Plasma-Wakefield Accelerator Group

Abstract:

A critical review is given of the current status of cosmological nucleosynthesis. In the framework of the Standard Model with 3 types of relativistic neutrinos, the baryon-to-photon ratio, $\eta$, corresponding to the inferred primordial abundances of deuterium and helium-4 is consistent with the independent determination of $\eta$ from observations of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. However the primordial abundance of lithium-7 inferred from observations is significantly below its expected value. Taking systematic uncertainties in the abundance estimates into account, there is overall concordance in the range $\eta = (5.7-6.7)\times 10^{-10}$ at 95% CL (corresponding to a cosmological baryon density $\Omega_B h^2 = 0.021 - 0.025$). The D and He-4 abundances, when combined with the CMB determination of $\eta$, provide the bound $N_\nu=3.28 \pm 0.28$ on the effective number of neutrino species. Other constraints on new physics are discussed briefly.

Abstract:

Abstract: The production of beauty and charm quarks in ep interactions has been studied with the ZEUS detector at HERA for exchanged four-momentum squared 5 < Q2< 1000 GeV2using an integrated luminosity of 354 pb−1. The beauty and charm content in events with at least one jet have been extracted using the invariant mass of charged tracks associated with secondary vertices and the decay-length significance of these vertices. Differential cross sections as a function of Q2, Bjorken x, jet trans- verse energy and pseudorapidity were measured and compared with next-to-leading-order QCD calculations. The beauty and charm contributions to the proton structure functions were extracted from the double-differential cross section as a function of x and Q2. The running beauty-quark mass, mbat the scale mb, was determined from a QCD fit at next-to-leading order to HERA data for the first time and found to be mb(mb) = 4.07 ± 0.14 (fit)− 0.07+ 0.01(mod.)− 0.00+ 0.05(param.)− 0.05+ 0.08(theo.) GeV.

Abstract:

A 4 m-long, 324MHz four-vane RFQ, consisting of four coupled sections, has been designed for the Front End Test Stand (FETS) at RAL in the UK. A novel design method, integrating the CAD and electromagnetic design of the RFQ with beam dynamics simulations, was used to optimise the design of the RFQ. With the design of the RFQ fixed, the focus has been on optimising the transmission of the RFQ at 3MeV and matching the output of the FETS Low Energy Beam Transport (LEBT) to the RFQ acceptance. Extensive simulations have been carried out using General Particle Tracer (GPT) to map out the acceptance of the FETS RFQ for a 65 keV H- input beam. Particular attention has focussed on optimising the simulations to match the optimised output of the FETS Penning-type H- ion source. Results are presented of the transverse phase space limits on the RFQ input acceptance in both the zero current and full space charge regimes.

Abstract:

The COMET experiment will search for very rare muon processes that will give us an insight into particle physics beyond the Standard Model. COMET requires an intense beam of muonswith amomentumless than 70MeV/c. This is achieved using an 8 GeV proton beam; a heavy metal target to primarily produce pions; a solenoid capture system; and a curved solenoid to perform charge and momentum selection. Understanding the pion production yield and transport properties of the beam line is an important part of the experiment. The beam line is a continuous solenoid channel, so it is only possible to place a beam diagnostic device at the end of the beam line. Building COMET in two phases provides the opportunity to investigate the pion production yield and to measure the transport properties of the beam line in Phase-I. This paper will demonstrate how this will be done using the experimental set up for COMET Phase-I. Copyright © 2013 by JACoW- cc Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 (CC-BY-3.0).

Abstract:

EMMA (Electron Machine with Many Applications) is a prototype non-scaling Fixed-Field Alternating Gradient (ns-FFAG) accelerator whose construction at Daresbury Laboratory, UK, was completed in the autumn of 2010. The energy recovery linac ALICE [1] serves as an injector for the EMMA ring, within an effective energy range of 10 to 20 MeV. The ring is composed of 42 cells, each containing one focusing and one defocusing quadrupole. Acceleration over many turns of the EMMA machine has recently been confirmed. In some cases the bunch will traverse upwards of 100 turns, at which point the effects of space-charge may be significant. It is therefore necessary to model the electron beam transport in the ring using a code capable of both calculating the effect of and compensating for space-charge. Therefore the General Particle Tracer (GPT) code [2] code has been used. A range of injection beam parameters have been modelled for comparison with experimental results and those of other codes. The simulated effects of space-charge on the tune shift of the machine are also compared with those expected from theory. Copyright © 2013 by JACoW.