Superconducting Magnet Division a Recipient of 2016 Breakthrough Prize

The Superconducting Magnet Division was a participant in one of the neutrino experiments that were awarded the Fundamental Physics Breakthrough Prize in November, 2015.  The experiment was the Tokai to Kamioka Long Baseline Neutrino Oscillation Experiment in Japan, led by Koichiro Nishikawa.  The U.S. portion of the experiment was led by Chang Kee Jung of Stony Brook University.  (The Daya Bay neutrino experiment, which had participants from the BNL Physics Department, was among the other experiments which received the prize.)

The neutrinos were produced using protons from the JPARC accelerator in Tokai.  The proton beam was extracted from the accelerator and directed by superconducting magnets along a beamline to a target.  Pions were produced when the protons struck the target.  The pions quickly decayed to neutrinos and other particles.  The beamline contained corrector magnets that allowed the accelerator operators to fine-tune the position of the proton beam on the target.  These corrector magnets were made at the Magnet Division’s Direct Wind facility as part of the U.S. contribution to the neutrino facility at JPARC.  To acknowledge BNL’s participation in the experiment, Maurice Goldhaber and Peter Wanderer were coauthors of the initial paper reporting results of the experiment, which was published in Physical Review Letters (PRL 107, 041801 (2011)).