Public Lecture | Diana Gamzina "How Science Unlocks Copper's Hidden Powers"

About This Lecture:
In particle accelerators, electrons are pushed to extreme energies by electromagnetic fields that oscillate inside evacuated metal cavities. Those cavities are usually made of copper. Even in SLAC’s most advanced accelerators, it is the strength of the copper material that determines how much field we can apply and how much acceleration we can achieve. The same holds true for tabletop accelerators used in materials processing and cancer treatment. Today’s cavities are made of “dead soft” copper, which is weaker than most plastics. But switching to other forms of copper that are 10 to 100 times stronger - stronger than some steels - could help us overcome the current limitations on acceleration. This talk describes how SLAC scientists are using X-rays to explore the microstructure of various forms of copper under realistic accelerator operating conditions. Learning how to employ copper’s super-powered states, maintain its strength and guard against damage will enable more compact and powerful particle accelerators.
About the Speaker:
Diana Gamzina joined SLAC as a staff scientist in 2017; prior to that Gamzina was a research engineer at UC Davis working on devices for millimeter wave and sub-Terahertz applications. In this role, she invented techniques for constructing these devices that established records for their high power and small size. This work motivated her PhD research, which investigated the underlying materials-science basis for these inventions. Gamzina received her PhD in mechanical and aerospace engineering from the University of California, Davis in 2016. Here at SLAC, she has focused on fundamental issues of how materials behave in the high fields of accelerators and in the intense radio-frequency sources that feed them. Her goal is to develop new materials and manufacturing techniques to improve the performance of accelerators and to reduce their size.