SLAC topics

Accelerator science RSS feed

Accelerators form the backbone of SLAC's national user facilities. Research at SLAC is continually improving accelerators, both at SLAC and at other laboratories, and is also paving the way to a new generation of particle acceleration technology. 

Related link:
Advanced accelerators

Empty undulator hall
Feature

SLAC scientists have found a new way to produce bright pulses of light from accelerated electrons that could shrink "light source" technology used around...

A PhD student inspects the microwave undulator.
Feature

After working with particle accelerators his entire professional career, Heather Rock Woods’ father placed himself in the path of a beam to fight cancer.

Feature

The Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel’s recommendations will set the course for the future of particle physics in the United States.

Snomass 2013 Opening
Feature

Agostino Marinelli, a postdoctoral researcher in the Accelerator Directorate, has been named the 2014 recipient of the Frank Sacherer Prize from the European Physical...

SLAC accelerator physicist Agostino Marinelli in the LCLS Undulator Hall
Feature

From accelerators unexpectedly beneath your feet to a ferret that once cleaned accelerator components, symmetry shares some lesser-known facts about particle accelerators.

Feature

Five years ago, the brightest source of X-rays on the planet lit up at SLAC. The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) X-ray laser's scientific...

Image - Some of the LCLS team members stand by the newly installed undulators in this 2009 photo. From right: Mike Zurawel, Geoff Pile from Argonne National Laboratory, Paul Emma, Dave Schultz, Heinz-Dieter Nuhn and Don Schafer. (Brad Plummer)
Feature

One common stereotype of a theoretical physicist is the solitary scientist, scribbling away in his or her office and only emerging when there’s a...

Photo - Gennady Stupakov, SLAC accelerator theorist.
Feature

Stanford graduate student Spencer Gessner has received a Siemann fellowship to help him continue his research into cutting-edge accelerator physics at SLAC's Facility for...

Photo – Spencer Gessner, 2014 Siemann Fellow
Feature

A new system at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory's X-ray laser narrows a rainbow spectrum of X-ray colors to a more intense band of light...

Photo - A view of the soft X-ray self-seeding system during installation in the Undulator Hall at SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source X-ray laser. (Brad Plummer/SLAC)
Feature

SLAC accelerator physicists have been instrumental in creating a vital part of a future Higgs boson-producing linear accelerator, from developing the initial design nearly...

Photo - SLAC members of the ATF2 collaboration
Feature

A cooperative agreement with Palo-Alto based CPI opens the door to routine commercial manufacturing of these powerful vacuum tube devices, which convert electron beams...

CPI President and Chief Operating Officer Robert A. Fickett, left, and SLAC Lab Director Chi-Chang Kao look at one of the XL5 klystrons the company built under a cooperative agreement with SLAC.
Feature

Growing up in China shortly after the Cultural Revolution, Zhirong Huang may have been the only middle-school child in Beijing who knew anything about...

Zhirong Huang, associate professor of physics