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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. 

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Advanced accelerators

Empty undulator hall

Illustration

Scientists use a series of magnets to transform an electron bunch into a narrow current spike which then produces a very intense attosecond X-ray...

XLEAP illustration
Photograph

LCLS Undulator Hall with both soft X-ray undulators, left, and hard X-ray undulators, right. 

Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) Undulator Hall
News Feature

SLAC works with two small businesses to make its ACE3P software easier to use in supercomputer simulations for optimizing the shapes of accelerator structures.

A large, complex shape is seen against a blue background crisscrossed with white lines. The shape is dark blue and resembles a brick partially topped with a thick shark’s fin. Three areas of bright red, orange and green, are on the shape’s bottom edge.
Illustration

With help from two small businesses, SLAC’s vintage ACE3P software is spreading its wings to make supercomputing easier and faster.

A large, complex shape is seen against a blue background crisscrossed with white lines. The shape is dark blue and resembles a brick partially topped with a thick shark’s fin. Three areas of bright red, orange and green, are on the shape’s bottom edge.
News Feature

An extension of the Stanford Research Computing Facility will host several data centers to handle the unprecedented data streams that will be produced by...

SRCF-II
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.
Press Release

The facility, LCLS-II, will soon sharpen our view of how nature works on ultrasmall, ultrafast scales, impacting everything from quantum devices to clean energy.

LCLS-II cooldown
Animation
Now that the cavities have been cooled, the next step is to pump them with more than a megawatt of...
Cryomodule cavity animation
News Feature

The leaders of SLAC's Technology Innovation Directorate discuss how their group supports the lab's most innovative projects.

TID senior managers
News Feature

SLAC’s Matt Garrett and Susan Simpkins talk about tech transfer that brings innovations from the national lab to the people, including advances for medical...

Tech Transfer
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.