SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, originally named the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, is a federally funded research and development center in Menlo Park, California, United States. Founded in 1962, the laboratory is now sponsored by the United States Department of Energy and administrated by Stanford University. It is the site of the Stanford Linear Accelerator, a 3.2 kilometer (2-mile) linear accelerator constructed in 1966 that could accelerate electrons to energies of 50 GeV.
A linear particle accelerator is a type of particle accelerator that accelerates charged subatomic particles or ions to a high speed by subjecting them to a series of oscillating electric potentials along a linear beamline. The principles for such machines were proposed by Gustav Ising in 1924, while the first machine that worked was constructed by Rolf Widerøe in 1928 at the RWTH Aachen University. Linacs have many applications: they generate X-rays and high energy electrons for medicinal purposes in radiation therapy, serve as particle injectors for higher-energy accelerators, and are used directly to achieve the highest kinetic energy for light particles for particle physics.
In nuclear physics, an energy amplifier is a novel type of nuclear power reactor, a subcritical reactor, in which an energetic particle beam is used to stimulate a reaction, which in turn releases enough energy to power the particle accelerator and leave an energy profit for power generation. The concept has more recently been referred to as an accelerator-driven system (ADS) or accelerator-driven sub-critical reactor.
Neutron scattering, the irregular dispersal of free neutrons by matter, can refer to either the naturally occurring physical process itself or to the man-made experimental techniques that use the natural process for investigating materials. The natural/physical phenomenon is of elemental importance in nuclear engineering and the nuclear sciences. Regarding the experimental technique, understanding and manipulating neutron scattering is fundamental to the applications used in crystallography, physics, physical chemistry, biophysics, and materials research.
The Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) is a multi-disciplinary research institute for natural and engineering sciences in Switzerland. It is located in the Canton of Aargau in the municipalities Villigen and Würenlingen on either side of the River Aare, and covers an area over 35 hectares in size. Like ETH Zurich and EPFL, PSI belongs to the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Domain of the Swiss Confederation. The PSI employs around 2,100 people. It conducts basic and applied research in the fields of matter and materials, human health, and energy and the environment. About 37% of PSI's research activities focus on material sciences, 24% on life sciences, 19% on general energy, 11% on nuclear energy and safety, and 9% on particle physics.
The High Energy Accelerator Research Organization, known as KEK, is a Japanese organization whose purpose is to operate the largest particle physics laboratory in Japan, situated in Tsukuba, Ibaraki prefecture. It was established in 1997. The term "KEK" is also used to refer to the laboratory itself, which employs approximately 695 employees. KEK's main function is to provide the particle accelerators and other infrastructure needed for high-energy physics, material science, structural biology, radiation science, computing science, nuclear transmutation and so on. Numerous experiments have been constructed at KEK by the internal and international collaborations that have made use of them. Makoto Kobayashi, emeritus professor at KEK, is known globally for his work on CP-violation, and was awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Spallation is a process in which fragments of material (spall) are ejected from a body due to impact or stress. In the context of impact mechanics it describes ejection of material from a target during impact by a projectile. In planetary physics, spallation describes meteoritic impacts on a planetary surface and the effects of stellar winds and cosmic rays on planetary atmospheres and surfaces. In the context of mining or geology, spallation can refer to pieces of rock breaking off a rock face due to the internal stresses in the rock; it commonly occurs on mine shaft walls. In the context of anthropology, spallation is a process used to make stone tools such as arrowheads by knapping. In nuclear physics, spallation is the process in which a heavy nucleus emits numerous nucleons as a result of being hit by a high-energy particle, thus greatly reducing its atomic weight. In industrial processes and bioprocessing the loss of tubing material due to the repeated flexing of the tubing within a peristaltic pump is termed spallation.
The Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) is one of the national scientific research laboratories in the UK operated by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC). It began as the Rutherford High Energy Laboratory, merged with the Atlas Computer Laboratory in 1975 to create the Rutherford Lab; then in 1979 with the Appleton Laboratory to form the current laboratory.
The Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) is an accelerator-based neutron source facility in the U.S. that provides the most intense pulsed neutron beams in the world for scientific research and industrial development. Each year, this facility hosts hundreds of researchers from universities, national laboratories, and industry, who conduct basic and applied research and technology development using neutrons. SNS is part of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is managed by UT-Battelle for the United States Department of Energy (DOE). SNS is a DOE Office of Science user facility, and it is open to scientists and researchers from all over the world.
Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (TJNAF), commonly called Jefferson Lab or JLab, is a US Department of Energy National Laboratory located in Newport News, Virginia.
The ISIS Neutron and Muon Source is a pulsed neutron and muon source, established 1984 at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory of the Science and Technology Facilities Council, on the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire, United Kingdom. It uses the techniques of muon spectroscopy and neutron scattering to probe the structure and dynamics of condensed matter on a microscopic scale ranging from the subatomic to the macromolecular.
The European Spallation Source ERIC (ESS) is a multi-disciplinary research facility currently under construction. The ESS is currently under construction in Lund, Sweden, while its Data Management and Software Centre (DMSC) is situated in Copenhagen, Denmark. The 13 European member countries are partners in the construction and operation of ESS. ESS is scheduled to begin its scientific user program in 2023, with the construction phase set to be completed by 2025. ESS will enable scientists to observe and understand basic atomic structures and forces, which is not achievable with other neutron sources in terms of lengths and time scales. The research facility is located close to the Max IV Laboratory, which conducts synchotron radiation research. The construction of the facility began in the summer of 2014 and the first science results are planned for 2023.
J-PARC is a high intensity proton accelerator facility. It is a joint project between KEK and JAEA and is located at the Tokai campus of JAEA. J-PARC aims for the frontier in materials and life sciences, and nuclear and particle physics. J-PARC uses high intensity proton beams to create high intensity secondary beams of neutrons, hadrons, and neutrinos.
A particle accelerator is a machine that uses electromagnetic fields to propel charged particles to very high speeds and energies, and to contain them in well-defined beams.
A neutron research facility is most commonly a big laboratory operating a large-scale neutron source that provides thermal neutrons to a suite of research instruments. The neutron source usually is a research reactor or a spallation source. In some cases, a smaller facility will provide high energy neutrons using existing neutron generator technologies.
The Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE), formerly known as the Los Alamos Meson Physics Facility (LAMPF), is one of the world's most powerful linear accelerators. It is located in Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico in Technical Area 53. It was the most powerful linear accelerator in the world when it was opened in June 1972. The technology used in the accelerator was developed under the direction of nuclear physicist Louis Rosen. The facility is capable of accelerating protons up to 800 MeV. Multiple beamlines allow for a variety of experiments to be run at once, and the facility is used for many types of research in materials testing and neutron science. It is also used for medical radioisotope production.
A Fixed-Field alternating gradient Accelerator is a circular particle accelerator concept that can be characterized by its time-independent magnetic fields and the use of alternating gradient strong focusing.
An accelerator-driven subcritical reactor (ADSR) is a nuclear reactor design formed by coupling a substantially subcritical nuclear reactor core with a high-energy proton or electron accelerator. It could use thorium as a fuel, which is more abundant than uranium.
John M. "Jack" Carpenter was an American nuclear engineer known as the originator of the technique for utilizing accelerator-induced intense pulses of neutrons for research and developing the first spallation slow neutron source based on a proton synchrotron, the Intense Pulsed Neutron Source (IPNS). He died on 10 March 2020.
Neutron resonance spin echo is a quasielastic neutron scattering technique developed by Gähler and Golub. In its classic form it is used analogously to conventional neutron spin echo (NSE) spectrometry for quasielastic scattering where tiny energy changes from the sample to the neutron have to be resolved. In contrast to NSE, the large magnetic solenoids are replaced by two resonant flippers respectively. This allows for variants in combination with triple axes spectrometers to resolve narrow linewidth of excitations or MIEZE for depolarizing conditions and incoherent scattering which are not possible with conventional NSE.
