Report on the Joint US-CERN-Japan-Russia Accelerator School 2013

 

Abstract

The Joint US-CERN-Japan-Russia Accelerator School 2013 was held at the Fuji Institute of Education and Training which is located at the foot of Mt. Fuji, one of the world heritages, from October 23 to 31, 2013. The school welcomes more than 100 attendees from many countries of Asia, Europe and North America, and successfully completed.
 

1. Introduction

The Joint US-CERN-Japan-Russia Accelerator School 2013 (http://www-conf.kek.jp/accschool/) was held at the Fuji Institute of Education and Training (Photo 1), operated by Teijin Ltd., for 9 days from October 23 to 31, 2013. The institute locates Susono City, Shizuoka Prefecture and is surrounded by beautiful nature near Mt. Fuji, one of the world heritages. The institute offers a 100 seats lecture hall, accommodations for all attendees and beautiful scenery of Mt. Fuji. The main subject of the school is “Introduction to Particle Accelerators”. This school is a series of joint accelerator schools of US, CERN, Japan and Russia, and next succession of the accelerator school held at Sicily, Italy in 2011. The objective of the joint accelerator schools is not only for the extension of the knowledge on accelerators of the attendees, but also to promote friendship among the attendees around the world. The attendees, lecturers and school staffs lived together under the same roof to cultivate their friendship (Photo 2). This school was supported by the High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK), the Graduate University for Advanced Studies (SOKENDAI) and the Foundation for High Energy Accelerator Science. The schoolmaster was Kenji HOSOYAMA, a professor emeritus at the KEK.
 

Photo 1 Appearance of The Fuji Institute of Education and Training

Photo 2 Breakfast at the Fuji Institute

About 80 students and researchers attended this school from universities, companies and institutes, and enjoyed fruitful lectures (Photo 3) by 21 lecturers who are active in the forefront of accelerator science. Nationalities and numbers of attendees from each country are listed in Table 1. About 50% of all attendees came from China, Russia and Japan. It is one of the characteristics of the school that attendees from Asian countries are also dominant. Some of them came from Asian countries where accelerator study is not so active yet. According to their explanation, there is no accelerator laboratory in their universities and hence they major in high energy physics or nuclear physics instead. Thanks to the wonderful lectures in the school, they became very interested in accelerator science. They asked the lecturers and also Prof. Katsunobu OIDE, director of the Accelerator Laboratory of KEK, how they could find an academic position to work on the accelerator science in Japan. It is a great pleasure for the school staffs to contribute an initiation of young researchers into the accelerator science.

Table 2 shows the school program. The last periods of October 28 and 29 had originally been assigned to free study. Some attendees, however, requested to introduce their studies to other attendees. Then, these periods were assigned as student sessions to give presentations on their studies, works and so on. About 10 students introduced their activities and enjoyed discussions among attendees with a liberal and a friendly atmosphere.
 

Photo 3 Attendees in the Lecture Hall

Table 1 Nationalities of attendees Nationalities Number of Attendees Ratio (%) China 14 18.2 Russia 13 16.9 Japan 12 15.6 USA 7 9.1 Germany 5 6.5 Indonesia 4 5.2 Taiwan 4 5.2 Canada 3 3.9 India 3 3.9 Malaysia 2 2.6 Slovenia 2 2.6 Bangladesh 1 1.3 Egypt 1 1.3 France 1 1.3 Italy 1 1.3 Poland 1 1.3 Thailand 1 1.3 United Kingdom 1 1.3 Vietnam 1 1.3

 

2. Lectures

Lectures were given for five days, as shown in Table 2. Five lectures for 1.5 hours each were given from 9 am to 6 pm everyday. The lectures in this school cover a wide range of subjects, not only essentials of accelerator science such as beam dynamics, linear and circular accelerators, magnet, superconducting cavity and cryogenic system, but also on-going projects like ILC and cancer treatment accelerator. The attendees locked themselves up in the lecture hall, and intensively studied on accelerator science. Since the every lecture started from fundamentals and then proceeded to advanced topics step by step, everyone could surely understand the lectures. The topics of the lectures are based on a lot of knowledge and experience in their outstanding research careers. The attendees seemed to be very interested in the lectures. Some attendees asked the lecturers many questions in and after the lectures. Attendees also downloaded the lecture materials into their own PCs to review the lectures in a study room until late night.

Because of the limitation of the page capacity, here we concisely introduce the outline of only two lectures. All lecture materials were already uploaded on the school web site. Please download them if you are interested.

Dr. Robert RIMMER from Jefferson Lab, USA, lectured on the superconducting RF cavity. Firstly, he mentioned the historical details how RF acceleration and superconductivity, which had completely separate histories, were combined. After the explanation of the principle of the RF cavity, parameters for the cavity characterization and superconducting phenomena, he switched the subject to the superconducting cavity. He evaluated quantitatively and exemplified the advantages of the superconducting cavity from the comparison of low RF loss and high electromagnetic fields with the normal conducting cavity. Then he introduced a manufacturing method of the RF cavities in detail, especially emphasizing on how to finish up the inner surface of cavities in order to realize high electromagnetic field. He concluded that the development of superconducting cavity is still challenging field and we should continue our study on it. For encouragement to the students, he finally said that what is most necessary for us is the power of a young generation and it means you.

