Issue 41

September 2022

Welcome to Issue #41 of Accelerating News!

Both the reduction in energy supply and the need to reduce the impact of human activities on the environment require research infrastructures to become more sustainable.

At the latest IAEA Accelerator Conference, the CLIC collaboration showed which axes the accelerator community must take in order to achieve sustainability. New designs that take into account the environmental impact per physics output will be chosen, as highlighted by  a recent analysis which sets the FCC-ee as the most sustainable design for the proposed Higgs factory. Novel ways of reducing and reusing waste will have to be considered, as achieved by CERN’s “Mining the Future®” competition which identified solutions for the reuse of rock excavated during tunnelling for future CERN colliders.

One other way to achieve greater sustainability in accelerators will be by disrupting the technology itself. In an in-focus piece, Maurizio Vretenar, I.FAST project coordinators, explores how the community is working to miniaturise accelerators.

This summer was an eventful one. In addition to the start of LHC Run 3, the 23-institute-strong AWAKE collaboration explored new, viable and more efficient alternative to traditional radiofrequency acceleration using charged particles. In late August, the LINAC Conference  in Liverpool provided a unique opportunity to hear about the latest advances in research and developments on linear accelerators and their applications.

Whether we are talking about fundamental research or societal applications, outreach activities are crucial to inform and motivate future generations of accelerator scientists. The EU-funded ARIES project, which ended earlier this year, has released an e-learning course to serve as an introduction to accelerator science, engineering and technology, aimed at undergraduate students. Also, scientists at Diamond Light Source have published a board game developed to inspire students to explore STEM scientific careers and subjects.

Antoine Le Gall, Editor-in-Chief