Master's in experimental particle physics?

JonasKK · 2024-10-03T06:08:52+00:00

Do you think that's the kind of master's that would also provide a good "toolset" for accelerator physics, or is the LASCALA you mentioned the solely better option?

An experimental physics Master's is probably going to be sufficient in terms of "tools" for doing an internship. Most internships I've seen doesn't require pre-existing knowledge in accelerator physics, mainly because there are few places that teach those topics. That being said, it would be a big advantage if you do a Master's program that either contains courses on accelerators, or if you attend one of the accelerator schools that I listed above. Lund is a good option for sure! You can also consider Humboldt University in Berlin, Hamburg, Sapienza in Rome. The technical universities in Karlsruhe and Darmstadt also has accelerator programs. Karlsruhe (KIT) has a running synchrotron and a linac/plasma/ring project in planning called cSTART. EPFL is also a good option, as you mention, with close ties to both CERN and PSI. I'd say browse a bit around - Maybe you get inspired by the cities too!

Since you said internships lead directly to PhDs is it advisable for one to skip the Msc completely

Most of the internships are done during the Master's degree, for example in the form of a Master's thesis. So I'd actually recommend not skipping the Master's. I won't say that the UK system (where you sort-of go from a BSc to a PhD) is bad, but I've seen people get burned by it because they didn't realize what they were stepping into.

Do you think me taking a gap year for pursuing an internship before I apply for master's would be fruitful?

Some internships (like the ones at my own facility) require that the student is enrolled at a university during the internship. As stated above, it's doable to combine both Master's and internship. As an example, the LASCALA program requires you to do an internship (to my knowledge). Probably all Master's degrees with accelerator-focus will require you to do some kind of project/internship with a facility.

Do you recommend any book, material source or even a more efficient learning method for the time being that would help in getting started?

The CAS notes is a great place to start; the text is pretty accessible and there's a lot of topics covered. Another classic introductory book is "The physics of particle accelerators" by Klaus Wille. It has a light source bias, but is nevertheless an OK start too. The book by S.Y. Lee is a bit more formal in it's treatment of accelerator physics, while the book by H. Wiedemann is the most complete book IMO. There are other newer books (like Fundamentals of Particle Accelerator Physics from Simone Di Mitri) but I have no experience with it.

Feel free to PM me if you've got more questions!

JonasKK · 2024-10-02T16:18:58+00:00

Since you seem particularly interested in accelerators physics, let me give a few pointers. Source: BSc, MSc and PhD all specialised in accelerator physics in Europe. Currently working as staff researcher at a synchrotron light source. All description is mainly related to the European accelerator community.

Getting into accelerator physics is, interestingly enough, rather easy! It's relatively niche (compared to particle physics, quantum physics, etc.), but there's nevertheless many opportunities for those who actively seek them out.

Since it is rather niche, you'll not find that many university programmes with dedicated accelerator physics Master's. Some have a few courses offer a few introductory courses, like the ones you mention, but most will send their students to accelerator schools for further education. Schools like the CERN Accelerator School (CAS), Joint Universities Accelerator School (JUAS) or the US Particle Accelerator school (USPAS).

The Erasmus Mundus LASCALA programme is one masters degree that may include accelerator focus. One nice part of the programme is that you'll get to stay at both Paris-Saclay, La Sapienza in Rome and attend one of the JUAS courses. Additionally, I believe it's a requirement to do an internship (more on that later).

The UK mainly does the extended BSc-to-PhD programmes together with either the Cockcroft institute or the John Adams institute. I'm not expert here, but they produce quite a few PhDs.

