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TRIUMF will host
the third North American meeting on FFAG accelerators.
The workshop will be held in Vancouver (Canada) from Thursday, 15th April
through Tuesday, 21st April, and will be preceded by a half day mini-symposium
on FFAGs on Wednesday 14th April. The meeting has been organized to
span a weekend, to give participants a short break.
Fixed Field Alternating Gradient (FFAG) accelerators were first proposed in the 1950s. In recent years, there has been a resurgence in interest, both in the traditional "scaling'' versions for proton driver applications, and in novel "non-scaling'' versions offering very high momentum compaction for high-energy muon accelerators. In both cases one can have high repetition rates and use superconducting magnets, since the magnetic fields do not need to be ramped. For muons, FFAGs can achieve significant cost advantages compared to recirculating linacs.
The initial forums for discussion of the proton machines were two workshops hosted by KEK, and for muons the annual Neutrino Factory and Muon Collider Workshops. As interest has intensified, a series of specialized FFAG Workshops has emerged, hosted by KEK (twice), CERN, LBNL, and most recently, BNL. In addition, an FFAG muon source workshop was held at TRIUMF in 2000.
By design, the two previous FFAG Workshops have been kept small and informal, where more time is allocated to work and discussion than to presentations. This is felt to be their most valuable feature, and we aim to follow the same pattern.