8th International Workshop on Accelerator Alignment (IWAA 2004)

CERN, Geneva, October 4-7, 2004

The 8th International Workshop on Accelerator Alignment (IWAA 2004) was held at CERN, Geneva, on October 4-7. It followed the CERN Accelerator School (1986) and the seven dedicated IWAA workshops at SLAC (1989), DESY (1990), CERN (1993), KEK (1995), APS (1997), ESRF(1999) and SPring-8 (2002).

These workshops are devoted to the large scale metrology and high precision positioning ("alignment") of particle accelerators up to 27 km circumference, reviewing and investigating there all suitable advanced techniques capable of accuracies from 0.2 mm to a few micrometers over long or large dimensions. Participants are mainly coming from laboratories, institutes, universities or companies relating to particle physics, synchrotron light, medical or industrial applications of accelerators - or concerned with other scientific equipment as well. People dealing with engineering survey and large scale metrology for industry or with the development and manufacturing of instruments usually find also here many subjects of interest - hence the opening to other professionals and scientists and the support of FIG commission 6.

The IWAA 2004 gathered 125 participants from 31 scientific research institutes, 4 universities, 14 private companies and 1 public professional body - spread over 15 countries. The programme consisted of 46 session papers, 25 posters, 3 technical visits and a small exhibition (10 firms) mainly focussed on hydrostatic levelling systems (HLS), wire positioning systems (WPS) and high precision devices. The proceedings are available from the web site http://cern.ch/IWAA2004, together with a link to those of the past IWAA's.

Michel Mayoud
November 23, 2004
Email: Michel.Mayoud@wanadoo.fr