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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: EP/D064449/1
Title: Relativistic Charged Beam Interactions
Principal Investigator: Tucker, Professor RW
Other Investigators:
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Project Partners:
Department: Physics
Organisation: Lancaster University
Scheme: Springboards Scheme
Starts: 01 October 2006 Ends: 31 August 2008 Value (£): 101,842
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Algebra & Geometry Mathematical Physics
Non-linear Systems Mathematics
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
No relevance to Underpinning Sectors
Related Grants:
Panel History:  
Summary on Grant Application Form
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) scheduled for operation in 2006-7is planned to explore multi-quark interactions that arise incentral collisions with a proton energy of over a million million electron volts.It may uncover evidence for new particles including scalar fields.However even if developed to higher energies it is unlikely toresolve all the outstanding questions raised by the standard modelof the fundamental interactions. Its colliding constituents(protons) are composites and therefore the beam energy ispartitioned among individual quarks. An alternative is to use adevice that accelerates directly the point-like structure ofleptons and anti-leptons. Indeed such a machine has a well testedpedigree. Most of the detailed precision tests of the standardmodel owe their success to the electron-positron ring collider(LEP) at CERN (Geneva), A new generation of electron/positronlinear colliders is now in design progress at SLAC (USA), DESY(Germany), KEK (Japan) for the ILC and at CERN for CLIC withprojected energies in the 1 Tev region. Whatever the outcome ofthe LHC or these new electron/positron colliders, the fullpanoply of predictions beyond the standard mode will undoubtedlyrequire several TeV electron-positron machines before definitivepatterns can emerge in the data produced.Scaling electron/positron machines to higher energies can onlybe realistically achieved for LINEAR colliders. A radically newdesign for a higher energy electron/positron linear collider(linac) has been developed at CERN. The Compact Linear Collider(CLIC) gains its name from its compact transverse dimensioncompared with other designs. The effective operation of such acomplex device relies on a number of challenges that lie at thelimit of current technological feasibility. The role of coherentsynchrotron radiation by the beam requires a fuller understandingin order to achieve design criteria and its effective functioning relies on being able to control such emission. To date this problem remain to be fully resolved.A mathematically coherent formulation of a closed system ofpartial differential equations describing the relativisticbehaviour of charged matter with electromagnetic fields isinevitably non-linear and in general exact solutions satisfyingcausal boundary conditions are intractable. The fact that theeffects of (coherent and incoherent) radiation on micro-sizedcharged bunches in a host of newly proposed advanced devices is asignificant barrier to development indicates that existingapproaches used to model such effects are inadequate and that afresh look at the whole problem is timely. It is the aim of thisproposal to offer new tools in differential geometry to theanalysis of a new approximation scheme based fundamentally on thelight cone structure of spacetime.It is aimed to interact with accelerator scientists in the UK,CERN, DESY and the US, over a period of 18 months, to determine the precise nature of theproblems associated with synchrotron radiation in the design ofproposed devices of novel and advanced design. Based oninteractions with personnel in major accelerator centres it isplanned to confront the above problems with a new theoreticalprogramme that will lead to a clearer understanding of classicaland quantum synchrotron radiation phenomena and provide new toolsfor their solution. In particular it will permit the constructionof new efficient and transparent code for tackling the challengesassociated with the planned functioning of the damping andcombiner rings in the proposed machine (CLIC) described brieflyabove and provide a new electrodynamics framework for themathematical sciences .
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Organisation Website: http://www.lancs.ac.uk