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NIU prof's accelerator project aims to put DeKalb on high-tech fast track

Author(s): Sandra Guy The Chicago Sun-Times Date: May 24, 2006 Page: 76 Section: Financial

A former Air Force officer who ran a laser and accelerator research and development program in the Reagan era is the guiding force behind Northern Illinois University's obtaining a first-of-its-kind particle accelerator. Court Bohn, a physics professor at NIU, is reaching for a bigger goal. The accelerator will be housed in a beam diagnostics laboratory that will become the center of high-tech research and development in DeKalb.

A year from now, Bohn expects to have the lab certified and ready to generate electron beams.

"At first, we'll use the electron beam to develop instruments to measure the properties of intense charged particle beams," Bohn said.

The measurements are important because the beams exhibit complicated dynamics that have yet to be understood or controlled. A better understanding is essential to developing projects such as a high-energy collider being built near Geneva, Switzerland, that will boost particles to energy levels never before produced on Earth.

More fundamentally, high-energy physics seeks to discover basic principles that underpin the workings of the physical universe by exploring the building blocks of matter and their forces.

Bohn, along with colleague Philippe Piot, associate professor of physics at NIU, intends to use Northern Illinois University's accelerator laboratory to produce a terrifically bright and intense beam -- so bright it could be used to convert some of the electron-beam energy into tunable laser light that can span a series of wavelengths. That accomplishment, which could take three years, would give NIU the distinction of having the only particle accelerator that could make a light source capable of spanning all the way from X-rays to long-wavelength radiation.

The super-bright light can also be used to do experiments and study fast processes in materials. The goal is a better understanding of the technology used in nanoscience and in certain chemical and biological processes.

NIU is getting help with the project from Argonne -- home of North America's most powerful X-ray machine -- and its experts in advanced photon-source technology, such as John Lewellen, a prominent accelerator physicist. The university received $1.5 million from the U.S. Education Department in fiscal 2005 earmark funding to buy the equipment and set up the lab configuration.

Bohn, 53, who this spring won a 2006 Presidential Research Professorship, NIU's top research award, studied to be an astrophysicist. He was fascinated as a child with the vastness of the universe, an interest encouraged by a high school teacher and triggered by the original "Star Trek" television show.

He earned his master's degree, and while an Air Force officer, a Ph.D., both at the University of Chicago.

Instead of gazing toward the heavens, Bohn discovered that career opportunities opened up in the subatomic workings of laser beams. It's no accident. Beams and galaxies evolve in similar ways.

Bohn worked at Argonne, Fermilab and at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Va., where he led the design and building of a breakthrough free-electron laser.

Bohn joined NIU four years ago and developed a code based on wavelet mathematics with the help of a post-doctoral researcher, Balsa Terzic.

What does the future hold? The combined accelerator-laser technology could be used in things as mundane as making plastic sandwich wrap resist bacteria, to heady issues such as creating tools and software to develop lasers that would provide Navy fleets with defenses against lightning-fast cruise missiles.

Stephen Holmes, associate director for accelerators at Fermilab, said the NIU project is vitally important because it provides great enrichment opportunities for students, and will develop instruments and diagnostics that can be used in the next state-of-the-art particle accelerator -- a linear collider.

e-mail: sguy@suntimes.com

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