Projects

CW operation of 94GHz Gyro-TWA for telecommunications applications: Cross, Adrian (Principal Investigator) He, Wenlong (Co-investigator) Whyte, Colin (Co-investigator); "This proposal will develop the world's highest power (kW), broadest instantaneous bandwidth, frequency agile amplifiers operating in the mm-wave/terahertz range. The gyro-amplifiers offers a unique opportunity to fill a long standing gap in the generation of high power coherent millimetre and sub millimetre wave radiation with its promise of amplification with an unprecedented 20% instantaneous bandwidth and an unrivalled power of 5kW at 94 GHz. Building on the recent success of W He et al PRL 2013, 110, art 165101, 2013, the mm/sub-mm wave gyro-TWA will enable a paradigm shift in what is achievable for a ground based, cellular telecommunications network by providing tera-bit data rates. This is possible due to the fact that the wireless gyro-TWA operating at sub-THz frequencies does not need to use opto-electronic components currently limiting data rates of optical schemes.

Another major area of development is the possibility of exploiting the world leading gyro-TWA to be used in Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) and Dynamic Nuclear Polarisation (DNP) spectroscopy which is currently hampered by the lack of high power sources and especially broadband amplifiers of terahertz radiation.

In addition the gyro-TWA would be an ideal source for cloud profiling radar and the detection of atmospheric pollutants because the atmospheric absorption, penetration and scattering losses, practical stand-off systems require considerable power, typically hundreds of watts. Other applications include high frequency long range security imaging, space situational awareness (detecting space debris), terrain mapping (volcano monitoring), radar and long range, high bandwidth, line of sight communications and real time video-rate detection of hidden explosives and illegal drugs."; 01-Jan-2017 - 31-Jan-2020
MICE Ionization-Cooling Demonstration: Ronald, Kevin (Principal Investigator) Whyte, Colin (Co-investigator) Young, Alan (Research Co-investigator); "The Neutrino Factory is a possible future accelerator facility that creates beams of neutrinos from the decays of muons in a storage ring. The neutrino beams from a Neutrino Factory would have the highest intensity and can be controlled with unprecedented accuracy. For these reasons, the Neutrino Factory has the potential to discover measurable differences between neutrino and antineutrino oscillations, which could be the key to understanding the puzzle of the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe. This phenomenon, known as CP violation, has been observed in the quark sector but has never been seen in the neutrino sector. A future Neutrino Factory would determine CP violation in the neutrino sector with the best possible accuracy. Furthermore, a Neutrino factory could be used as a first stage before the construction of a Muon Collider, which could be used to measure the properties of the Higgs boson with the ultimate precision, and could potentially reach energies of up to 6 TeV, in order to explore new physics phenomena at the highest energy frontier.

Both the Neutrino Factory and a Muon Collider rely on the acceleration of muons. To be able to create muon accelerator facilities, we require to reduce the size of the muon beam so that it may be accelerated. Since muons decay within 2 microseconds in their own rest frame, the only known way to reduce the phase space of the muon beam before the muons decay is to use the concept of ionisation cooling, in which the muons lose energy in an absorber such as liquid hydrogen or lithium hydride (LiH) and then recover the longitudinal component of the momentum by accelerating them using RF cavities. The international Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE) is an engineering demonstration of the concept of ionisation cooling. This experiment is being built at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, in which a beam of muons will be cooled in a muon cooling cell consisting of three absorbers and two RF cavities inside the field of two focus coil magnets. The emittance of the beam is measured before and after the cooling channel using a scintillating fibre tracker inside a superconducting solenoid, and the muons are identified using time-of-flight detectors, a Cherenkov detector and a calorimeter system consisting of a scintillating fibre-lead pre-shower detector (named the KL) and a totally active scintillating detector, called the Electron Muon Ranger (EMR).

In this proposal we aim to perform measurements of emittance reduction, without RF cavities (MICE step IV) and perform the final demonstration of ionisation cooling with RF cavities. This proposal is a bid for 42 months funding from Oct 2016 to March 2020, supporting academic and student effort over that period and research staff from the end of the bridging support that ends in December 2016."; 01-Jan-2017 - 30-Jan-2021
Folded Waveguide TWTAs: Whyte, Colin (Principal Investigator) MacInnes, Philip (Co-investigator) Robertson, Craig (Research Co-investigator); 01-Jan-2016 - 31-Jan-2017
Continuation of UK participation in the International Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment - Bridging Funds: Ronald, Kevin (Principal Investigator) Whyte, Colin (Co-investigator) Young, Alan (Research Co-investigator); "The Neutrino Factory is a possible future accelerator facility that creates beams of neutrinos from the decays of muons in a storage ring. The neutrino beams from a Neutrino Factory would have the highest intensity and can be controlled with unprecedented accuracy. For these reasons, the Neutrino Factory has the potential to discover measurable differences between neutrino and antineutrino oscillations, which could be the key to understanding the puzzle of the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe. This phenomenon, known as CP violation, has been observed in the quark sector but has never been seen in the neutrino sector. A future Neutrino Factory would determine CP violation in the neutrino sector with the best possible accuracy. Furthermore, a Neutrino factory could be used as a first stage before the construction of a Muon Collider, which could be used to measure the properties of the Higgs boson with the ultimate precision, and could potentially reach energies of up to 6 TeV, in order to explore new physics phenomena at the highest energy frontier.

