No. 37 (2005): Cyclotrons and polarization

Issue Editor: R. Wanzenberg, Editor-in-Chief: W. Chou

First and foremost I would like to thank all the authors of the contributions to this issue of the newsletter. This newsletter begins with a letter to the Editor by S. A. Khan reflecting on anniversaries celebrated last year, and looking ahead to the extension of international collaboration on accelerators and beam physics as well as to new regional facilities.

There is a dedicated section on recent activities related to the global effort towards a linear collider. The “Second ILC Accelerator Workshop” will be held in Snowmass, Colorado, August 14-27, 2005. Reports from that workshop are expected for the next issue of this newsletter in December.

This issue contains two theme sections on cyclotrons and on polarized beams. Cyclotrons have not been in the focus in recent issues of the newsletter although many cyclotrons are operated worldwide for different purposes. These include medical applications, nuclear physics and the operation of a spallation neutron source. The contributions to this topic, received from different regions of the world, demonstrate that cyclotrons are interesting with respect to beam dynamics, which includes not only aspects of beam optics but also three-dimensional modeling of complicated accelerator structures and space charge dominated beams. I am particularly pleased by receiving an article by IJ. L. Conradie from South Africa, which reports new beam developments in the iThemba Labs (see Section 4.4).

The section on polarization covers achievements with respect to polarized beams as well as recent progress in spin-orbit tracking codes. The Cooler Synchrotron COSY is accelerating polarized proton and deuteron beams up to a momentum of 3.7 GeV/c. The attainment and handling of spin polarization of electron and positron beams has a long tradition at DESY. Presently longitudinal polarized electrons of energy of 27.5 GeV are delivered to three HERA experiments. RHIC has shown an impressive increase in polarized proton (100 GeV) performance over the last few years.

There are interesting and well-written activity reports on beam-beam effects, a longitudinal feedback system and on coherent synchrotron radiation effects in bunch compressors.

There are several workshop and conference reports, including a well-prepared comprehensive report of the ERL2005.

The forthcoming beam dynamics workshops can be found in section 8 of this newsletter.

Last but not least I would like report that Dr. Anton Piwinski, one of the founders of this newsletter, has received the USPAS Prize for his achievements in accelerator physics and technology.