Accelerator superconducting magnets give headaches

Two major high‐energy accelerator projects in the US are designed to use superconducting bending and focusing magnets in their rings. Both the Isabelle project at Brookhaven and the Energy Doubler project at Fermilab have found that developing a reliable high‐field superconducting magnet that could be reproduced almost a thousandfold is a lot harder than originally anticipated: The difficulties with the Isabelle magnets are sufficiently troubling that Brookhaven has recently established three alternative magnet‐design task forces. The hope is to produce a design that could be substituted in case Brookhaven cannot substantially improve the performance of the present magnet design.