Find People |

Search NSCL:

NSCL Directory Profile

Michael Syphers Professor of Physics Accelerator Physics   Ph.D. Physics, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1987 Joined NSCL in August 2010 Phone (517) 908-7608 Fax (517) 353-5967 Office 1122   syphers at fribmsuedu Professional homepage

The design and development of large-scale particle accelerators, such as the system being pursued at MSU – the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) – and the subsequent stability of particle motion within these accelerators have been the focus of my research over the years. Before arriving at MSU in 2010, my career has involved designing, building, commissioning, operating, and experimentally studying large particle accelerators for fundamental physics research, including work on the Main Ring, Tevatron, Main Injector, and other injectors at Fermilab; the Superconducting Super Collider in Texas (construction halted); Brookhaven National Lab’s AGS and RHIC (as a polarized proton collider); and the LHC at CERN. I also have participated in early design studies of the International Linear Collider and Muon Collider concepts.

More particularly, my work has “focused” on particle beam optics, nonlinear particle beam dynamics, and novel uses of beam instrumentation and diagnostics for measuring and monitoring beam and accelerator properties. The FRIB project at MSU brings several new demands to the accelerator field in these regards. The very heavy ions to be accelerated with FRIB dictate that particle speeds will range from a few percent the speed of light up to about 70% at most, depending upon the selected isotope species and charge states. The wide range of particle velocities coupled with the intense beam power on target -- to approach half a Megawatt -- pose new challenges to beam intensities, efficiencies, and the need for flexible systems of particle containment, focusing, and optimization.

As fragments coming from the target will have a large range of energies and trajectories, systems will be used to actually decelerate and essentially stop particles so that they can be re-accelerated into well-defined particle beams before arriving at their final experimental stations. The MSU Re-Accelerator (ReA) provides a unique system for methodically studying nuclear systems found in astrophysical environments. It also provides opportunities for research into novel beam diagnostic systems and a test bed for the development of superconducting cavity systems and beam systems that can be used in FRIB and other future particle accelerators. The wide variety of beam species, particle speeds, beam conditions and intensities found at ReA, and later at FRIB, provides unique and varied opportunities for beam research.

Other interests include studies of novel beam focusing systems to possibly enable higher intensities to be realized in accelerators, and rings and beam lines that can be used in systems for studies of fundamental symmetries, such as those necessary to measure anomalous magnetic moments (in particular the muon system) and electric dipole moments (muons and various nuclei), as well as lepton flavor violation (muon to electron conversion). Understanding of the particle beam storage and transport systems used in these experiments requires fundamental design, CPU-intensive computational studies as well as experimental investigations for verification. Such investigations will be necessary to exploit the full potential of FRIB at MSU as well as other accelerator facilities operating at the intensity frontiers of nuclear physics and high energy physics.