The Gamma Factory proposal for CERN

TL;DR

The Gamma Factory proposal aims to significantly enhance CERN's light source capabilities by creating a high-intensity, tunable gamma-ray source using existing infrastructure, enabling new research in fundamental physics and applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel gamma-ray source concept at CERN that surpasses current light sources in intensity and energy range, expanding research possibilities.

Findings

Potential to reach 10^17 photons/sec flux in gamma-ray domain

Enables production of polarized secondary beams like muons and positrons

Opens new avenues for fundamental physics and industrial applications

Abstract

This year, 2015, marks the centenary of the publication of Einsteins Theory of General Relativity and it has been named the International Year of Light and light-based technologies by the UN General Assembly. It is thus timely to discuss the possibility of broadening the present CERN research program by including a new component based on a novel concept of the light source which could pave a way towards a multipurpose Gamma Factory. The proposed light source could be realized at CERN by using the infrastructure of the existing accelerators. It could push the intensity limits of the presently operating light-sources by at least 7 orders of magnitude, reaching the flux of the order of 10^17 photons/s, in the particularly interesting gamma-ray energy domain of 1 < Ephoton < 400 MeV. This domain is out of reach for the FEL-based light sources. The energy-tuned, quasi-monochromatic gamma beams, together with the gamma-beam-driven, high intensity secondary beams of polarized positrons, polarized muons, neutrons and radioactive ions would constitute the basic research tools of the proposed Gamma Factory. The Gamma Factory could open new research opportunities in a vast domain of uncharted fundamental physics and industrial application territories. It could strengthen the leading role of CERN in the high energy frontier research territory by providing the unprecedented-brilliance secondary beams of polarized muons for the TeV-energy-scale muon collider and the polarized- muon-beam based neutrino factory.