24 October
ALICE – first acceleration through the Booster.
Around 4 MeV acceleration was achieved in Booster cavity 2 at 00:54 24/10/08.
The success heralds a first for UK: a high quality electron beam from a photoinjector being boosted halfway to relativistic energies by UK’s first linear superconducting microwave accelerator.
The injection is the critical process in any accelerator, the electrons and the team that builds the facility sharing the sufferings, the pangs and joys of ‘birth’, so to speak. With this successful injection, accelerating up to the speed up light can only be around the corner and the excitement to follow in not too distant a future!!
Congratulations to the entire ALICE team in the Cockcroft Institute and the STFC’s ASTeC centre for such an pioneering achievement!
(Celebration of first acceleration through the Booster in the ALICE control room at 11:45.)
memo from Susan Smith (ALICE Programme Leader)
ALICE Accelerates Towards Energy Recovery
At just past midnight last night, the ALICE commissioning team successfully accelerated an electron beam through the superconducting booster module. This was achieved when the team successfully brought into simultaneous operation the photoinjector electron source and the superconducting booster module. The electron beam was accelerated through the module to around 4 MeV.
This achievement is a key step towards demonstrating energy recovery. With these two critical technologies having been commissioned, the next step will be to accelerate to full energy and circulate the beam to demonstrate energy recovery. The accelerator is now shutdown for four weeks for planned maintenance, so the commissioning to energy recovery will commence in late November.
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