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Scientific Work Opportunities
in the
Magnets & Superconductors Group
section
Magnet design, Analysis and Databases

Please consult the CERN Recruitment Service for information about terms and conditions, as well as for submitting your application.  Scientific questions should be addressed to the supervisors. We thank you in advance for taking the time to consider these opportunities.

Technical Students ( 2 anticipated openings )

Study of future insertion quadrupoles for the LHC upgrade (opening 1)

Supervisor: Dr Christine VOLLINGER
Starting date: 2007, expected duration: 6 months
Working language: English and/or French (German and Italian also useful)

Study Description:

The LHC upgrade requires more powerful quadrupoles in terms of gradient, beam aperture, integrated gradient and robustness against radiation damage and energy deposition.

Starting from existing conceptual designs for the upgrade, we plan to investigate two design issues that are partially or not covered:

1. Conductor grading
   
   To our knowledge, the conductor grading done so far in superconductive magnets have used an empirical approach. We intend to gather the information on all graded quadrupoles built so far. From this information, we shall attempt at defining the important parameters and the maximum grading possible versus the parameters. The grading lends itself naturally to coils made of several superconductors. This aspect will be investigated as a second priority if time permits.
    
2. Cables built of Nb₃Sn strands

   Only a limited number of measurement data exists on Nb₃Sn strands or cables such that its magnetization properties are far less known, and can result in field distortions which are one or two orders of magnitude bigger than for Nb-Ti if the classical designs are used. We propose an electromagnetic design study that would be carried out in 2D and 3D with the use of cable parameters that have been published recently by the community. The goal is to get a more precise judgment on whether the field quality that can be reached today matches the beam dynamics requirements.
    

Open mid-plane dipole for the LHC luminosity upgrade (opening 2)

Supervisor: Dr Christine VOLLINGER
Starting date: 2007, expected duration: min 6 months
Working language: English and/or French (German and Italian also useful)

Study Description:

A challenging but potentially promising option in the scenarios for LHC luminosity upgrade is the so-called “Dipole First” proposal, for which an open mid-plane dipole magnet could be used. The feasibility of the open mid-plane design has already been shown within the framework of the US LARP R&D, where it was also shown that the magnet life time can be made sufficient despite a large beam-induced energy deposition. 

The aim of the proposed work is to develop different coil cross-sections of a 15T open mid-plane dipole magnet in Nb₃Sn technology with a horizontal spacing between 100 and 160 mm, and vertical coil spacing between 30 mm and 60 mm, respectively. This would be a new step in magnet design since so far, a design field of 15 T with the open mid-plane design could be reached only in one case and for a rather small coil separation.

The major challenge is to obtain such a design for high fields, a good field quality in spite of the large coil separation, and a reasonable force distribution on the coil blocks. The study should comprise a feasibility study of the mechanical design, an evaluation of the efficiency of the concept and a comparison between the different designs (pay-off study of field/gap relation).