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Sustainability of particle accelerators
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Europe/London
Berry Lecture Theatre
Berry Lecture Theatre
Description
Accelerators are key research and industrial infra-structure for developed countries. They are used to treat cancer, process materials, non-destructive imaging, discover new particles/interactions and drugs. An accelerator can be considered as a power transformer, so converting electrical energy available from national grids into “beam power”. This could be X-rays for imaging, neutrons for scattering or luminosity for high energy physics experiments like CMS/LHCb. As accelerators push towards higher energy and/or intensity to measure rarer or more subtle phenomena, more resources are required to construct and operate the accelerator. This talk will cover a range of topics in accelerator sustainability, with a focus on the research programme at the Cockcroft Institute. Considering accelerators as power transformers naturally leads to questions of efficiency, so how efficient can the conversion be? Novel acceleration using plasma could significantly reduce the resources to construct the accelerator, but at what efficiency? What are the issues with proposed high energy facilities like a muon collider or future circular electron positron collider? With the upcoming European Strategy for Particle Physics Update accelerator sustainability is becoming a critical consideration for future facilities.
