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DESY II
DESY II Test Beam Facility
The DESY test beam is used by research groups from all over the world. Prototypes of particle detectors only one square millimetre in size and others weighing several hundred kilograms; components that will become the heart of a detector and others designed for the outer layers of future detectors. All these are put through their paces at the test beam facility at DESY’s oldest accelerator, the electron synchrotron DESY II.
The DESY II Test Beam Facility offers users a wide range of possibilities. By exposing their detector prototypes to electrons or positrons with energies of 1 to 6 giga-electronvolts (GeV), users can test properties such as response behaviour and accuracy of the prototypes, which are decisive for their later function in experiments.
The beam for the three measuring stations is not extracted directly from the accelerator. It is generated by introducing a hair-thin wire as “target” into the electron beam of the DESY II synchrotron. This creates photons (particles of light), which are converted into electron–positron pairs using another target. A magnet behind it gives the test beam users the possibility to select the energy of the electrons themselves. In addition, various “beam telescopes” for measuring the particle trajectories and two large magnets are available for the experiments. Thus, an accelerator that has been running since 1985 has become a sought-after site for technology development.
