Status of PACMAN Project at CERN

Abstract

Though the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is just at the start of a program expected to run for 20 additional years, CERN is studying the next generation of colliders, like the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC). This project proposes an electron-positron collider with a length close to 50 km and with a centre of mass energy of 3 TeV at the collision point. One of the main challenges is the sub-micrometric size of the beams, down to a few nanometres at the interaction point. As a consequence, the accelerator will require unprecedented nanometric tolerances of beam alignment. A series of several thousands components will have to be assembled, aligned at the micrometre level and most critically, stabilized actively at the nanometre level. PACMAN, a study on Particle Accelerator Components Metrology and Alignment to the Nanometre scale, is a Marie Curie Program supported by the European Commission (FP7 Program), creating a network of 16 Academic and Industrial Partners. The project is hosted at CERN and it offers training and PhD studentship to 10 students selected worldwide. Specialties are covering: beam instrumentation, metrology, micrometric alignment, magnetic measurements, nano-positioning and high precision engineering. The technical goal of PACMAN is to push the limits of the alignment of accelerator components by combining multi-disciplinary measurements and techniques, in the same bench