Accelerator design

with Professors Paul Grannis and John Hobbs

There are nice opportunities for research projects in conjunction with the electron-positron linear collider project that is being proposed. The LC would be a 500 GeV accelerator that collides nanometer scale beams to look for new understanding of the unification of forces and exotic new behavior such as extra spatial dimensions or supersymmetry.

Our colleagues at Brookhaven Lab are working on some new ideas for the accelerator itself, and have projects suitable for part-time work by students, either for academic credit or for pay:

  1. Work with BNL scientists to develop ways to measure the vibrational stability of superconducting magnets needed to focus the beams to the nanometer scale spot size.

  2. Work on developing computer simulations of the transport of particles as part of a project to develop new ways to arrange the optics for these focussing elements.

John Hobbs and Paul Grannis would serve as the liaison for this work from Stony Brook. Students would be expected to spend some of their time at Brookhaven Lab, working with people there. Work could start soon or if preferred, after the fall semester. To make sense, it would be useful to have 15 hours per week available for this research. The projects would be suitable for good junior and senior students, or for beginning graduate students who wish to get acquainted with accelerator physics through applications of mechanics, E&M and optics.

If you are interested, contact John Hobbs (room D-108) or Paul Grannis (main Physics office).

October 2003