAI Advisory Board are available here .

Research activities:

• Laser-wire
  
• LiCAS
  
• MONALISA
  
• FONT
  
• Beam Delivery System
  
• Beam Position Monitors
  
• Coherent Diffraction Radiation
  
• ATF2
  
• Neutrino factory
  
• MICE: International Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment
  
• CONFORM: COnstruction of a Non-scaling FFAG for Oncology, Research and Medicine
  
• Diagnostics for laser-driven plasma accelerators
  
• FACETS
  
• Other new ideas
  

International Linear Collider:

• Laser-Based Beam Diagnostics R&D Activities (Laser-wire)
  The mission of the Laser-Based Beam Diagnostics (LBBD) Collaboration is to study the feasibility of laser-based diagnostics tools for the International Linear electron positron Collider (ILC). The objectives of the laser-wire project are to develop laser-based techniques for determining the dimensions of electron (positron) bunches at the ILC and optimising their application using simulations.
• LiCAS
  LiCAS is short for Linear Collider Alignment and Survey. The project aims to develop a survey system that can be used to align accelerator components during the build stage of the International Linear electron positron Collider to O(200 microns) over distances of O(600)m. Refraction prevents using optical methods in open air to align the components to the required accuracy. Instead, the plan is to do the survey in 25m overlapping lengths. Our system will therefore take the form of a 25m long survey train which will travel the 30km length of the tunnel establishing a coordinate system of reference marks against which the collider components will be surveyed. The train's internal co-ordinate measurement system operates in vacuum. It uses FSI (Frequency Scanning Interferometry) and LSM (Laser Straightness Monitors) to measure absolute co-ordinates. The group closely collaborates with the DESY metrology group and a first prototype will be tested at DESY soon.
• MONALISA
  The MONALISA project is developing accurate systems for monitoring and stabilisation of key components in and around accelerators. Current work is focused on a demonstration system in Oxford and a test installation at ATF2.
• Beam Delivery System
  Simulations of the Linear Collider Beam Delivery System.
• Beam Position Monitors
  
• Coherent Diffraction Radiation
  
• ATF2
  
• FONT:The F.O.N.T. (Feedback On Nano-second Timescales) project was set up to research, design and test an intra-train beam-based feedback system to achieve and maintain beam collisions, and therefore high luminosity, at a future electron-positron Linear Collider. It is one of the projects of the LC-ABD group which is part of the LCUK collaboration. We also participate through the TESLA Accelerator Physics and Design group.

Neutrino factory:

• Neutrino factory
  Neutrino Sources based on Muon storage rings have found a lot of interest in the High Energy Physics community. The strong point is the capability of providing very intense, very well collimated neutrino beams. In such facility, an intense proton beam hits a target, pions decay into muons in long decay channels, the muons have to be cooled and then accelerated and finally get injected into a storage ring where they decay.
  A recent Neutrino Factory interest is to explore whether FFAGs could be used to provide a more economical Neutrino Factory than one which uses cooling.
• MICE: International Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment
  Future neutrino factories or muon colliders will require that intense muon beams are accelerated and stored. Many tricks are required to do this efficiently. The muons originate from the decay of pions and the beam has a very high initial emittance (rms size times rms divergence). The emittance must be reduced substantially to match the acceptance of downstream accelerators. The muon lifetime is finite and conventional cooling methods cannot be used: ionisation cooling is the only possibility.
  In an ionisation cooling channel the muons are focussed by solenoidal magnetic fields onto a series of low Z 'absorbers' where ionisation loss reduces both transverse and longitudinal momentum; RF cavities subsequently restore the longitudinal momentum thereby reducing the net emittance of the beam.
  MICE is a UK/US/Japan/European collaboration to build a section of muon cooling channel and demonstrate ionisation cooling. MICE will consist of one lattice cell of the US Neutrino Factory Feasibility Study 2 cooling channel design and will make single-particle measurements of emittance reduction with a precision of one part in a thousand. The experiment will take place at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in a new muon beam from the 800 MeV ISIS proton accelerator.
  The John Adams Institute, in collaboration with RAL, will provide the Absorber Focus Coil (AFC) modules for MICE. These modules contain pairs of high-field superconducting coils surrounding liquid hydrogen absorbers. The group is also working on the design of thin windows for the absorbers and RF cavities, the beam optics of the cooling channel, emittance measurements, and calculations of energy loss and multiple scattering in liquid hydrogen (ELMS).

CONFORM:
COnstruction of a Non-scaling FFAG for Oncology, Research and Medicine

• The non-scaling fixed-field alternating gradient accelerator - or NS-FFAG - offers the prospect of smaller, simpler, cheaper accelerators operating with a high frequency and a high duty cycle. The project will build a 20 MeV electron accelerator, EMMA to test the principle and design a proton accelerator for medical applications, PAMELA, while investigating other possible applications, from archaeology to zoology. Here in the JAI, our main focus is on the medical application PAMELA – the Particle Accelerator for MEdicaL Applications – where the aim is to develop the design of a cancer treatment facility using protons and light ions such as Carbon to treat certain types of cancer that are otherwise difficult to treat.

Other projects:

• Diagnostics for laser-driven plasma accelerators
  We are investigating how accelerator diagnostics can be applied to the beam created by laser-driven plasma wakefield accelerators.
• FACETS
  The FACETS project aims to support researchers at the University of Oxford interested in using external scientific facilities such as the Diamond synchrotron. This website is under development but will provide information on the science that can be done, guidance on identifying the best instrument for your work and opportunities to find potential collaborators at Oxford or at the facilities themselves.
• Other new ideas
  We are also looking at a range of other projects, from laser-plasma accelerators, the development of femtosecond x-ray pulses (in association with the Diamond Light Source) and a new Proton Synchrotron at CERN.

Past activities:

• Longitudinal profile diagnostics using Smith-Purcell radiation
  
• ELMS: Energy Loss and Multiple Scattering
  

• Longitudinal profile diagnostics using Smith-Purcell radiation
  The objective of this research is the development of a method for the determination of the longitudinal (temporal) profile of short, intense and highly relativistic bunches of electrons. In principle, information about the longitudinal charge distribution inside the bunch can be obtained from any radiative process, whereby the beam is made to radiate a very small amount of energy. The wavelength distribution of this radiation can then be measured and used in order to infer the charge distribution inside the bunch. This is only possible if the radiation is coherent, i.e. if its wavelength is comparable to or longer than the bunch length.
  The first Smith-Purcell experiment in the multi-GeV regime [1] was recently carried out at SLAC (28.5GeV). The results from this experiment were very encouraging, and the bunch lengths measured were in line with alternative measurements (LOLA).
  1. G. Doucas et al., EPAC2008.

• ELMS
  ELMS is a study into the accurate simulation of the passage of Muons through matter, specifically Liquid Hydrogen, in order to investigate the feasibility of Muon Cooling.
  We showed that energy loss and scattering corellation present in the full cross section, but not considered by alternative treatments, might be significant.
  Seminar 2004 (PowerPoint) given in Oxford, 20th January 2004.