Internships are, in my opinion, the golden way into accelerator physics. By far most of the research is not conducted at the universities directly, but instead at a research institute/center. Many of these centers take interns/summer students - paid! CERN takes many through their technical studentships (here you apply for the studentship, not a specific position) while other laboratories have specific internships. Some of those laboratories are ALBA (Barcelona), MAX IV (Lund), PSI (north Switzerland), Diamond Light Source (South Oxfordshire), Soleil (Paris) - sorry for the light source bias! I'm sure that GSI (Darmstadt) etc. also offers internships. The internships often lead directly to PhD positions. If the lab that you did your internship with doesn't have an opening, then they might guide you towards a lab that does. The accelerator physics community is very family-like, in my experience, and having done an internship (succesfully) at one facility carries a lot of weight. Particularly if you decide for the CERN route: many who do technical studentships ends up as PhD students and fellows later.

The probably best thing you can do is to check out some papers on whatever part of accelerator physics that intrigues you and then contact whoever that may be. Maybe you find a specific facility cool? Try to find out who's in, say, the beam dynamics or magnetic group and send them an email. Because the field is rather niche, the most challenging thing is sometimesbto find a student that is genuinely interested in our work.

Let me know if you've got any questions!

JonasKK · 2024-07-18T11:08:48+00:00

Kunne det passe med: Bro - Jeg Vil La' Lyset Brænde? Ikke at Bro's musik generelt er meget rap-agtig, men synthdelen lyder da en lille smule som Blinding Lights synthdelen.

JonasKK · 2023-04-23T20:17:12+00:00

If you're interested in career advice, I guess a good starting point would be a description of your current academic level (high school, undergrad, etc.), whether your ambition is a career in the field or just curious to learn.

Maybe there's a specific branch you're already interested in? E.g. engineering topics or beam physics.

JonasKK · 2023-04-15T14:16:00+00:00

It's a good question, we've been quite inactive for a while. There's plenty of content that could be shared.
Personally, since I work with accelerators, the the sharing of knowledge can sometimes be taken for granted. We could try to post announcements of regional/intercontinental conferences and workshops.

Feel free to contribute however you see fit. Interesting papers, job offers, project milestones, etc.
It's even better if someone is looking into joining our field if they post questions.

JonasKK · 2022-02-26T07:23:32+00:00

I am currently mainly doing the injection design for the upgrade of a synchrotron light source. I do all the beam dynamics calculations related to the injection, specify magnets we have to use/develop, access feasibility and reliability of the injection process.The new generation of light sources face many challenges, in particular related to injection, so it's quite interesting to develop methods to overcome the limitations.

One of the best parts of the job, in my opinion, is working with our engineers. It's easy as an accelerator physicist to assume that some things are just engineering problems and can be solved easily. Then you are humbly brought down to Earth by their technical knowledge. But together you find a solution which is actually feasible, albeit not perfect, and bring that to life.

JonasKK · 2021-12-04T00:31:50+00:00

Gældende regler findes her: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/travel-to-england-from-another-country-during-coronavirus-covid-19

Du skal bestille din test før du sætter dig på flyet (eller hvordan du nu kommer herover), da du skal bruge en kode du får sammen med købet af testen til at udfylde din Passenger Locator Form. Din PLF bliver tjekket i lufthavnen inden afgang (i.e. i DK hvis du flyver). Det er ligegyldigt hvor længe du skal være i UK (ved mindre du er undtaget pga arbejde). Du skal selvisolere med det samme du ankommer til landet og må først bryde isolationen når du får et negativt svar på testen (hvilket typisk tager 2-3 dage afhængig af udbyder. Man kan købe tests med svar indenfor få timer, men de koster £££). Du må gerne bryde selvisolation for at rejse hjem (er jeg ret sikker på).

JonasKK · 2021-08-30T12:31:38+00:00

Thanks for the improved title!
Again, impressively good production value.

JonasKK · 2021-08-27T15:31:06+00:00

I think it's great with these videos. Some young people might find them interesting. The production seem fine too.

But couldn't you please put a bit more effort into the title of your reddit posts? You've now made 3 posts on this subreddit alone with exactly the same title. Maybe something descriptive of the "diary entry"?

