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LHC 'Long Racetrack' Magnets Tested at Brookhaven

One coil of the long racetrack magnet being moved into the reaction oven at Brookhaven.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN won't start up until next year, but physicists and engineers in the U.S. LHC Accelerator Research Program are already working hard toward the collider's next phase. In a major milestone, a test of the first "long racetrack" magnet was successfully completed the week of July 23 at Brookhaven.

As part of a planned LHC upgrade, the eight sets of "inner triplet" quadrupole magnets will be replaced. These superconducting magnets, the current versions of which were supplied by Fermilab and KEK, in Japan, focus the particle beams prior to collision.

Due to their proximity to the four interaction points, the inner triplets are built to withstand high doses of radiation, and thus heat, without failing. An upgraded, higher-luminosity LHC will mean a hotter environment. So the team from Fermilab, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Brookhaven that is conducting research for the upgraded magnets turned to a different material, niobium-tin (Nb3Sn).

"We're starting early because it's really hard to make long Nb3Sn magnets," said Peter Wanderer, the head of Brookhaven's Superconducting Magnet Division. "We need to start learning how far you can push the material to have magnets ready for an upgrade in 2013."

The support structure of the long racetrack magnet. (Image courtesy of Paolo Ferracin, LBNL)

To construct the inner triplet magnets in place now at the LHC, physicists pushed the limits of well-established Niobium-Titanium magnet technology. Magnets from Nb3Sn can operate at a higher electric current and magnetic field, but have never been fabricated longer than one meter.

The team constructed one set of 3.6-meter-long Nb3Sn coils and tested how they responded to cooling and electrical current. The test of the first "long racetrack" magnet, so called because of its racetrack shape, was successfully carried out during the week of July 23 at BNL. The magnet reached a coil peak field of 11 Tesla and carried 90 percent of the current scientists expected.

"Everybody's very happy with this result," said Wanderer.

The next step is to build and test a quadrupole magnet with coils of Nb3Sn, a process that will take several years.

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One of ten national laboratories overseen and primarily funded by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Brookhaven National Laboratory conducts research in the physical, biomedical, and environmental sciences, as well as in energy technologies and national security. Brookhaven Lab also builds and operates major scientific facilities available to university, industry and government researchers. Brookhaven is operated and managed for DOE's Office of Science by Brookhaven Science Associates, a limited-liability company founded by Stony Brook University, the largest academic user of Laboratory facilities, and Battelle, a nonprofit, applied science and technology organization.

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