We are offering a certain number of tours of the DESY facilities, the tours will take place on Wednesday and will start at 17:45 from the main Auditorium. Please find below a list.
Registrations are closed, but there are still few places left in some of the Tours. Please contact elisabetta.gallo@desy.de directly if you are interested.
Tour 1: SHELL Building: MADMAX and BRASS
The MAgnetized Disc and Mirror Axion eXperiment (MADMAX) uses the dielectric haloscope approach to search for dark matter axions in the range between 40 and 400 µeV, a part of the axion parameter space which is particularly difficult to access experimentally while being favored model-wise in the post-inflationary scenario. With a so-called booster structure (a set of movable dielectric discs) inside a strong magnetic field, dark matter axions are converted to microwave photons in the range of 10 to 100 GHz. Currently, the MADMAX collaboration is working towards its medium-scale prototype which will be first commissioned in the SHELL lab in Hamburg in 2024 before being moved to CERN during a shutdown period to perform a physics run inside a 1.6 T dipole magnet in the CERN North Area (https://alps.desy.de/our_activities/axion_wisp_experiments/madmax/ ).
The Broadband Radiometric Axion SearcheS prototype (BRASS-p) follows the dish antenna approach, utilizing a radio telescope structure to detect Weakly Interacting Slim Particles from the dark matter halo. BRASS-p is the collaborative endeavor between the University of Hamburg and the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy and funded by the Excellent Cluster: Quantum Universe. Notably, BRASS-p has set the global benchmark, providing world-leading exclusion limits for hidden photon dark matter in the 12-18 GHz frequency mass range. We are now gearing up for axion/axion-like-particle searches set to commence in 2024 (https://www.physik.uni-hamburg.de/iexp/gruppe-horns/forschung/brass.html)
Tour 2: ARES Linac - a Precision Tool for Accelerator Science, Technology and Application Developments
The R&D linac ARES (https://ares.desy.de/) produces and diagnoses sub-fs, high quality and highest stability electron beams at a nominal energy of 155 MeV and delivers them to internal and external users. ARES is used for medical in-vivo experiments in the frame of Very High Electron Energy (VHEE) treatment, FLASH radiotherapy and imaging methods. The scientific program at ARES also includes accelerator and detector R&D, machine learning towards autonomous accelerators and accelerator infrastructure development.
Maximum number of people: 10
Tour 3: KALDERA and LUX (2 places left)
KALDERA is DESYs new flagship laser to drive our next-generation laser-plasma accelerators. KALDERA will deliver ultrafast laser pulses of 100 TW peak power at up to 1 kHz repetition rate (https://kaldera.desy.de).
With LUX (http://mls.desy.de/target), we first tested our ideas of merging plasma-acceleration with modern accelerator technology. LUX is fully integrated into DOOCS, DESYs control system and backbone of its large scale user facilities. Over the years we added many beam optic elements and modern diagnostics. Typically, we generate 300 MeV electron beams at 1 Hz repetition rates. Our pioneering work on machine learning at laser-plasma accelerators, and our first steps in decoding the sources of energy variability, have happened at LUX.
Maximum number of people: 7
Tour 4: PETRA III and IV
With PETRA III, DESY operates one of the best storage ring X-ray radiation sources in the world. Research groups from all over the world use the particularly brilliant, intense X-ray light for a variety of experiments – from medical to materials research. But the 2300-metre-long storage ring PETRA has even more potential: DESY plans to expand it into a high-resolution 3D X-ray microscope for chemical and physical processes – the future project PETRA IV (https://www.desy.de/research/facilities__projects/petra_iv/index_eng.html).
Tour 5: EuXFEL (registration closed)
The 3.4 km long European XFEL (https://www.xfel.eu/ ) generates extremely intense X-ray flashes used by researchers from all over the world. The flashes are produced in underground tunnels and allow scientists to map atomic details of viruses, film chemical reactions, and study processes in the interior of planets.
Tour 6: ALPS II (Cancelled)
ALPS II is a light-shining through a wall (LSW) experiment to search for WISPs. Potential WISP candidates are axion-like particles or hidden sector photons. Axion-like particles may convert to light (and vice versa) in presence of a magnetic field. Similarly, hidden sector photons "mix" with light independent of any magnetic fields. This is exploited by ALPS II- Light from strong laser is shone into a magnetic field. Laser photons can be converted into a WISPs in front of a light-blocking barrier (production region) and reconverted into photons behind that barrier (regeneration region). The experiment exploits optical resonators for laser power build-up in a large-scale optical cavity to boost the available power for the WISP production as well as their reconversion probability to light (https://alps.desy.de/our_activities/axion_wisp_experiments/alps_ii/ ).
Tour 7: Detector Assembly Facility and Test Beam
DESY operates a test beam facility with three test beam lines (21, 22 and 24) in experimental Hall 2 (building 27) on the campus in Hamburg Bahrenfeld. The electron or positron beams are converted bremsstrahlung beams from carbon fibre targets in the electron-positron synchrotron DESY II with up to 1000 particles per cm² and energies from 1 to 6 GeV, an energy spread of ~5% and a divergence of ~1mrad (https://particle-physics.desy.de/test_beams_at_desy/ ).
The DESY’s Detector Assembly Facility (DAF), is developping and building high-precision silicon detectors for the Phase 2 of the ATLAS and CMS experiments. A total of about 3000 modules will be built for the two detectors in the DAF.