Prof. Hiroshi MATSUMOTO from KEK made his lecture on medical accelerators, especially focused on the Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT) with which he concerns himself for its development. An accelerator therapy before the BNCT, radial rays and charged particle beams had been irradiated to kill cancer cells. These conventional ways, however, also damage normal cells in the vicinity of the cancer cells. In order to overcome the defect, the BNCT utilizes the nuclear reaction of boron (10B) with a neutron: n+10B -> 7Li+α. The path length of the α-particle is comparable with a cell size. It is possible only to damage the cell in which 10B is captured. Therefore, a patient takes a medicine containing 10B before a neutron irradiation so as to concentrate 10B in cancer cells. He spent about half of lecture time to explain the principle of the BNCT in detail. Then he introduced current status of the BNCT project that is now under development adjoining the J-PARC site. He also explained construction status and future schedule of the linear accelerator for neutron generation.
 

3. Excursion

On October 27, Sunday, we went on an excursion to nice places near Mt. Fuji by two busses. Though it had been cloudy and rainy until the day just before the excursion, it was clear on the excursion day thanks to good behavior of the attendees. We could enjoy beautiful views of Mt. Fuji for the first time for us during the school period (Photo 4). We first visited the “Shizuoka City Tokaido Hiroshige Museum of Art” (Ukiyoe museum). Some of attendees were trapped in woodblock printing experience at the museum, and it causes the delay of departure from the museum. Then we moved to “Miho-no Matsubara” (pine tree forest along the seashore) to take group photos with Mt. Fuji. The departure was again delayed longer, since someone took a time to buy souvenirs. After having lunch at “Nihondaira” (Scenic spot for Mt. Fuji) we took aerial cable cars to visit “Kunozan Toshogu Shrine” (Photo 5). Because of a fine weather, there was a long line for the cable cars. Since at that moment the excursion schedule was seriously delayed and sunset time would come soon, we gave up visiting “Hakone-Owakudani” (Hakone national park), where we could see a magnificent view of Mt. Fuji and volcanic activity. Then we directly headed to the restaurant “Grand Table” in “Gotemba Kogen Brewery” (Photo 6) to enjoy the school banquet.
 

Photo 4 Mt. Fuji in the Fall

Photo 5 Kunozan Toshogu Shrine

Photo 6 School Banquet at the "Grand Table"

 

4. Facility Visits

After the lectures for 5 days in the Fuji Institute, we made facility visits. On the way from the institute to KEK on October 30, we stopped at the Radio Isotope Beam Facility (RIBF) of the RIKEN Nishina Center for Accelerator-Based Science, Wako City, Saitama Prefecture. Lunch boxes were loaded into the buses at a service area of the highway from the Fuji Institute, and we had lunch inside the buses. We took a short rest at a neighbor public park of the RIKEN for schedule adjustment. At RIKEN Nishina Center we watched an introductory video of the facility at first. Then we separated into 4 groups (about 20 persons per group) to observe the RIBF.

Next day, October 31, it was the day for the KEK site visit and also the last day of the school. In the morning we again separated into 4 groups to observe 5 facilities in KEK: the e-/e+ linac, the main ring of the KEK B-Factory (ARES cavities and Belle detector), the Superconducting RF Test Facility (STF) and the compact Energy Recovery Linac (cERL). Since only 3 buses could be available for the transportation, the arrangement of 4 groups with 3 buses was complicated. Visits could complete, however, almost on time just before lunchtime. Since it was the first experience for many attendees to observe the large facilities as RIKEN and KEK, they commented that the visits were so impressive for them.

After having lunch at KEK we said goodbye each other and rode buses to go home (Photo 7).
 

Photo 7 The Last Group Photo at KEK

 

5. Concluding Remarks

We thank the lecturers again for their wonderful lectures during this school. The school staffs are grateful to staffs of the RIKEN Nishina Center and KEK for their cooperation on the facility visits. Special thanks go to all staffs of the Fuji Institute of Education and Training. They made their every effort to support the school, even though it was their first experience to accept so many foreign people in their institute. Especially, appreciated greatly are the copes of the restaurant staffs of the institute to prepare special meals for the attendees who have restrictions on food from their religion and health.

As a first trial in this school, message boards with photos of all attendees, lecturers and school staffs were posted to encourage closer friendship among them (Photo 8). The message boards with photos were rather favorable among the attendees, since the boards could help to remember names and faces more easily. On the other hand, however, some attendees did not want their photos to be on display.

Though it is famous that Japanese people always buy souvenirs everywhere, many attendees of this school bought souvenirs during the excursions and the move to KEK. This caused the delay of departure always. It should be mentioned at last that the communications among the attendees still continue on the internet community site.
 

Photo 8 Message Boards with Photos

 

Table 2 Timetable of the school

〜 Author : Accelerator Division III, Hirotaka Nakai / Accelerator Division II, Tomofumi Maruta〜

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