SLAC topics

Accelerator engineering RSS feed

Accelerators have hundreds of thousands of components that all need to be designed, engineered, operated and maintained. Research at SLAC is paving the way to a new generation of particle acceleration technology.

SXU

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

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.
News Feature

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...

This photograph shows 2023 Lytle award winner Jim Sebek at work on SSRL's electrical systems.
News Feature

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...

This cartoon figure shows how the cavity-based X-ray free electron laser works in general. The electron beam (blue) travels through an undulator (brown), which causes the beam to release X-ray pulses. These pulses bounce around a set of four mirrors, helping them become coherent, before they continue down the accelerator to experimental halls.
News Feature

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

This is a representation of a particle beam traveling through an accelerator.
Photograph

At left is physicist Dorian Bohler. Staff gathered in Bldg 52’s main control room on October 6, 2022 in anticipating seeing the first electrons...

At left is physicist Dorian Bohler. Staff gathered in Bldg 52's main control room on October 6, 2022 in anticipating seeing the first electrons from LCLS-II.
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
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.
Illustration

A half-mile-long stretch of tunnel in Menlo Park, California is now colder than most of the universe.

LCLS-II cooldown