Special & Memorial Sessions

In the last 15 years, much of the efforts devoted to the pinning enhancement in high temperature superconductors has been focused on the APC method, and on the possibility to transfer the related pinning improvements to REBCO coated conductor technology. The obtained results has enabled most of the coated-conductor companies to produce advanced superconducting tapes meeting the requirements for different applications.

This session, dedicated to the great physicist and Nobel prize Alexei Alexeyevich Abrikosov, represents an opportunity to review the work done so far on the APC topic and to discuss about further developments: have we already explored all the potentiality of APCs or not? This will be also a unique opportunity to identify recent trends and to collect new ideas with the aim of fostering alternative and original methods to further enhance pinning in superconducting materials.

This session is dedicated to Fernand “Doc” Bedard, retired NSA Fellow and one of the first directors of the Laboratory for Physical Sciences, who passed away on June 21st, 2018 in Silver Springs, Maryland. Doc received his B.S. degree in Physics and Mathematics magna cum laude from Fordham University and his Ph.D. in Physics from Johns Hopkins University. During his career, he taught physics at the University of Cincinnati, American University, and the University of Maryland.

He spent most of his career at the National Security Agency, working in a wide variety of technologies and technology applications in Research and Engineering. His association with superconducting electronics stretched back to early research into Dudley Buck’s cryotron in the early 60’s. He was one of the leading advocates and investigators of application of superconducting electronics to high performance computing and networking systems, including central roles in the IBM Josephson Computer Technology project in the early 70’s, the Crossbar Switch demonstration in the mid-90’s and the Hybrid Technology Multi-Threaded (HTMT) petaflops project in the late 90’s. The legacy of his vision can be seen in the current IARPA Cryogenic Computing Complexity (C3) program.

Doc was not just a visionary sponsor of superconducting research, he was an accomplished and creative inventor and technologist. Doc was the inventor on 6 patents and the architect and first circuit designer of the 128×128 crossbar switch. In addition, he used his deep insight into electromagnetism to pioneer novel sensors across a variety of bandwidths.

During his career, Doc mentored many scientists and engineers. He was always willing to provide his insight into computing, circuits, cryogenics, materials, physics, and a broad panoply of technologies. He was active in the organization of many of the flagship conferences including the earliest Applied Superconductivity Conference, the establishment of the International Superconductive Electronics Conference. He was a founding organizer of the Workshop for Superconductive Devices, Circuits, and Systems (the JJ Workshop) and was still a member of the board at his passing.

In 2002, Doc received the IEEE Award for Continuing and Significant Contributions in the Field of Applied Superconductivity for his contributions within superconducting electronics.

While he had retired from professional activities, those who were in contact with Doc know that he was still working and creating, developing his inventions and ideas for commercial applications of superconducting electronics. Doc’s wisdom, energy, humor, and sharp insights will be sorely missed.

New technologies based on the use of High Temperature Superconductors (HTS) can lead to higher efficiency and more resilient energy systems. As a matter of fact, HTS are creating opportunities for promising commercial components enabling the needed evolution of the energy system, such as high-capacity power cables, fault current limiters, high-efficiency generators for offshore wind turbines, energy storage, and innovative transformers. Not only do superconductor-based devices provide improvements over conventional electric grid technologies, but also unique alternatives to system challenges that cannot be addressed otherwise.

This special session organized by the International Energy Agency’s Technology Collaboration Program on HTS (IEA HTS TCP) will explore the potentialities of HTS-based devices in allowing the transformation towards reliable, resilient, secure, affordable, flexible and efficient energy systems.

This session will feature an introduction and then a presentation based on a recently developed white paper to give an overview on the current environmental impacts and to show how HTS-based technologies could be helpful to mitigate them. This presentation will be followed by a few talks by international experts dealing with more specific issues. An interactive session, moderated by a representative from the IEA HTS TCP, will follow. The aim of this session is to promote an interactive discussion with the audience on the potential benefits of HTS in the energy system, emphasizing how the superconductivity industry would positively contribute to an innovative, more efficient and resilient future energy system. All presented material will be made available to all attendees.

Audience participation is an important part of this session. Please watch for instructions about how to participate.

Cosmology.
A travel in space and time – and in temperature.

You will travel from 45.7 billion light-years, the dimension of the observable universe, to the 10m diameter South Pole telescope to the 0.25 um KID structure. From 13.4 billion years, the age of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), to the ms TES time constant to 1e-37s, the Inflation epoch. From the extremely hot temperature of the primordial universe down to 10K of magnetically levitated Half-Wave Plate (HWP), to 4K of SQUIDs to 0.3K of Kinetic Inductance Detectors (KIDs) and Transition-Edge Sensors (TESes).

You will work in the harsh environment of the South Pole, testing the performance of a frequency domain multiplexing readout architecture to operate a ~16,000 TESes array with scientific targets running from the inflationary gravitational waves to the total neutrino mass and the physics of the galaxy clusters, the largest gravitationally bound objects in the universe. You will experience the challenges in the multiplexing readout for the next generation CMB experiment targeting ~500,000 detectors.
In an underground experiment at the Gran Sasso (Italy), you will perform research of rare scattering events between CaWO_4 crystals (the cryogenic calorimeters) and sub-GeV/c^2 Dark Matter (DM) particles, detecting a nuclear recoil as low as 100eV with W TESes.
In a 100 class cleanroom you will learn KIDs fabrication. You will test an on chip TiN KID resonators spectrometer for future observations of spectral lines from dusty star forming galaxies at high redshift, from a 50m diameter telescope on the volcano Sierra Negra (Mexico, 4,600m above sea level).
You will fly on board of a future satellite to spin for 3 years, with a superconducting magnetic bearing, a 45cm diameter HWP cooled down to 10K. You will experience the instrument challenges to reach a nK sensitivity in polarization necessary to measure the potential polarization fluctuactions produced during the Inflation.

You will learn how ambitious cosmology scientific targets are shaping the challenges that require developments in the superconducting technologies.

Maria Salatino, Joe Minervini, Lance Cooley and the speakers invite you to this special ASC 2018 session organized visiting the Orsay museum in Paris, watching the movie ‘the theory of everything’ and walking in the night in the Princeton University campus.
You will make connections.
You will build bridges between ‘islands’ that so far do not speak each other.
“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet.
Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist.
Be curious.”
Prof. Stephen Hawking

Info: Maria Salatino, marias5@stanford.edu.