International Workshop on Breakdown Science and High Gradient Technology (HG2012 is an ICFA mini-workshop)

Dear Colleagues, It is our great pleasure to host “International Workshop on Breakdown Science and High Gradient Technology” in Tsukuba, Japan as the 6th one of the series of meetings, originally started with the name “X-band Accelerator Structure Design and Test Program.” This series has been continuing since 2007 being held annually by CERN, SLAC and KEK with focusing at X-band accelerator structure operated at a very high gradient, nominally 100 MV/m for CLIC application. This time we changed the workshop title a little by reflecting the recent focus of the studies pursued by many of the participants to this series of meetings. The last workshop, 5th one, was originally scheduled to be at KEK but the Earthquake in Tohoku area and the following troubles of the nuclear plants at Fukushima prevented us from holding it in Japan. SLAC kindly held it and the next one is now being planned to be at KEK as the 6th one on 18-20 April, 2012. In this workshop, we discuss the accelerator structure design and test of the high-gradient performance, the physics of the breakdowns and the suppression ideas, the status and plans of high power facilities, the engineering R&D’s on accelerator unit centered at accelerator structure but also on many components, high-power RF handling devices, the devices for power conversion from beam to RF, and so on. The application of the high-frequency RF, such as X-band, is nowadays one of the trends of the accelerator applications and the actual studies toward applications are also important discussion themes. I hope all of you to join this workshop and discuss those topics above and exchange your ideas with the colleagues. See you in Tsukuba in next spring. Toshiyasu Higo Chairperson Accelerator Laboratory High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK)