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DESY and KEK strengthen the tie in photon science

20 Dec 2010

On 9 December, a meeting of the collaboration between DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron) and KEK was held at KEK, Tsukuba, Japan. A five-year extension of the academic exchange agreement between DESY and KEK was ratified, and a signing ceremony was held.

Helmut Dosch, Chairman of the Board of Directors at DESY, and Atsuto Suzuki, Director General of KEK, presented their vision of the future of the laboratory and its research activities, followed by presentations from project leaders on the status of on-going collaborations. These include the upgraded KEKB accelerator and Belle experiments, accelerator R&D, future light source R&D, detector R&D, and research on materials and life sciences. Participants discussed a number of opportunities for partnership and collaboration.

As DESY is now placing their emphasis on photon science: DESY has started the operation of the PETRA III, the world's best synchrotron light source of its kind this year, and will be hosting the European XFEL project, a research facility currently under construction at DESY in which will generate extremely intense X-ray flashes Hamburg, DESY will closely collaborate with KEK's Institute of Materials Structure Science. "DESY and KEK can expect numerous scientific results with our multiple research probes, such as syncrotron radiation, neutron and muon beams", said Osamu Shimomura, Director of the Institute of Materials Structure Science, and Trustee of KEK.

The delegation from DESY toured the KEK Tsukuba campus, visiting the Accelerator Test Facility (ATF), and the construction site of the compact Energy Recovery Linac (cERL). They also visited the Superconducting radiofrequency Test Facility (STF), where KEK is hosting an international experiment for the planned International Linear Collider (ILC) called S-1 Global, for which DESY provided important components such as two superconducting cavities, couplers and tuners. The delegation also visited J-PARC at the Tokai campus.

The collaboration between DESY and KEK began in 1989 with the signing of an agreement concerning the ZEUS experiment at DESY's Hadron-Electron Ring Accelerator (HERA). In 2005, the scope of the agreement was extended to encompass comprehensive academic exchanges, and the two institutions have since maintained a productive partnership, holding annual collaboration meetings and working together on projects like the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) or the ILC. .

The next meeting will be held at DESY. DESY Director Helmut Dosch proposed that a workshop should be organized in conjunction with the meeting, to promote active interaction among the researchers, which was favorably received by all the meeting participants.