Oxford/RHUL Institute in Accelerator Science

A new institute at Oxford and Royal Holloway will train the next generation of accelerator scientists and build the machines that push particles to near light-speed. Particle accelerators are the workhorses of fundamental science. They allow physicists to probe the building blocks of matter, test the Standard Model, and search for new particles. But the current generation of accelerators—such as the Large Hadron Collider—are reaching the limits of what existing technology can achieve. To go further, researchers need new methods of acceleration: more powerful, more efficient, and more compact. This institute will develop those methods, focusing on linear colliders, neutrino factories, and novel acceleration techniques. If successful, the work could lead to the next generation of particle physics experiments, enabling discoveries about the nature of mass, dark matter, and the early universe. There is no immediate practical application—this is fundamental science. But past accelerator research has given us synchrotron light sources for medical imaging and materials science, and compact accelerators for cancer therapy. Deeper understanding of how to control and accelerate particles may eventually feed into those applied fields as well.