Stanford Linear Accelerator Center
The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory ( SLAC ) is a research facility of the United States Department of Energy . The laboratory is operated by Stanford University . The main research areas of the research facility are particle physics , atomic physics and physics of condensed matter . In addition, synchrotron radiation is used for research in the fields of chemistry, biology and medicine.
History and function
The laboratory was founded in 1962. It is located on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park , California . The abbreviation SLAC stands for Stanford Linear Accelerator Center , which was the name of the laboratory until 2008. The most important accelerator of the research facility is a 3 km long linear accelerator that can accelerate electrons and positrons up to 50 GeV . A center of gravity energy of approx. 91 GeV can thus be achieved in colliding beam experiments . The accelerator is located 10 m underground and crosses Interstate 280 .
research
More than 3000 scientists work at the SLAC who use the accelerator for experiments in high-energy physics and in the field of synchrotron radiation . Research at SLAC resulted in three Nobel Prizes in Physics :
- 1975 - Martin L. Perl and Frederick Reines for the discovery of the τ lepton and τ neutrino
- 1976 - Burton Richter at SLAC (and Samuel Chao Chung Ting at Brookhaven National Laboratory ) for discovering the J / ψ meson , which indicates the existence of the charm quark . Richter used the storage ring SPEAR (Stanford Positron Electron Asymmetric Ring) of the SLAC, in operation from 1972.
- 1990 - Jerome I. Friedman , Henry W. Kendall and Richard E. Taylor for elucidating the quark structure of protons and neutrons
Since 1998, electron-positron collisions have been evaluated at SLAC for the BaBar experiment , which deals with CP symmetry .
In the 1980s, the institute's conference rooms served as a meeting place for pioneers of the home computer revolution. The USA's first website was also hosted here, the interface of the SPIRES database .
In October 2009, the Linac Coherent Light Source , the world's first laser for hard X-rays , went into operation at SLAC .
Web links
- Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (English)
- SLAC Virtual Visitors Center (English)
Coordinates: 37 ° 24 ′ 53 " N , 122 ° 13 ′ 18" W.