Accelerator designers met at GSI to discuss facility optimization
The Antiproton Decelerator (AD) and the Extra Low ENergy Antiproton (ELENA) rings are unique facilities at CERN designed to trap, store and facilitate antimatter research. They help scientists understand fundamental properties of antimatter and to advance fundamental scientific knowledge. ELENA is currently being commissioned and will improve the conditions for antimatter experiments dramatically by lowering their energy - the less energy antiprotons have, the easier it is to study and manipulate them. ELENA is designed to reduce antiproton energies to below 0.1 MeV, which is lower than achievable anywhere in the world today.
In order to share and discuss the latest research results, the AVA network organised a two-day Topical Workshop on Low energy facility design and optimization through diagnostics at GSI, Darmstadt, Germany between 6-7 of February 2019. Around 30 researchers from all across Europe came together to talk about ELENA and its challenges, the various AD experiments, as well as problems faced in other low energy ion storage rings.
Poster session.
The workshop kicked off by Dr Davide Gamba from CERN addressing operational aspects of ELENA commissioning. His presentation was followed by Dr Manfred Grieser from the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg and Dr Ansgar Simonsson from Stockholm University talking about the electrostatic cryogenic storage ring (CSR) and the Swedish low energy double ring DESIREE, respectively. Several AVA Fellows also gave talks on the first day exploring various techniques for beam quality optimization. Other participants prepared posters highlighting their research results which stimulated many interesting discussions.
The theme of the second morning was the mini-storage ring at Lyon and its application in molecular physics. Results were presented by Prof Jerome Bernard and Dr Abdulaziz Al Mogeeth, both from University of Lyon. After several other talks covering further optimisation towards experiments, talks highlighting R&D at GSI were presented by Dr Frank Herfurth, Dr Oleksii Gorda and Dr Zhexi Guo.
The workshop was concluded by Prof Carsten Welsch, AVA coordinator, who highlighted the importance of collaboration and knowledge sharing and pointed out that the workshop showed clearly that the various low energy storage rings and experiments covered during the two days faced may similar challenges. He added that a number of areas had now been identified which would require international collaboration to fully address them and that the workshop had now set an ideal basis for this.
To finish off the event, the participants went on a tour of the GSI facilities which was kindly offered by Dr Wolfgang Quint and Dr Peter Forck. This included an overview of the FAIR construction site where a next-generation ion beam facility is being built.
GSI Tour by Wolfgang Quint
All presentations are available via the event indico page. The AVA project will next organize a workshop at our partner COSYLAB, Slovenia in autumn 2019.