Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

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This is an article about the particle physics research facility. For other uses of SLAC, see SLAC (disambiguation).

The Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) is a U.S. National Laboratory operated by Stanford University under the programmatic direction of the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science. The SLAC research program centers on experimental and theoretical research in elementary particle physics using electron beams and a broad program of research in atomic and solid-state physics, chemistry, biology, and medicine using synchrotron radiation.Template:Ref The 3 kilometer (1.9 mile) long underground accelerator is the longest linear accelerator in the world, and is claimed to be "the world's straightest object."Template:Ref The above-ground klystron gallery atop the beamline is the longest building in the United States.

Image:Stanford-linear-accelerator-usgs-ortho-kaminski-5900.jpg

1 History
2 PEP-II and SSRL
- 2.1 Injectors
3 Other Discoveries
4 See also
5 External links
- 5.1 References
- 5.2 Citations

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History

Founded in 1962, the facility is located on 426 acres of Stanford University-owned land on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California—just down the road from the University's main campus. The main accelerator, a 3.2 kilometer long RF linear accelerator which can accelerate electrons and positrons up to 50 GeV, has been operational since 1966. It is buried 10 metres (30 feet) below ground and passes underneath Interstate 280. As of 2005, SLAC employs over 1,000 people, some 150 of which are physicists with doctorate degrees, and serves over 3,000 visiting researchers yearly, operating particle accelerators for high-energy physics and the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory (SSRL) for synchrotron light radiation research.Template:Ref label Image:LINAC.jpg

Research at SLAC has produced three Nobel Prizes in Physics:

1976 - The Charm Quark — see J/Ψ particle Template:Ref
1990 - Quark structure inside Protons and Neutrons Template:Ref
1995 - The tau lepton Template:Ref

In the early-to-mid 90's, the Stanford Linear Collider or SLC, investigated the properties of the Z boson using the SLAC Large Detector.

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PEP-II and SSRL

Template:Cleanup-date Since 1998 SLAC has been providing electron-positron collisions to the 2.2km dual storage rings for the BaBar Experiment in order to study charge-parity symmetry. The laboratory is the site of a number of National User Facilities, including the B-Factory. PEP-II is used in conjuction with the BaBar detector located at interaction area (IR2), or twelve o'clock from the LINAC.

SSRL is a synchrotron light user facility located on the SLAC campus. Previously the ring in which the J/Psi particle was discovered, it is now used exclusivly for synchrotron light experiments.

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Injectors

(PEP-II) uses the main LINAC injector while the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory or (SSRL) SPEAR3 has its own independent injector for research. In the mid to late 1980's funding became available to add the SPEAR injector to cutoff parasitic dependency from the main LINAC.

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Other Discoveries

SLAC has also been instrumental in the development of the klystron, a high-power microwave amplification tube.

SLAC's meeting facilities provided a venue for the homebrew computer club and other pioneers of the 1980s home computer revolution, and later SLAC hosted the first webpage in the U.S.

There was a Paleoparadoxia found at the SLAC site, and its skeleton can be seen at a small museum there in the Breezeway.Template:Ref

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