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Accelerators form the backbone of SLAC’s national user facilities. They generate some of the highest quality particle beams in the world, helping thousands of scientists perform groundbreaking experiments each year.

Linac towards SLAC campus

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Aalayah Spencer inside the Linac Coherent Light Source at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

Aalayah Spencer inside the Linac Coherent Light Source at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Spencer is a science and engineering associate in Experiment Control Systems at LCLS.
News Feature

By tinkering and troubleshooting, Aalayah Spencer helps turn researchers’ ideas into state-of-the-art science experiments.

Aalayah Spencer inside the Linac Coherent Light Source at the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Spencer is a science and engineering associate in Experiment Control Systems at LCLS.
News Feature
Scientists already knew the atoms in  perovskites,  a promising class of solar cell materials, react favorably to light. Now they can see precisely how...
MeV-UED
News Feature

Two GEM Fellows reflect on their summer internships at SLAC and share their thoughts on representation and mentorship.

Nate Keyes and Zariq George
Illustration

Illustration of how a single crystal sample of silicon deforms during shock compression on nanosecond timescales.

MEC silicon
News Feature
Silicon, an element abundant in Earth’s crust, is currently the most widely used semiconductor material and is important in fields like engineering, geophysics and...
MEC silicon
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Visitors to SLAC tour the accelerator control room during Community Day 2019.
Visitors to SLAC tour the accelerator control room during Community Day 2019
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
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A look inside SLAC’s FACET-II test facility, where scientists use electron beams to advance revolutionary technologies that could make future particle accelerators much smaller...

A look inside SLAC’s FACET-II test facility.
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Facility for Advanced Accelerator Experimental Tests (FACET-II).
Facility for Advanced Accelerator Experimental Tests (FACET-II)
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Selina Li, Sebastien Corde, and Philippe Hering in a FACET laser lab.
Selina Li, Sebastien Corde, and Philippe Hering in a FACET laser lab
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.