INFN researcher invents a new technique for particle accelerators

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Source: INFN
Content: Press Release
Date Issued: 5 June 2008

A researcher at INFN's laboratories in Frascati, Pantaleo Raimondi, has developed a technique that allows to exceed some of the limits of existing particle accelerators. The first tests, carried out at the laboratories in Frascati, have provided very positive results and are being followed with great interest throughout the world. This technique could lead to a new generation of much more efficient accelerators for studying the infinitely small.

Positive results have been obtained with the first tests of a new
technique developed by a researcher at Italy's National Institute of
Nuclear Physics (INFN), Panntaleo Raimondi. These tests, carried out in
Frascati and closely followed by the world's leading Physics laboratories,
could lead to the development of new particle accelerators (the devices
used to investigate the basic structures of the Universe).

In fact, thanks to the technique developed by Raimondi, it should be
possible a ten-fold increase of the efficiency of the accelerators,
greatly reducing the energy they require.

In other words, it is possible to "dope" the existing accelerators and
create new ones that are much more powerful and capable of providing
answers to the great mysteries of the nature of all things, mysteries that
scientists have been unable to solve.

In the existing accelerators (for example, the Large Hadron Accelerator -
LHC, the giant machine that will be inaugurated in October at the CERN
laboratories in Geneva], the number of particles that can be stored in the
bunches that collide (which allows the Universe's structures to be
studied) has already reached a maximum; thus only a certain number of
collisions can be performed in a certain time and on a certain surface.

Raimondi has taken a previously known technique and has adapted it to the
accelerators, where the particles collide. To do so, he modified the
DAPHNE collider in Frascati - where he directs the Accelerators Division.
In only two years time he progressed from the technique's conception to
its concrete realization: with the same energy as before, the DAPHNE
collider can now see many more collisions, that is, more events. The
collider has increased what physicists refer to as its "luminosity".

"We had to modify 50 percent of the accelerator" - explains Raimondi - "We
saw the advantages of the new system right away: the luminosity increased
immediately by 50%, and this is only the beginning. Of course now the new
configuration of DAPHNE is that of a compact car that goes as fast as a
Ferrari. DAPHNE has the third highest absolute luminosity in the world,
yet its energy is much lower than that of the other machines; thus it has
an extremely high ratio of luminosity to energy".

"Worldwide there has been a great amount of attention and anticipation
regarding the results that we've been producing in Frascati" - explains
the INFN's President Professor Roberto Petronzio - "The first tests have
indicated that we're on the right track. Now we're thinking of also
developing a machine to study the virtual presence of the heavy particles
that the LHC could produce at low energies. This is a fundamental
scientific task; this research is complementary to that which will be done
using the LHC in Geneva. We want to construct a "b factory", a machine
that produces enormous quantities of quark b, and now we can make one that
will have a luminosity that is 100 times greater than the only two that
currently exist, the one at SLAC in California (which has just finished
its research) and that of KEK in Japan".

Moreover, for Petronzio, using "the b factory may be the trigger for
developing the new free electron laser that we want to construct at
Frascati and Tor Vergata in southern Rome, which could become the world's
most powerful laser, together with that of DESY in Germany. It would be a
supermicroscope capable of providing a fundamental contribution to
research in Molecular Biology, Genetics, and Medicine".

Contacts
Infn - Pantaleo Raimondi
Mob. +393299412828
Email: pantaleo.raimondi@lnf.infn.it

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