New Record for GaAs Quantum Efficiency
at Daresbury!

This week a team of scientists and engineers from Daresbury (Ian Burrows, Ryan Cash, Barry Fell, Adrian Hannah, Lee Jones, Keith Middleman, Boris Militsyn and Mark Pendleton) in collaboration with scientists from Novosibirsk (Sergei Kosolobov, Heinrich Scheibler and Alex Terekhov) have achieved a major milestone for the future of ALICE. The team have successfully activated a GaAs cathode with a Quantum Efficiency of 15%, an improvement of over 10% on our previous best. Scientists and engineers from Daresbury have spent the last 18 months designing and building a photocathode preparation system that will be incorporated on the ALICE photoinjector within the next 12 months, this upgrade will lead to a significant improvement in ALICE performance.