It has been a privilege to receive opportunities to work and contribute to both the conventional superconducting magnet designs and technologies and to the new magnet designs and technologies.
After the completion of RHIC (highlights), I moved on to developing and demonstrating new magnet designs such as:
- common coil design for collider dipoles (papers, presentations)
- overpass/underpass design (papers, presentations, PBL STTR)
- open midplane design for muon collider and for dipole first IR optics
- optimum integral design (Paper, Presentation, STTR Phase I, STTR Phase II)
I also helped develop and demonstrate new and developing magnet technologies such as:
- HTS magnet technology for a variety of applications
- react & wind high field magnets with brittle superconductors such as Nb3Sn and Nb3Al and HTS (paper)
Often these new and vastly different technologies than those ever used before require a fresh look at the basic magnet design from the first principle. In fact, this led to the development of the new and innovative magnet designs mentioned above.
I further realized that we also need to change how we do the magnet R&D. Conventional way of doing R&D takes too long and is too expensive. Getting a positive outcome then becomes too important. Therefore, to assure success one tends to incorporate many improvements (changes) at one time into a single magnet. This in turn makes it difficult to identify what individual change made the improvement or what was responsible for the poorer performance. I saw a need for and developed new ways of doing magnet R&D which are lower-cost and have rapid-turn-around. They encourage both:
- developing and testing bold and innovative designs and technologies, and
- carrying out systematic scientific studies.
For example, an insert coil in BNL common coil dipole DCC017 becomes an integral part of the magnet in the highest field area and an insert coil test becomes a low-cost, rapid-turn-around magnet test.
If a test result is positive, it becomes a demonstration of the new design or new technology and can be used more confidently in a new magnet. However, if a test result comes out to be negative, the test result need not be seen as a failure of that magnet project. It could and should be seen as a low cost insert coil test where we tried something that didn’t work.
Though everything must be done to avoid or minimize a negative outcome, being prepared for occasional negative results must be a part of learning and innovating. Experimental results help us understand what works and what does not. We need to find out why, and what was the cause of the negative outcomes. Then, we make corrections, or find alternate solutions, and move ahead. In fact, both negative and positive test results are an integral part of developing new designs and/or technologies optimally.
Working with the conventional NbTi cosine theta magnets for accelerators, prior to embarking on the new designs and technologies, gave an important perspective and direction. I worked on the magnets for the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and for the Superconducting Supercollider (SSC). Key outcome of that work, some of which resulted in new designs and techniques that can be and has been used are:
- highlights of RHIC magnets
- techniques to reduce field errors due to non-linear iron saturation by as much as an order of magnitude (thesis, YouTube Video),
- flexible magnet designs which were able to produce good field quality magnets essentially without any prototyping and/or able to reduce tolerances in parts – both significantly reduce the project cost and the project schedule (YouTube Video),
- tuning shim techniques which were able to take field quality in accelerator magnets to a level that were thought to be not possible before and beyond the tolerances in parts (paper, thesis),
- developed and demonstrated field quality as a tool to monitor magnet production (paper).
Seeing that work used in the magnets of a major accelerator (RHIC at BNL) was a truly fulfilling experience. I gave several talks, wrote papers, and gave courses so that these techniques can be used in future accelerators, such as VLHC, FCC or LHC at CERN, SppC.
Brief CV/Biodata
Contributions and Collaborations
Introduction during Brookhaven Lecture
Tenure Granted at BNL
Publications
Presentations
Brookhaven Bulletin
Courses on Superconducting Accelerator Magnets
YouTube Videos
It has been my pleasure and honor to work with many colleagues and collaborators, without whom none of this would have been possible.
