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Accelerator engineering RSS feed

Accelerators have hundreds of thousands of components that all need to be designed, engineered, operated and maintained. Research at SLAC is paving the way to a new generation of particle acceleration technology.

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News Feature

What could smaller particle accelerators look like in the future? SLAC scientists are working on innovations that could give more researchers access to accelerator...

This is a graphic image of particles moving through plasma during plasma wakefield acceleration.
News Feature

Sebek’s extraordinary career at SSRL includes helping build the facility’s original electron injector back in the 1980s and working on almost all of its...

This photograph shows 2023 Lytle award winner Jim Sebek at work on SSRL's electrical systems.
News Feature

The long – but not too long – cavity would ping-pong X-ray pulses inside of a particle accelerator facility to help capture nature’s fastest...

This cartoon figure shows how the cavity-based X-ray free electron laser works in general. The electron beam (blue) travels through an undulator (brown), which causes the beam to release X-ray pulses. These pulses bounce around a set of four mirrors, helping them become coherent, before they continue down the accelerator to experimental halls.
News Feature

The algorithm pairs machine-learning techniques with classical beam physics equations to avoid massive data crunching.

This is a representation of a particle beam traveling through an accelerator.
News Brief

Knowing a magnet’s past will allow scientists to customize particle beams more precisely in the future. As accelerators stretch for higher levels of performance...

A magnet on a test stand inside SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.
News Feature

Edelen draws on machine learning to fine tune particle accelerators, while Kurinsky develops dark matter detectors informed by quantum information science.

Side by side photographs of a woman and a man.
News Feature

Over the past few years, Kathleen Ratcliffe and Tien Fak Tan have worked together to help build the superconducting accelerator that will drive new...

SLAC's Tien Tan, left, and Kathleen Ratcliffe pose for a portrait outside a SLAC building.
News Feature

From the invisible world of elementary particles to the mysteries of the cosmos, recipients of this prestigious award for early career scientists explore nature...

Panofsky fellows
News Feature

At the Machine Shop, Pete Franco crafts beautiful, intricate and precise parts for the lab’s latest scientific tools.

Pete Franco at the SLAC Machine Shop
Press Release

FACET-II will pave the way for a future generation of particle colliders and powerful light sources, opening avenues in high-energy physics, medicine, and materials...

FACET-II
News Feature

Daniel Ratner, head of SLAC’s machine learning initiative, explains the lab’s unique opportunities to advance scientific discovery through machine learning.

Physicist Daniel Ratner.
News Brief

It uses terahertz radiation to power a miniscule copper accelerator structure.

Terahertz accelerator structure