Accelerator engineering

Surfing a plasma wave, electrons get an energy and brightness boost.

Experiments running at these higher pulse rates will allow scientists to capture ultrafast processes with greater precision, collect data more efficiently and explore phenomena that were previously out of reach.

The SLAC team is developing digital twins – powered by AI and high-performance computing – to help quickly shape high-quality particle beams for the lab’s X-ray and ultrafast facilities.

Shweta Saraf and her team work to ensure the LCLS beamline runs without interruption. 

Researchers positioned lasers to compress billions of electrons together, creating a beam five times more powerful than before.

Researchers across the lab are developing AI tools to harness data and particle beams in real time and make molecular movies, speeding up the discovery process in the era of big data.

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 health and quantum information.

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 science, new physics and primordial gravitational waves.

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

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 electrical systems since.

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 movements.

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