23 October 2010
FIRST LASING IN ALICE FREE ELECTRON LASER
I am delighted to announce that the Infra Red Free Electron Laser installed on the ALICE accelerator at STFC Daresbury Laboratory lased for the first time on Saturday 23rd October 2010 at 16:35. Present in the Control Room were Neil Thompson, Peter Williams, Stephen Hill, and Yuri Saveliev. The recent hardware changes made to ALICE to enable the bunch charge to increase by more than 50% has quickly led to this successful outcome.
…read more below
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MESSAGE of CONGRATULATIONS from the DIRECTOR
Congratulations to Prof. Jim Clarke and the entire ALICE team and associated collaborators from across UK and the world as the scientists and engineers at Daresbury achieve first lasing in the ALICE Free Electron laser!! This achievement together with the ongoing successful commissioning of EMMA, the world’s first non-scaling Fixed Field Alternating Gradient synchrotron, initiates a step change in the scientific horizons at Daresbury laboratory, a major stake holding partner in the Cockcroft Institute. Please see the message from Jim below and take the time to congratulate his entire team!
Swapan Chattopadhyay, Director, Cockcroft Institute
MESSAGE from Prof. Jim Clarke on FIRST LASING IN ALICE FREE ELECTRON LASER
I am delighted to announce that the Infra Red Free Electron Laser installed on the ALICE accelerator at STFC Daresbury Laboratory lased for the first time on Saturday 23rd October 2010 at 16:35. Present in the Control Room were Neil Thompson, Peter Williams, Stephen Hill, and Yuri Saveliev. The recent hardware changes made to ALICE to enable the bunch charge to increase by more than 50% has quickly led to this successful outcome. Once established, the FEL lased for several hours at about 8 microns wavelength and appeared quite tolerant to the machine settings. A scan of output power vs the cavity length showed the expected behaviour (see below). The maximum output power observed so far is 20.7mW. The next step for the project will be to thoroughly characterize the FEL performance and output properties.
I would like to thank everyone who has been involved in us reaching this significant milestone. This achievement is, of course, due to the hard work and dedication of the entire ALICE Team. The Team, which is made up of staff from ASTeC, Technology Department, and Photon Science Department, has also benefitted greatly from the advice and encouragement of many friends and colleagues in the international accelerator community. In the case of the FEL it has also benefitted from specific equipment loaned to the project by Jefferson Laboratory and LURE (CNRS). I would particularly like to thank the FEL commissioning group, which is made up of Neil Thompson, Dave Dunning, Mark Surman, and Andy Smith, who have worked long hours, late nights, and given up many weekends to be able to reach this point.
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21 October 2010
Cockcroft Institute Hosts Fest Event for its First Emeritus Professor
Professor Richard Carter, who retired from Lancaster University in September 2009, was instrumental in the founding stages of the Cockcroft Institute and hence it was fitting that the Institute should host a colloquium to mark his career. The fest aimed to bring distinguished colleagues to deliver scientific papers on aspects of RF engineering which overlap Richard’s work or interests.
6 October 2010
Two Physicists from University of Manchester Receive Nobel Prize in Physics
Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov have just won the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Manchester has a long tradition of mentoring scientists with ground-breaking contributions including Lord Rutherford and Sir John Cockcroft, the iconic figure that guides the Cockcroft Institute for its research aspirations! This makes the collective trio of the Universities of Manchester, Liverpool and Lancaster in England’s northwest connected with at least 30+ Nobel laureates around the world in some way or other either as past alumni, or their current or past faculty.
link to nobelprize.org »