Superconducting Magnets: Enhancing The Capabilities of Particle Accelerators

Particle accelerators and colliders are crucial to fundamental scientific research and breakthrough science and have led to discoveries in particle and high-energy physics, materials science, medicine, and many other fields, as well as enabling progress in research areas such as fusion. Superconducting magnets are essential components of accelerators as they produce the magnetic fields that guide and steer particle beams around the accelerator. Two types of magnets are used in accelerators: dipole magnets, which steer particle bunches in a ring, and quadrupole magnets, which compress and focus these bunches to help control the beam.

The development of more dipole powerful magnets enables researchers to achieve higher particle energy levels, and stronger quadrupole magnets squeeze the particle beams more tightly, increasing the rate of collisions at the interaction points. This improves the precision in accelerator experiments, expanding research opportunities and paving the way for new applications. However, the complex design, specialized materials, and cryogenic cooling systems needed to construct them and maintain their superconducting state make high-field strength superconducting magnets particularly challenging and expensive to build and operate.

Researchers in the Accelerator Technology & Applied Physics (ATAP) Division at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) are leading efforts to develop advanced accelerator magnets. For instance, they are working with colleagues from the Lab’s Engineering Division to fabricate and assemble powerful new quadrupole magnets using niobium-tin (Nb3Sn) technology. These magnets, part of the ongoing contribution of the U.S. Accelerator Upgrade Project to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Accelerator Upgrade Project, or HL-LHC-AUP, generate much higher fields than the niobium-titanium magnets currently used in the LHC to create more tightly focused particle beams. This enhancement to the LHC, the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, will increase the collision rate of the accelerator’s proton beams, extending its capabilities.

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