“High Brilliance Neutron Source” Workshop: Also a Success as a Virtual Meeting

by Thomas Gutberlet, JCNS

17-18 September 2020

From 17-18 September 2020, the sixth international workshop on High Brilliance Neutron Sources based on low-energy accelerator systems took place as a virtual conference organized by the Jülich Centre for Neutron Science (JCNS). This workshop series is now known as “the Unkel meeting” for its beautiful location on the shores of the river Rhine where all the preceding workshops took place. It was to the regret of all participants that, due to the current pandemic, the workshop could not be held in Unkel this time.

With more than 20 presentations by colleagues from France, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Sweden, Israel, Canada, Japan and Germany, the workshop was truly international and covered time zones from Asia to North America. On average more than 60 participants followed the presentations on both days. They were welcomed by Prof. Thomas Brückel, director of JCNS, on the first day.

A series of comprehensive reports on recent work on projects for compact accelerator-based neutron sources (CANS) in Europe, Canada and Japan were given. Ian Swainson introduced recent activities guided by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on the topic of CANS, as well as Frederic Ott, LLB, on the activities of the League of Advanced Neutron Sources (LENS) and Thomas Brückel, JCNS, who presented the launch of the “European Low Energy accelerator-based Neutron facilities Association” ELENA. Options for particle and astrophysics by CANS were highlighted by Christoph Langer of FH Aachen. On the second day, most recent technical developments regarding accelerator development, cold moderator systems and instrumentation for CANS were highlighted.

The next HBS Workshop will be held, hopefully in its familiar format, again at the Rheinhotel Schulz in Unkel, Germany, from 23-24 September, 2021.

Further information on the HBS 2020 Workshop