Both the Neutrino Factory and a Muon Collider rely on the acceleration of muons. To be able to create muon accelerator facilities, we require to reduce the size of the muon beam so that it may be accelerated. Since muons decay within 2 microseconds in their own rest frame, the only known way to reduce the phase space of the muon beam before the muons decay is to use the concept of ionisation cooling, in which the muons lose energy in an absorber such as liquid hydrogen or lithium hydride (LiH) and then recover the longitudinal component of the momentum by accelerating them using RF cavities. The international Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE) is an engineering demonstration of the concept of ionisation cooling. This experiment is being built at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, in which a beam of muons will be cooled in a muon cooling cell consisting of three absorbers and two RF cavities inside the field of two focus coil magnets. The emittance of the beam is measured before and after the cooling channel using a scintillating fibre tracker inside a superconducting solenoid, and the muons are identified using time-of-flight detectors, a Cherenkov detector and a calorimeter system consisting of a scintillating fibre-lead pre-shower detector (named the KL) and a totally active scintillating detector, called the Electron Muon Ranger (EMR).

In this proposal we aim to perform measurements of emittance reduction, without RF cavities (MICE step IV) and perform the final demonstration of ionisation cooling with RF cavities. This proposal is a bid for 9 months funding from April to December 2016 in order to bridge the current MICE Step IV construction grant that ends in March 2016 and the final demonstration of ionisation cooling, expected to run until 2019."; 01-Jan-2016 - 31-Jan-2016
Project Manager: Mice Ionization Cooling Demonstration: Whyte, Colin (Principal Investigator); "The Neutrino Factory is a possible future accelerator facility that creates beams of neutrinos from the decays of muons in a storage ring. The neutrino beams from a Neutrino Factory would have the highest intensity and can be controlled with unprecedented accuracy. For these reasons, the Neutrino Factory has the potential to discover measurable differences between neutrino and antineutrino oscillations, which could be the key to understanding the puzzle of the matter-antimatter asymmetry of the universe. This phenomenon, known as CP violation, has been observed in the quark sector but has never been seen in the neutrino sector. A future Neutrino Factory would determine CP violation in the neutrino sector with the best possible accuracy. Furthermore, a Neutrino factory could be used as a first stage before the construction of a Muon Collider, which could be used to measure the properties of the Higgs boson with the ultimate precision, and could potentially reach energies of up to 6 TeV, in order to explore new physics phenomena at the highest energy frontier.
Both the Neutrino Factory and a Muon Collider rely on the acceleration of muons. To be able to create muon accelerator facilities, we require to reduce the size of the muon beam so that it may be accelerated. Since muons decay within 2 microseconds in their own rest frame, the only known way to reduce the phase space of the muon beam before the muons decay is to use the concept of ionisation cooling, in which the muons lose energy in an absorber such as liquid hydrogen or lithium hydride (LiH) and then recover the longitudinal component of the momentum by accelerating them using RF cavities. The international Muon Ionization Cooling Experiment (MICE) is an engineering demonstration of the concept of ionisation cooling. This experiment is being built at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, in which a beam of muons will be cooled in a muon cooling cell consisting of three absorbers and two RF cavities inside the field of two focus coil magnets. The emittance of the beam is measured before and after the cooling channel using a scintillating fibre tracker inside a superconducting solenoid, and the muons are identified using time-of-flight detectors, a Cherenkov detector and a calorimeter system consisting of a scintillating fibre-lead pre-shower detector (named the KL) and a totally active scintillating detector, called the Electron Muon Ranger (EMR).
We aim to perform measurements of emittance reduction, without RF cavities (MICE step IV) and perform the final demonstration of ionisation cooling with RF cavities.
This proposal is a bid to provide bridging funds for 10 months salary for Dr Colin Whyte. The Bridging funds are required to cover the period between the end of funds for Dr Whyte from the Strathclyde MICE grant and the start of the Cost to Completion Funding, Jan 2017."; 01-Jan-2016 - 31-Jan-2016
Enabling next generation TWT amplifiers: Whyte, Colin (Principal Investigator) Robertson, Craig (Research Co-investigator); 01-Jan-2015 - 30-Jan-2015

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Dr Colin Whyte

Senior Research Fellow

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