illustration of an electron beam traveling through a niobium cavity – a key component of SLAC’s future LCLS-II X-ray laser.
Explore our frontier research

Advanced accelerators

Accelerators are the backbone of SLAC's national user facilities, creating unprecedented opportunities for a global research community.  Accelerators are complicated machines, with hundreds of thousands of components that all need to be designed, engineered, operated and maintained to achieve the highest-energy acceleration and the highest-quality particle beams. Research at SLAC is continually improving accelerators, both here  and at other laboratories, and paving the way to a new generation of technology for future accelerators, from particle colliders to ultrabright X-ray light sources, opening avenues in high-energy physics, medicine, and materials, biological and energy sciences.

High-energy positron acceleration in plasma.

Accelerator physics

Accelerator science and technology have been at the core of SLAC’s mission from the beginning. The Accelerator Directorate operates and maintains our existing accelerators to provide the highest possible level of performance by developing ways to preserve beam quality.

Accelerator news

Scientists from all over the world come to SLAC’s FACET-II to do experiments aimed at improving the power and efficiency of particle accelerators.

FACET's transverse deflecting cavity
Plasma wakefield acceleration.

Accelerator R&D

New technologies, such as "plasma wakefield" accelerators, can boost electrons to very high energies in very short distances. This could lead to linear accelerators that are 100 times more powerful and that can boost electrons to a given energy in one hundredth the distance.

Accelerator R&D news

Charged particles “surf” waves of plasma – a promising technology that could make future particle colliders more compact and affordable.

A plasma tube to bring particles up to speed at SLAC.
 Plasma wakefield acceleration.

Accelerators of the future

SLAC scientists and engineers are instrumental in developing technology for future accelerators, from linear and circular particle colliders to new, ultrabright X-ray light sources and advanced technologies for the accelerators of tomorrow.

Accelerator engineering news

Dig deeper

Latest news in advanced accelerators

Press Release

The high-energy upgrade will keep the U.S. at the forefront of X-ray science and technology, allowing researchers to advance fields such as sustainability, human...

LCLS-II-HE
News Feature

David Cesar, Julia Gonski and W.L. Kimmy Wu will each receive $2.75 million issued over five years for their research in X-ray and ultrafast...

Early Career Award Winners 2024
News Feature

Wan-Lin Hu’s job is to improve the way people and artificial intelligence collaborate to run SLAC’s complex machines.

Wan-Lin Hu is seen talking with talks with accelerator systems operator Kabir Lubana in the lab’s main Accelerator Control Room.
Press Release

The high-energy upgrade will keep the U.S. at the forefront of X-ray science and technology, allowing researchers to advance fields such as sustainability, human...

LCLS-II-HE
News Feature

David Cesar, Julia Gonski and W.L. Kimmy Wu will each receive $2.75 million issued over five years for their research in X-ray and ultrafast...

Early Career Award Winners 2024
News Feature

Wan-Lin Hu’s job is to improve the way people and artificial intelligence collaborate to run SLAC’s complex machines.

Wan-Lin Hu is seen talking with talks with accelerator systems operator Kabir Lubana in the lab’s main Accelerator Control Room.
News Feature

The High Energy Physics Advisory Panel has approved the recommendations of the P5 Report.

P5 report
News Feature

A new report outlines suggestions for federal investments needed for the next generation of transformative discoveries in particle physics and cosmology, including priority projects...

A web of dark matter, in which galaxies are forming.
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.