Scientific Highlights from the Department "Large Research Facilities" (GFA)
ETH Zurich, IBM and Paul Scherrer Institut Researchers receive 2012 PRACE Award
PRACE Award
18.06.2012 HAMBURG: At the International Supercomputing Conference (ISC12) researchers from ETH Zurich, the renown science and technology university; IBM Research - Zurich and the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), Switzerland’s largest research centre for natural and engineering sciences, received the 2012 PRACE Award.
The PRACE Awards recognizes the best scientific paper in one of the following areas: a breakthrough in science achieved with high performance computing resources, algorithms or implementations that achieve significant improvements in scalability, or novel approaches to performance evaluation on massively parallel architectures.
Yves Ineichen, (ETH, IBM, PSI); Andreas Adelmann (PSI); Costas Bekas, Alessandro Curioni (IBM); and Peter Arbenz (ETH); received the award for their paper “A Fast and Scalable Low Dimensional Solver for Charged Particle Dynamics in Large Particle Accelerators.” ISC12
Citation for the award: “This paper demonstrates how HPC can be used in real time to tune the operation of particle accelerators, which are invaluable tools for research in the basic and applied sciences, in fields such as materials science, chemistry, the biosciences, particle physics, nuclear physics and medicine,” communicated by Prof. Richard Kenway, chairman of the PRACE Scientific Steering Committee.
About PRACE
The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) is an international nonprofit association with its seat in Brussels. The PRACE Research Infrastructure (RI) provides a persistent world-class High Performance Computing (HPC) service for scientists and researchers from academia and industry. The PRACE leadership systems form the apex of the performance pyramid and are well integrated into the European HPC ecosystem. PRACE receives funding from the EU's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement n° RI-261557.
Vertical Emittance of the SLS Storage Ring
Beam cross section in comparison to a human hair
21.12.2011
On the 6th of December 2011 the vertical emittance of the SLS storage ring could be reduced to a world record low value of 1pm rad. The vertical beam size in the short straight sections of the SLS is then only 3 micron (rms). This was achieved through vertical re-alignment of the magnet girders with 400mA stored beam and fast orbit feedback running, as well as through application of several different methods of coupling suppression using 36 skew quadrupoles. High resolution profile monitor utilizing vertically polarized component of synchrotron radiation allowed precise determination of the beam size.
PSI sets world record with 1.4 MW proton beam
23.06.2011 The highest average power proton beam in the world was produced on 20th of June in the 580 AUTHOR_WWW/GFA.MeV cyclotron at Paul Scherrer Institute. Extremely low beam losses achieved in this 35 years old veteran cyclotron allowed PSI team of accelerator scientists and engineers to put 1.4 MW beam of protons onto the muon and neutron spallation targets. This beam is used to produce the brightest beam of muons in the world, as well as supply neutrons for the spallation source SINQ.
Neutrons are a powerful tool for investigattion of the static and dynamical properties of condensed matter on atomic scale. Present and future sources like SINQ at PSI, Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) in Oakridge, Tennessie, USA and the future European Spallation Source (ESS) planned to be built near Lund, Sweden require powerful proton beams to create intense sources of neutrons. With 1.4 MW average power proton beam PSI produces the most powerful beam of protons in the world today. Several EPFL laboratories use the large research facilities at PSI to carry out investigations of novel materials properties, using most advanced sources of muons, neutrons and photons.