Fermilab turns up the heat on electron cooling

A technique that was first proposed by Gersh Budker in 1966 is being injected with new life by a team of physicists at Fermilab in the US. Working on an ambitious electron-cooling project, the team set a new world record for DC beam power, they maintained a continuous 3.5 MeV electron beam with a current of more than 500 mA for up to 8 h with only short interruptions. They use an electron beam to cool antiprotons inside Fermilab's 3 km Recycler antiproton storage ring and boost the luminosity of the laboratory's Tevatron collider. When the electron-cooling system is complete, electrons and antiprotons will travel side by side in the Recycler.