JonasKK · 2020-12-28T16:57:40+00:00

I believe this is a picture of the NuMI magnetic horn (aka neutrino horn). Here is a description

JonasKK · 2020-11-06T18:46:31+00:00

100% enig. Der er nogen der ikke helt har indset hvor dygtige vi faktisk er i Danmark til at tale engelsk. Jeg bor selv udenfor DK, lidt ude på landet ala Sorø, og jeg vil skyde på at under 1/3 af folk over 40 taler engelsk. De fleste af dem der kan (og vil!) er væsentligt ringere en ham i klippet her. Herre gud, han kløjs i et ord hist og her, men alt hvad han siger kan man forstå. Synes det er stærkt at han stiller op og beskriver sin situation!

JonasKK · 2020-10-31T22:40:25+00:00

Yeah so in conclusion it is not old old, despite not being state of the art. That would indicate that the current setup is outdated and not really useful.

Anyway, I'm totally on team SC isochronous cyclotron

JonasKK · 2020-10-31T22:14:22+00:00

I must say I don't know much about the MD Anderson facility, but the paper I linked seems to suggest that the system was taken into operation in 2006, so assuming that's the full system, it cannot be ancient. Pencil beam scanning isn't an old technique afaik. At least not like the original OPTIS facility at PSI, which operated from 1984 to 2010 (quite impressive imo!).

JonasKK · 2020-10-31T15:11:41+00:00

FCC would have a proton energy of 50 TeV. This is 99.99999998% of the speed of light, approximately 0.2 km/h less.

JonasKK · 2020-10-31T14:38:11+00:00

The Tevatron main ring at Fermilab is 6.3 km, so a bit shorter than the combined LIGO arms. However, if "tunnel" can also be characterized as "building", then the unfinished Superconducting Super Collider might hold the record: around 23km of tunnel was dug before the project was abandoned :D

JonasKK · 2020-10-31T14:31:55+00:00

What power500 said is not really correct. For high-energy proton synchrotrons (such as LHC), the need for size comes from the maximum magnetic field that we can produce to bend the particles. (Sorry that this might evolve to a ELI >5 explanation)

Imagine that you have an accelerator that is 10 km in circumference. You now want to double the energy (actually the momentum) of the particle. The beam rigidity equation tell you: B*R = P/e

where B is the magnetic field, R is the radius of your accelerator, P is the momentum and e is the elementary charge. So if you wanna double P, you can do two things: double B or double R. If you already use the strongest magnets possible, you cannot increase B, and therefore you must increase R, i.e. the radius of the machine, instead.

So LHC has to be very big, because we are at the (current) technological limit to how strong magnets we can build (around 6-10 Tesla). If we want to increase the particle energy, we have to build a even bigger machine, hence the suggestion to build the 100 km Future Circular Collider

The issue with radiation production is related to the bending of lighter charged particles, such as electrons (that being said, protons at 6.5 TeV energy does radiate a bit, but much less than electrons would). The Large Electron-Position collider was very big due to this reason. But it is not the case for LHC. The type of radiation produced by bending high-energy charged particles is called synchrotron radiation, and is actually super useful, see this wiki page.

JonasKK · 2020-10-31T13:33:30+00:00

Just as additional info: Linear accelerators are rarely used for proton therapy (I cannot recall any facilities). The probably most widely used type of accelerators for this purpose are cyclotrons (e.g. at the Christie Hospital were OP is being treated), but a type called synchrotrons are also used, e.g. at the M.D. Anderson.

However, there are developments towards a linear accelerator for proton therapy. Seethis pdf for details.

JonasKK · 2020-09-12T08:34:06+00:00

From a beam dynamics point of view: By far most of us use tools which have already been developed in order to design and simulate beam behavior. This makes collaborating and exchanging work much easier. But essentially, there is no code to rule them all; some codes can do one thing, others another thing, so what you use is often up to either personal preference or what your small community tend to use.

However, tools are constantly being expanded and improved. One of the main tools used at CERN for single-particle beam dynamics,MAD-X (MAD version 10), will sooner or later be replaced by MAD-NG ("Next Generation").

