The ProtonSynchrotron (PS) was the first major particle accelerator at CERN, built as a 28 GeVproton accelerator in 1959.
It was reused as the initial accelerator for the Intersecting Storage Rings and Super ProtonSynchrotron, and will be reused in the same capacity for the Large Hadron Collider.
It is a versatile machine which is (or has been) used for accelerating antiprotons, protons, electrons, positrons and ions.
Originally specified as a 300 GeVproton machine, the SPS was actually built to be capable of 400GeV, an operating energy it achieved on the official commissioning date of 17 June 1976.
The SPS was designed by a team led by CERN director-general of what was then known as Laboratory II, Sir John Adams.
The SPS is now to be used as the final pre-injector for high-intensity proton beams for CERN's Large Hadron Collider, scheduled to begin operation in 2007, accelerating protons from 26GeV to 450GeV.
The large range in solids of high-energy protons and also the reactions induced by secondaries are essential in providing ISOLDE with intensities that, in general, cannot be matched by other machines.
The transfer of ISOLDE from the 600 MeV dc proton beam at the CERN SC to the time structure, with a short high density proton pulse at low repetition rate, increased the release time of the produced radioactivity from the target.
As shown in the ISOLDE layout the protons from the PSB are delivered to the ISOLDE target zones via an underground transfer line, which serves two different isotope separators, one with its target position situated in a straight extension of the beam line and a second one after a bend of 400 mrad.
At the first Session in May 1952 of the provisional CERN Council, Odd Dahl, a Norvegian specialist in accelerators, was appointed Head of the Study Group in charge of studies and investigations regarding accelerators of particle for energies higher than 1 BeV.
The PS Division was in charge of construction, commissioning and operation of the PS, targets and beam transport sytems for PS, planning of East experimental area, bubble chamber design and construction, preparation for nuclear physics experiments with PS, operation of liquid hydrogen plants and accelerator research.
In 1976 the two CERN Laboratories were united and the MSC (Machine Synchro-Cyclotron Machine) and MPS (Machine ProtonSynchrotron) were amalgamated to form the ProtonSynchrotron (PS) Division.
The pioneers at CERN had dared to follow a new, untested route in a bid to become the world's highest energy machine.
On 24 November 1959, CERN's new ProtonSynchrotron accelerated protons through the dreaded "transition energy" barrier and on to achieve the nominal energy of 24 GeV.
One was passing the transition energy in the PS causing the dilution of longitudinal phase-space density.
The proton Linac was again working near its top performance with a current of 163 mA delivered to the PS Booster which accelerated more than 3.45 E13 protons and extracted 3.32 E13 protons towards the PS.
At 11:22, the PS proton intensity finally reached a new peak value of 3.115 E13 protons whilst the intensity at extraction at 14 GeV/c was 3.05 E13 protons.
On the 29th August, after other careful adjustments of the chain of the 3 accelerators, the PS proton intensity often exceeded the value of 3.000 E13 and finally reached a new record of 3.020 E13 whilst the intensity at extraction at 14 GeV/c was 2.920 E13.
My CERN experiment (NA35) uses 200 GeV/nucleon sulfur ions from the SPS that come up from underground and are delivered to a large hangar-like building in the North Area, a separate part of CERN located near the village of Prevessin, France.
Synchrotron radiation bleeds away the energy of electrons (or positrons) when they are accelerated in a circular path.
The limiting factor for the acceleration of protons is not radiative energy loss but the size of the magnetic field needed to bend the energetic beam of particles into a circular path.
NA49 experiment at CERN's Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) accelerator(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-24)
The ultimate goal of the CERN program is the observation of a phase transition from ordinary matter to a new form of matter called the quark-gluon plasma.
At high energies, the simultaneous collision of many protons and neutrons within a small volume can produce an especially hot and dense system in the center of mass of the collision.
TPCs have also figured in earlier studies of compressed nuclear matter at the Bevalac and at CERN, and will be used in the giant STAR detector being prepared for use at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Lab.
Pedro G Ferreira of CERN explains how theorists are faced with the dilemma of living with the controversial cosmological constant or having to postulate a new form of matter.
Spearheading the construction effort for CERN's LHC collider is the groundwork for the 1232 superconducting dipole magnets, to be cooled by superfluid helium at 1.9K.
CERN's demanding data processing requirements provide the testbed for a new range of semiconductor chips and associated software developed jointly by industrial giants Hewlett-Packard and Intel and which are aimed at new generations of computers.
At a special seminar on 10 February, spokespersons from the experiments on CERN* 's Heavy Ion programme presented compelling evidence for the existence of a new state of matter in which quarks, instead of being bound up into more complex particles such as protons and neutrons, are liberated to roam freely.
The aim of CERN's Heavy Ion programme was to collide lead ions so as to create immensely high energy densities which would break down the forces which confined quarks inside more complex particles.
While all of the pieces of the puzzle seem to fit with a quark-gluon plasma explanation, it is essential to study this newly produced matter at higher and lower temperature in order to fully characterize its properties and definitively confirm the quark gluon plasma interpretation.
CERN - PS/CA Septa for the CERN PS Complex(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-24)
The magnetic septa can be used for example in combination with with a fast kicker magnet to realise a realise a so called 'single turn' injection or extraction.
All particles then are ejected from the synchrotron in a single revolution of the synchrotron.
Although the actual extraction may take as little as the time of one synchrotron revolution (around 1 micro second), the high electric inductance obliges the magnet to be or Direct Current or pulsed with a half sine current of around 3 ms (half period time).
The Super ProtonSynchrotron (SPS) at CERN is one of the worlds largest protron synchrotrons, reaching energies of 450 GeV.
Another major facility at CERN is the Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR), the first proton-proton collider to be put into operation (1971).
For the electron synchrotrons, the maximum energy is limited by the losses to synchrotron radiation which increases with the fourth power of the particle energy.
This Technical Note was distributed at CERN in manuscript form on 10/10/85.
By removing the upstream plug and then cutting through the target snout immediately in front of the alumina disc, the target and its surrounding graphite cylinder could be pressed out from the titanium container The graphite cylinder was then sheared longitudinally with a special tool exposing the rhenium rods for visual inspection.
A subsequent improvement in target design - intended for higher intensity proton beams - was water cooled and in some assemblies the 3mm diameter iridium core material was plated to a diameter of 6 mm with nickel to improve the containment of the fragments.
As from January 2003, PS Division merged with SL Division to form the Accelerators and Beams Division.
The Division is responsible for the operation of five accelerators which operate for close to 6400 hours per year and deliver beams of protons, Pb ions and antiprotons either to the SPS for further acceleration or directly the Physics users located in four experimental areas: East Hall, ISOLDE facility, AD area and TOF facility.
In addition to its rôle as supplier of all of CERN's beams, the PS Division is responsible for the R&D for the possible future facilities at CERN in the post-LHC era.
The accelerator complex at CERN is a succession of machines with increasingly higher energies, injecting the beam each time into the next one, which takes over to bring the beam to an energy even higher, and so on.
Its aim is to produce antihydrogen atoms for the particle physicists to study their spectroscopy and test fundamental symmetries.
CNGS, CERN Neutrino beam to Gran Sasso, sends a high intensity beam of the very elusive neutrinos to a detector located near Rome, 800 km away from CERN.
