2002 ATF Newsletters

Jan | Feb - March | April - June | July - Sept | Oct - Dec

Greetings to all,

This update, the first one for the year 2002, will be completely dedicated to the ATF's User's Meeting and ATF Program Committee meeting. Besides the report on the meeting below, you may also find the agenda of the meeting and the slides of most presentations at

ATF 2002 pictures

See you at the next meeting!

Ilan Ben-Zvi

The Brookhaven Accelerator Test Facility held its annual Program Committee and Users Meeting at BNL from Thursday, January 31^st to Friday, February 1^st. The meeting, which is the 11^th ATF Users Meeting, attracted about 60 participants. C. Joshi (UCLA) chairs the current ATF's Program Committee. Other members include S. Chattopadhyay (JLAB), R. Gluckstern, (U. Maryland), M. Harrison (BNL), T. Marshall (Columbia), S. Milton (ANL), C. Pellegrini (UCLA), and R. Ruth (SLAC).

Thursday morning began with the customary welcome from BNL Interim Director Peter Paul. Chief of the Advanced Technology R&D Branch David Sutter at the US Department of Energy (DOE) followed with words on the relevance of the ATF's program for the DOE's advanced accelerator R&D program. Robert Palmer, the Head of the BNL Center for Accelerator Physics provided an introduction for the meeting. ATF Head Ilan Ben-Zvi gave an overview of the facility and its contributions to accelerator science and graduate education. Xijie Wang, ATF Deputy Head and Operations Coordinator, presented an update on ATF operations, performance and upgrades. The morning session concluded with additional presentations on ATF systems and R&D: The ATF lasers (Igor Pogorelsky, ATF), the ATF Computer Control System (Bob Malone, ATF), Small Beams and High Brightness (Vitaly Yakimenko, ATF) and Surface Roughness / Emittance vs. Uniformity experiments (Feng Zhou, UCLA / ATF).

The Thursday afternoon session was dedicated to scientific results from ATF experiments. In rapid-fire sequence the participants heard about the following:

The VISA FEL Experiment (C. Pellegrini, UCLA), in which results were presented of the saturation of this SASE FEL with a record short gain length.

The Staged Electron Laser Acceleration (K. Kusche, STI Optronics / ATF). This experiment, which achieved for the first time staging of two laser accelerators, is making progress towards a monochromatic acceleration with a new configuration and increased laser power.

The High-Gain Harmonic-Generation FEL experiment (L-H. Yu, BNL-NSLS) has demonstrated a convincing proof-of-principle for this unique FEL mechanism that provides longitudinal coherence on top of the usual transverse coherence of FELs.

A report on the Ultrafast Detection of Relativistic Charged Particles by Optical Techniques (Y. Semertzidis, BNL-Physics) experiment, in which a charged particle beam is detected by means of its electro-optical effect on the propagation of laser light in a birefringent crystal.

One of the ATF's international users, from the National Tsing-Hua University in Taiwan, reported on progress towards a Structure-Based Laser Driven Acceleration in a Vacuum (Y.-C. Huang). 

An experiment that supports the development of particle detectors for a neutrino oscillation search at Fermilab is the MINOS Beam Monitoring Detectors (M. Diwan, BNL-Physics). This experiment has recently completed its mission.

The Stimulated Dielectric Wakefield Acceleration (T. Marshall, Columbia) aims at accelerating electrons by a coherent superposition of wake fields excited in a dielectric tube by an electron bunch train. This experiment is a collaboration of Columbia University with a small business, (Omega-P, New-Haven).

The LACARA Experiment (J. Hirshfield, Omega-P), is also a collaboration of Columbia University with Omega-P. In this novel experiment, a longitudinal magnetic field, generated by a superconducting solenoid, in concert with a powerful CO₂ laser beam will produce a significant acceleration to the ATF's electron beam.

After a short break, the afternoon science highlights continued with a presentation on The Compton Scattering of Picosecond Electron and CO₂ Beams (T. Hirose, Tokyo Metropolitan University), an experiment that combines (like many other ATF experiments) High-Energy Physics with Basic Energy Science themes. The x-rays produced by the scattering are investigated to serve in the generation of polarized electrons for a linear collider. The picosecond x-rays (sub picosecond with electron bunch compression) are a unique source for a variety of scientific, medical and industrial applications.

Beam Position Monitors for Linear Colliders (V. Yakimenko, ATF), is a Russian experiment that has already demonstrated about 150 nm positional-resolution in a single shot of the ATF's beam with sub-100 nm resolution to be expected in the future.

The Smith Purcell Experiment (H. Brownell, Dartmouth) carries the venerable experiment to relativistic energies. Unexpected radiation patterns were detected and discussed.

The Electron Beam Pulse Compression Based Physics experiment (J. Rosenzweig, UCLA) will open a whole range of beam physics studies in CSR wake field effects, enhancement of FEL performance and other subjects.

Photocathode R&D (T. Srinivasan-Rao, BNL-Instrumentation) is a basic ingredient for high-brightness electron beams such as the ATF and many others. This group reported on recent developments in metallic photocathodes for photoinjectors, the material upon which most SASE FELs are based.

The afternoon concluded with a tour of the ATF facility and poster presentations, followed by dinner.

Friday morning was taken by presentations of new proposals for the ATF and executive sessions of the Program Committee. The new proposals included 'Particle Acceleration by Stimulated Emission of Radiation', presented by Levi Schachter of the Technion, Israel, a stimulating approach to use the energy stored in the active medium of a laser to accelerate electrons.

The quest for ever-shorter time scales in radiation and electron bunches was given a significant boost by the proposal for 'Atto-Second Electron Bunches Production Experiment', presented by Max Zolotorev from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. If successful, the method opens up a qualitatively new class of phenomena based on the interaction of atomic electrons in the medium with a collective electric field of electron pulses and not with their individual electrons.

Innovative electron beam diagnostics are essential tools for getting better beams (and higher brightness radiation) from particle accelerators. This area was represented by the proposal to do "Optical Diffraction-Transition Radiation Interferometry Diagnostics for Low Emittance Beams", by a small business (TR Research, Silver Spring, MD) and the University of Maryland, presented by Ralph Fiorito. The last proposal was in the area of advanced laser-based accelerators, the "In Vacuum Laser Acceleration of Electrons at BNL's ATF", presented by Vitaly Yakimenko of BNL for a large collaboration of small business and universities.

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Last Modified: December 3, 2007
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