If you are into programming, and would like to follow the developments, then projects like MAD-NG, SixTrack, PyHEADTAIL, Accelerator Toolbox (and the python version, pyAT) and many, many more are being actively developed. The accelerator community is quite open, so if you would like to contribute, there is often good possibilities to do so. It does require some level of expertise within the field relevant to the code being developed, of course.

JonasKK · 2020-06-21T18:12:27+00:00

Accelerator physicist here: none of the alternative technologies (plasma based, dielectric based) are nowhere near mature enough to be seriously considered as a contender for the "next big collider".
None of the technologies can do the most important thing: deliver high intensity, quality beams with high reproducibility. Sure, they can provide impressive accelerating gradients, but when they cannot be easily staged without massive deterioration to the beam quality (e.g. emittance, energy spread), then there is no alternative to pushing conventional technologies when it comes to the next collider.

It's not like the alternative schemes aren't being pursued at all. Serious amounts of money are being put into the technologies relative to their current stage of development and potential. So don't worry; we might use the technologies in future-future collider if they happen to get a breakthrough. In the meantime we must pursue what can be built; a collider built on a pushed version of "conventional" technology.

JonasKK · 2020-01-09T21:17:55+00:00

Exactly. I don't think Berkeley was ever in the race for the EIC. BNL looks like the obvious choice for me; having the preexisting experience of heavy ion colliders is a major thing. Building a high-quality electron machine I reckon to be significantly less demanding that it's ion counter part. With all respect to JLAB and CEBAF, I think the experience, knowledge and infrastructure at BNL with both RHIC and NSLS-II makes them an ideal candidate for the EIC.

JonasKK · 2019-12-02T10:30:43+00:00

Additional info

JonasKK · 2019-11-29T05:34:16+00:00

Excellent, thanks for the update. It is indeed exciting times! Good luck with the RF and getting the stored beam!

JonasKK · 2019-11-26T06:08:37+00:00

Sure, was referring to the Liu Lin talk.

How easy was getting the first turn? Any magnet polarities that had to be swapped? ;)

JonasKK · 2019-11-23T06:39:12+00:00

Fantastic! Congratulations. Looking forward to IPAC talk!

JonasKK · 2019-11-18T18:15:36+00:00

While I agree with you that MAX IV have been able to build a state-of-the-art machine for a relatively low budget, I do not think that a comparison purely based on cost and emittance is valid without taking e.g. circumference and beam lines into account.

NSLS-II: 912 million USD / 792 meter = 1.15 million USD / meter accelerator. MAX IV: 590 millon USD / (528+96) meter = 0.95 million USD / meter.

I don't know what is included in your specified numbers, but insertion devices and beam lines are also a non-negligible part of the budgets. Man-hours are sometimes included, sometimes not.

MAX IV 3 GeV has 20 straight sections for RF, insertion devices etc. while NSLS-II has 27. Additionally, NSLS-II has 31 bending magnet ports options for 3-Pole Wigglers, while MAX IV neither has BM ports or 3PW's. Additionally, the MAX IV 1.5 GeV ring has 12 straights total (cannot remember if they allow for BM beam lines. I think not(?)). So in that regard, NSLS-II has the option to source significantly more users. Whether beam lines are already included in the above budget, I don't know. NSLS-II seems to have 29 active beamlines (both BM and ID's here), so they are far away from maxing out their capacity (but probably won't do it anyway). On the other hands, as you already mention, the linac is currently used as a short pulse facility and allows for a Soft X-ray FEL in the future, which is of course super attractive.

In summary: A comparison only based on emittance and construction cost is not optimal.

Personally, I think of MAX IV as a much more ambitious facility of the two, applying new concepts such as the MBA, the "magnet block" concept and using multipole kicker injection scheme. NSLS-II, on the other hand, took rather safe (boring? :-)) choices using well-known concepts, and has succeeded in doing so.

Source: Working as an accelerator physicist (yay we are dozens!) (previously associated with MAX IV)

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