Cockcroft Phase 4
Lead Research Organisation:
Lancaster University
Department Name: Physics
Abstract
Science has underpinned human progress for centuries. It has improved our quality of life and helps us understand our place in the Universe. The days when important breakthroughs could be achieved by a researcher working alone in a laboratory with minimal equipment are long gone. Now, the most important insights in science demand that researchers work in teams, collaborating between universities and laboratories and across national boundaries, often hand-in-hand with expert industrial partners. They also demand the best and most sophisticated equipment.
The Cockcroft Institute reflects these changes. Its purpose is to research, design and develop particle accelerators, machines that can be used to reveal the nature of matter, to probe what happened at the instant the universe was born and to develop new materials and healthcare tools to improve our quality of life. These machines are at the cutting-edge of technology, pushing to the limits our ability to control and understand processes happening at the smallest scales, and at the speed of light. They range from fairly small instruments built to support the semi-conductor industry, airport security and radiotherapy to enormous facilities providing intense, high energy beams of particles to create and probe the innermost workings of atoms. The global economy can afford only a few of these latter machines and so they demand collaboration between multi-national teams of the world's best scientists and engineers.
The Cockcroft Institute - a collaboration between academia, national laboratories, industry and local economy - brings together the best accelerator scientists, engineers, educators and industrialists to conceive, design, construct and use innovative instruments of discovery at all scales and lead the UK's participation in flagship international experiments. It stimulates the curiosity of emerging minds via the education of the future generation and engages with industrial partners to generate wealth for the community that sustains us.
Established more than a fifteen years ago, the Cockcroft Institute is increasingly focusing its attention on three parallel and complementary activities:
- Contributions to near future scientific frontier facilities based on incremental advances to conventional accelerating technologies
- Ground-breaking research in novel methods of particle acceleration which have the long term potential to yield much more compact types of particle accelerators
- Applications of accelerators to address global challenges in healthcare, security, energy, manufacturing and the environment.
The Cockcroft Institute reflects these changes. Its purpose is to research, design and develop particle accelerators, machines that can be used to reveal the nature of matter, to probe what happened at the instant the universe was born and to develop new materials and healthcare tools to improve our quality of life. These machines are at the cutting-edge of technology, pushing to the limits our ability to control and understand processes happening at the smallest scales, and at the speed of light. They range from fairly small instruments built to support the semi-conductor industry, airport security and radiotherapy to enormous facilities providing intense, high energy beams of particles to create and probe the innermost workings of atoms. The global economy can afford only a few of these latter machines and so they demand collaboration between multi-national teams of the world's best scientists and engineers.
The Cockcroft Institute - a collaboration between academia, national laboratories, industry and local economy - brings together the best accelerator scientists, engineers, educators and industrialists to conceive, design, construct and use innovative instruments of discovery at all scales and lead the UK's participation in flagship international experiments. It stimulates the curiosity of emerging minds via the education of the future generation and engages with industrial partners to generate wealth for the community that sustains us.
Established more than a fifteen years ago, the Cockcroft Institute is increasingly focusing its attention on three parallel and complementary activities:
- Contributions to near future scientific frontier facilities based on incremental advances to conventional accelerating technologies
- Ground-breaking research in novel methods of particle acceleration which have the long term potential to yield much more compact types of particle accelerators
- Applications of accelerators to address global challenges in healthcare, security, energy, manufacturing and the environment.
Organisations
Publications
Goodman J
(2022)
Optimisation of multi-petawatt laser-driven proton acceleration in the relativistic transparency regime
in New Journal of Physics
Goodman J
(2023)
Optimization and control of synchrotron emission in ultraintense laser-solid interactions using machine learning
in High Power Laser Science and Engineering
Martynenko A
(2021)
Optimization of a laser plasma-based x-ray source according to WDM absorption spectroscopy requirements
in Matter and Radiation at Extremes
Gnacadja E
(2022)
Optimization of proton therapy eye-treatment systems toward improved clinical performances
in Physical Review Research
Song H
(2023)
Optimization of target compression for high-gain fast ignition via machine learning
in Physics of Plasmas
Rothwell B
(2021)
Oxygen Depletion in Proton Spot Scanning: A Tool for Exploring the Conditions Needed for FLASH
in Radiation
Noakes T
(2022)
Oxygen plasma cleaning of copper for photocathode applications: A MEIS and XPS study
in Vacuum
Liu Z
(2023)
Parametric instabilities and hot electron generation in the interactions of broadband lasers with inhomogeneous plasmas
in Nuclear Fusion
Maitrallain A
(2022)
Parametric study of high-energy ring-shaped electron beams from a laser wakefield accelerator
in New Journal of Physics