The John Adams Institute for Accelerator Science is training the next generation of accelerator physicists while building the machines that will shrink particle accelerators from kilometres-long tunnels to tabletop devices. Accelerators are the workhorses of modern science, but they are enormous and expensive. The Institute tackles two fundamental bottlenecks: how to make accelerators smaller and cheaper, and how to train enough specialists to build them. Without this, the UK would lose its ability to design the next generation of X-ray light sources, particle colliders, and medical proton beams. If the Institute succeeds, it will deliver compact X-ray sources that can image large protein molecules for drug design, plasma-based accelerators that could fit in a hospital basement for proton cancer therapy, and new colliders to explore physics beyond the Higgs boson. It will also supply the skilled workforce needed to keep the UK’s accelerator infrastructure running. Much of this work is fundamental science—pushing the limits of how fast and efficiently particles can be accelerated. Past fundamental accelerator research gave us synchrotron light sources and medical linacs. This work could do the same for plasma-based technologies.
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The John Adams Institute for Accelerator Science (JAI) is a Centre of Excellence in the UK for advanced and novel accelerator technology, providing expertise, research, development and training in accelerator techniques, and promoting advanced accelerator applications in science and society. The JAI, established in 2004, initially as a joint venture between the Departments of Physics in the University of Oxford (UOXF) and Royal Holloway University of London (RHUL), expanded in 2011 with a new research base at Imperial College London (ICL) joining the two existing centres at RHUL and the UOXF. The five strategic guiding principles of our operation are: a) focus on the training programme and its enhancement to encompass the accelerator training together with laser and plasma physics; b) focus on the programmes that bring the partner universities together; c) focus on laser-plasma acceleration and its application for development of compact light sources; d) maintaining support and engagement into the programmes of strategic importance for UK; e) proactively developing collaborative projects with UK and worldwide partners. Our successful operation through the present grant has confirmed the validity of these guiding principles and we are aiming to maintain these principles throughout the future grant period as well. Our submission for 2017-2021 is focused on the national priorities and will aim at the following themes: 1- graduate training, 2- development of novel X-ray light sources that allow to study novel materials, new medicines, large and complicated protein molecules; 3- development of novel methods of acceleration of charged particles based on excitation of wakes in plasma by intense laser pulse; 4- development of future colliders of particles, that will allow to study physics beyond of the recently discovered Higgs boson; 5- development of methods to accelerate very powerful beams of protons, enabling to use them for proton cancer therapy, for creation of neutron sources for discovery science and neutrino sources for fundamental particle physics study. We will also develop links with industry and participate in outreach.
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