Ilan Ben-Zvi

Biography

Ilan Ben-Zvi is a tenured senior scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory. He serves as the Associate Chair for Accelerator R&D and the head of the Accelerator R&D Division in the Collider-Accelerator Department and as a Brookhaven Professor at the Physics and Astronomy Department at Stony Brook University. His current research interests are electron cooling of hadron beams, the generation of high-brightness electron beams, superconducting RF, Energy Recovery Linacs, and high-power Free-Electron Lasers thorough superconducting accelerator techniques. He has developed the Superconducting Quarter Wave Resonator, the superconducting reentrant cavity and the Superconducting RFQ for heavy ion accelerators, a number of generations of the BNL photoinjector, spearheaded the measurement of slice-emittance and phase space tomography of photoinjectors, the “Fresh-Bunch” technique for seeded High-Gain Harmonic-Generation FEL and the development of a new type of super-ferric undulator. He is currently developing ampere average current, high-brightness electron beam based on a superconducting photoinjector and energy recovery linac.

Ben-Zvi is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. He is the recipient of the 1999 IEEE Accelerator Science and Technology Award, the 2001 BNL Science and Technology Award, the 2007 Free Electron Laser Prize and the 2008 IEEE/NPSS Merit Award.

Ilan Ben-Zvi received his Ph.D. in physics from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel in 1970. From 1970 to 1989 he was a member of the scientific staff of the Weizmann Institute. He held visiting positions as Research Associate at Stanford University (1970-1975), Associate Professor of Physics at the University at Stony Brook (1980-1982) and Professor of Physics at Stony Brook (1988-1990). He joined the National Synchrotron Light Source at Brookhaven National Laboratory in 1989, and the Collider Accelerator Department in 2000. He also is a Brookhaven Professor of Physics at Stony Brook. He served as the Director of the Accelerator Test Facility, a user's facility for beam physicists, from 1989 to 2004, building up the facility to serve as the premier DOE facility for advanced accelerator R&D.

Ben-Zvi's active involvement in international cooperative projects led to his design and construction of the current leads for the superconducting magnets of the HERA proton ring in DESY, Germany, participation in the design and construction of the University of Washington's superconducting heavy ion booster, advisory work on beam optics, cavity design and controls of the INFN superconducting linac in Legnaro, Italy and new generation photoinjectors in collaboration with SLAC and UCLA (Gun III) and with KEK and Sumitomo (Gun IV) in Japan. In 1996 he initiated the archival of accelerator conference proceedings on the web, later to become known as JACoW. Ilan Ben-Zvi developed special relations with industry, including transfer of technology projects and collaborations on the development of novel accelerator components and software.

Ilan Ben-Zvi participated in the earliest stages of the development of superconducting linear accelerators at Stanford University. His work there included SRF techniques such as UHV firing of niobium cavities; particle beam dynamics in heavy ion linacs including work on alternating phase focusing and beam dynamics of high brightness ion beams, and accelerating structures. In this field he is the co-developer of the superconducting reentrant cavity and wrote codes that explained high order multipactoring in RF cavities. In 1975 he founded the Cryogenic Technology Laboratory at the Weizmann Institute and worked there on SRF, cryogenics and electrostatic accelerators. He developed a chopper-buncher system with emittance-independent chopper, harmonic buncher and a superconducting re-buncher and built the first quarter wave resonator superconducting booster linac. At Stony Brook he participated in the construction of its Heavy Ion Superconducting Linac, developed the Superconducting Quarter Wave Resonator, a wide-band RF cavity controller circuit and the Superconducting RFQ, all in wide use around the world. At BNL he headed the construction of the ATF Users Facility where he did research on laser and plasma acceleration, FEL physics, superferric undulators, high brightness electron guns and optical stochastic cooling. In most of these instances he led teams of scientists, engineers, technicians and administrators to carry out complex R&D and construction projects.

Ben-Zvi serves as a Divisional Associate Editor of Physical Review Letters. He was a member of the editorial board of Physical Review Special Topics - Accelerators and Beams from its inauguration in 1998 until 2004. He is a member of the ICFA Panel on Advanced and Novel Accelerators. He was the elected Secretary-Treasurer of the APS Division of Physics of Beams from 1999 to 2002. From 1997 to 1999 he chaired the BNL Council. He has served on or chaired several advisory and program committees of Beam Physics conferences and workshops, (including acting as a co-chair of the 1995 International FEL Conference, Program chair of the 1999 Particle Accelerator Conference and the 2001 International FEL Conference, chair of the 2004 Advanced Accelerator Concepts Workshop etc.), technical advisory panels and reviews of accelerator and FEL projects, including a committee of the National Academies of Science. He served as the chair of the IEEE/NPSS Particle Accelerator Science and Technology Committee from 2005 to 2008.  He is the author or co-author of over four hundred publications.