Newswise — Zholents was honored for his work on the theory of optical stochastic cooling.
Alexander Zholents, a senior physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory and distinguished fellow in the Accelerator Systems division is one of the recipients of this year’s Dieter Möhl Award.
The award is presented by CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics. It is in tribute to the late Dieter Möhl, a pioneer in the realm of particle beam cooling. The awards celebrate both early career and lifetime achievements in the field of beam cooling and its applications.
“I am deeply honored to receive this award,” said Zholents. “The intricacies of beam cooling are undoubtedly challenging, and my understanding has significantly benefited from studying Möhl’s insightful papers and engaging in two personal encounters with him. He was an exceptional scientist and educator and left an indelible mark on the field.”
Zholents was recognized for his groundbreaking work on the initial idea and theory of optical stochastic cooling. Stochastic cooling is an essential tool in achieving tight control over beams of protons, antiprotons and ions in circular accelerators such as Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, a DOE Office of Science user facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The inventor of this technique, Simon van der Meer, was awarded the Nobel prize in physics in 1984 for his work at CERN, which led to the discovery of the W and Z particles.
“I am deeply honored to receive this award. The intricacies of beam cooling are undoubtedly challenging, and my understanding has significantly benefited from studying Möhl’s insightful papers.” — Alexander Zholents, Argonne National Laboratory
Optical stochastic cooling takes the principles of stochastic cooling and achieves faster cooling by using speed and precision, as well as an optical amplifier and undulators instead of conventional radiofrequency methods. Zholents’s theories were first demonstrated in an accelerator at DOE’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in 2022.
“Additionally, my heartfelt gratitude extends to the scientists at Fermilab, whose groundbreaking work showcased the efficacy of optical stochastic cooling,” said Zholents. “Their contributions have been instrumental in advancing our collective knowledge in this domain.”
The accolade was presented at the COOL 2023 Conference hosted by CERN in October.
About the Advanced Photon Source
The U. S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory is one of the world’s most productive X-ray light source facilities. The APS provides high-brightness X-ray beams to a diverse community of researchers in materials science, chemistry, condensed matter physics, the life and environmental sciences, and applied research. These X-rays are ideally suited for explorations of materials and biological structures; elemental distribution; chemical, magnetic, electronic states; and a wide range of technologically important engineering systems from batteries to fuel injector sprays, all of which are the foundations of our nation’s economic, technological, and physical well-being. Each year, more than 5,000 researchers use the APS to produce over 2,000 publications detailing impactful discoveries, and solve more vital biological protein structures than users of any other X-ray light source research facility. APS scientists and engineers innovate technology that is at the heart of advancing accelerator and light-source operations. This includes the insertion devices that produce extreme-brightness X-rays prized by researchers, lenses that focus the X-rays down to a few nanometers, instrumentation that maximizes the way the X-rays interact with samples being studied, and software that gathers and manages the massive quantity of data resulting from discovery research at the APS.
This research used resources of the Advanced Photon Source, a U.S. DOE Office of Science User Facility operated for the DOE Office of Science by Argonne National Laboratory under Contract No. DE-AC02-06CH11357.
Argonne National Laboratory seeks solutions to pressing national problems in science and technology. The nation’s first national laboratory, Argonne conducts leading-edge basic and applied scientific research in virtually every scientific discipline. Argonne researchers work closely with researchers from hundreds of companies, universities, and federal, state and municipal agencies to help them solve their specific problems, advance America’s scientific leadership and prepare the nation for a better future. With employees from more than 60 nations, Argonne is managed by UChicago Argonne, LLC for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit https://energy.gov/science.
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