Papers
2
Total Citations
6
H-Index
2
About
R. Laping is a key figure in the development of advanced plasma coating technologies for particle accelerators, with a primary focus on mitigating beam-induced performance limitations in high-energy physics facilities. Their most significant contribution is the invention of a robotic "plasma magnetron mole"—a compact, 50 cm-long cathode system designed for *in-situ* sputtering of thick coatings inside long, small-diameter vacuum tubes. This innovation directly addresses critical operational challenges at the Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), including unacceptable resistive heating of stainless steel tubes and the formation of electron clouds that degrade beam quality and limit machine upgrades. Laping’s work, detailed in their 2015 paper (4 citations) and a 2013 update (2 citations), represents a practical, robotic solution for applying low-secondary-electron-yield coatings to the 316LN stainless steel cold bore tubes without disassembling the accelerator. While citation counts are modest, the impact is highly specialized and applied, directly supporting RHIC’s continued operation and future upgrades. Laping’s achievements exemplify how engineering ingenuity can solve complex, real-world problems in accelerator science.
Research Focus
Key Achievements
Top Papers
- 1
- 2Recent RHIC in-situ coating technology developments2 citations · 2013