Our customers at Fermilab needed a series of vacuum chambers that would enable the introduction of electrons to the antiproton beam and the extraction of the electrons from the beam after cooling.

In electron cooling, beams of electrons and antiprotons circulate together at the same speed. The “colder” electrons interact with the “hotter” antiprotons and cool the beam of antiprotons in the same way that hot gas is cooled when it is mixed with cold gas.

Atlas designed and manufactured a series of X and Y-shaped aluminum bending magnet vacuum chambers for an electron cooling system, which cools relativistic antiprotons, in two halves machined from thick plates of aluminum.

The aluminum material allowed for a homogenous magnetic environment and the precise control of the electron beams.

Fermilab was the first lab to demonstrate e-cooling at high energies, operating the electron beam at 4.3 MeV.