Research at the Intensity Frontier builds upon the development of High Intensity Accelerators and Storage Rings. With the increase in circulating beam currents, particularly for positively charged beams, various effects such as the rise of electron clouds become increasingly challenging. For example, the beam intensity in the Fermilab Main Injector is predicted to increase approximately four-fold for the Project-X upgrade, and electron cloud formation is expected to be a problem. The IIT group intends to measure in detail electron cloud formation in the presence of different materials and under varying beam conditions. The program of effort will involve design work to evolve the performance and variety of electron cloud measurement techniques, as well as to validate or improve electron cloud models used in numerical simulations by the scientific community. The research will be performed collaboratively with experts at Fermilab and at Argonne National Laboratory. Through this program, IIT is building a nascent graduate program in accelerator physics and materials research to support future accelerator development, with students involved in all aspects of the research, from hardware to modeling to numerical simulations.
