Université de Genève

Ecole de physique - Département de physique nucléaire et corspusculaire

24, quai Ernest-Ansermet

1211 GENÈVE 4

Tél: (022) 379 62 73 - Fax: (022) 379 69 92

Wednesday 17 décembre 2008

PARTICLE PHYSICS SEMINAR

at 17.00 hrs – Stückelberg Auditorium

Bent crystals: a long story and its new frontiers

by Dr Michela Prest / Universita degli Studi dell’Insubria, sede di Como

When a particle physicist hears the world "crystal", he usually thinks of calorimeters, silicon detectors, a state of matter. When he hears the word "magnet", he thinks of bulky, heavy objects. In 1976, E. H. Tsyganov experimentally demonstrated how a bent crystal 1 mm thick, a couple of mm wide and a few cm high can steer particles as a dipole of several tens of Tesla. Crystals and the channelling phenomena have been studied for around 30 years. Hadron beam collimation has been immediately identified as their main application and the understanding of the physics of crystals and their experimental study have proceeded in parallel, discovering new phenomena and requiring new technological achievements. This seminar describes the role of bent crystals in collimation in general and for the second phase of LHC in particular giving an insight of the physics of crystals. It will also revise the topic of radiation production by light particles in bent crystals which is still an open field both from the theoretical and experimental points of view and which would be a real breakthrough in several fields, from the production of positron sources for the Linear Collider to the generation of intense gamma beams for medical applications."

Organizer : J.-S. Graulich

Information: http://dpnc.unige.ch/seminaire/annonce.html