IARPE - DESY

Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY)

News from DESY

After a successful running period the big storage rings HERA (Hadron-Electron Ring Accelerator facility) and PETRA (Positron-Electron Tandem Ring Accelerator Facility) entered into a rather long shut down period at the beginning of November. At DESY usually the winter months are used for accelerator maintenance and installation work because of the high costs of electrical power in these "dark months". But nevertheless, last winter there was only a rather short interruption of the accelerator operation of a few weeks and new installations and modifications had to be postponed to this period.

One major point of interest at HERA is the complete exchange of the ion getter pumps of the electron ring by non-evaporative getter (NEG-) pumps. The aim of this enormous effort is to increase lifetime and current of the e-minus-beam. As expected for an electron (or positron) storage ring no significant induced radioactivity was produced in the vacuum pipes so that no restrictions were necessary when machining the vacuum chambers.

The second center of activity at HERA is the installation of the HERA-B experiment, the only fixed target experiment at a storage ring (as far as I know). Only the particles of the halo of the proton beam hit a wire target and produce B-particles, and the huge vessels and iron plates presently being installed are necessary to study the decay mechanisms of these exotic particles. Preliminary investigations performed with a test set-up ended successfully - successfully with respect to the production of secondary particles and with respect to additional background produced in other experiments. The radiation levels within the accessible part of the hall however will cause some effort to control in the next running period.

The e-plus-storage ring DORIS, dedicated to the production and use of synchrotron radiation is in operation up to the middle of December. Its shut down period is shorter because of the many requests of users for beam time. Especially the medical application of the synchrotron radiation was very successful in this running period. Patients who had to undergo a cardial operation are examined by a non-invasive coronar angiography to check the success of the operation. More than 100 persons passed this procedure in the current year.

The Radiation Protection Group of DESY maintaines a collaboration with the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Krakov, Poland. Especially topics concerning theoretical aspects and calculational techniques of radiation protection are treated in this collaboration. We are glad to have Dominik Dworak working with us.

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