The John Adams Institute for Accelerator Science is training the next generation of accelerator physicists and building the machines that will shrink particle accelerators from kilometre-long tunnels to tabletop devices. Particle accelerators are the workhorses of modern science, but they are enormous and expensive. The Institute tackles two fundamental problems: how to make accelerators smaller and cheaper, and how to ensure the UK has enough skilled people to build and run them. Without this training pipeline, the country would lose the expertise needed to operate existing facilities like Diamond Light Source and to contribute to international projects such as CERN. If the Institute succeeds, the impact spans medicine and fundamental physics. Compact laser-plasma accelerators could make proton beam therapy for cancer more widely available. Novel X-ray light sources would let researchers see the structure of large protein molecules, speeding up drug design. On the fundamental side, the work on future particle colliders aims to explore physics beyond the Higgs boson. The project also develops high-power proton beams for neutron sources and neutrino experiments. Much of this is curiosity-driven science, but past accelerator research has delivered spin-offs from medical imaging to the World Wide Web.
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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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