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Large volume metrology project invited to CERN workshop

The NPL FSI system, which was presented at the 2nd CERN PACMAN workshop

Invited presentations and metrology interactions link to CERN work towards the LHC successor

Physicists and engineers at CERN are probing the fundamental structure of the universe using the world’s largest and most complex scientific instruments. The CERN PACMAN project (Particle Accelerator Components’ Metrology and Alignment to the Nanometre scale) invited Andrew Lewis, the coordinator of EMRP project IND53 Large volume metrology in industry, to present the outputs of the project at the second PACMAN workshop in Debrecen, Hungary. Scientists from LUMINAR partner NPL were also invited to present their recent work from this project in the field of frequency scanning interferometry (FSI).

CERN’s latest addition to the accelerator complex, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) consists of thousands of superconducting magnets. CERN is a member of the LUMINAR stakeholder committee as large volume metrology plays a critical part in the alignment of the magnets in the LHC, as well as the alignment challenges of the LHC’s successor (e.g. 20,000 magnets aligned to 14 µm along kilometres of tunnel) which are not yet achievable.

Several outputs from the LUMINAR project are of direct relevance to these challenges including traceable absolute distance meters with refractive index compensation and the NPL FSI technique, which has recently demonstrated the ability to detect the stretched wire alignment aid which is at the heart of the planned CERN beamline metrology system.