Abstract

The Cockcroft Institute is a partnership between the Universities of Lancaster, Liverpool, Manchester and Strathclyde, and the Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC). The core membership comprises the accelerator physics & engineering groups of the partner universities and the Accelerator Science & Technology Centre (ASTeC) of STFC at Daresbury Laboratory.

The Institute provides the intellectual focus, educational infrastructure and the essential scientific and technological facilities for accelerator science and technology research and development, which enables UK scientists and engineers to take a major role in innovating future tools for scientific discoveries and in the conception, design, construction and use of the world’s leading research accelerators for the foreseeable future. It not only designs, builds and operates new accelerators but also carries out a broad-based R&D programme on the fundamental science and technology which underpins conventional and novel particle acceleration techniques.

In this seminar the research programme of the Institute will be reviewed with a strong emphasis on how it supports the particle physics research community in the UK. Specific examples will be presented of contributions to the construction of the High Luminosity upgrade to the LHC at CERN and the Long Baseline Neutrino Facility at Fermilab. Looking beyond these next generation facilities, the Institute is active developing advanced accelerator concepts along with more sustainable, energy-efficient accelerator technologies. The Compact Linear Accelerator for Research Applications (CLARA) at Daresbury will be a key tool in the development of several novel acceleration technologies but facilities elsewhere (SCAPA in Strathclyde and AWAKE at CERN ) are also expected to play a prominent part in this work. Exciting and ambitious ideas based on Energy Recovery Linacs (ERLs) will also be discussed.