Physical Society Colloquium

Particle Accelerators across Science and Society

Lia Merminga

TRIUMF

Particle accelerators enable scientific discoveries in a broad range of disciplines including particle and nuclear physics, materials science, biology and chemistry, and have found ever expanding applications in medicine, industry, energy and security. Moreover, the physics of accelerators is a field of science in its own right, with an active scientific research ranging from studies of fundamental physical phenomena to their implementation in state-of-the-art facilities.

In this talk I will review the development of early particle accelerators, and then discuss modern accelerators around the world and in Canada, including the Canadian Light Source in Saskatoon and TRIUMF's 500 MeV Cyclotron, the ISAC Rare Isotope Beam facility, and the new ARIEL electron linac, a state-of-the-art high power, superconducting radio-frequency electron linear accelerator, presently under construction at TRIUMF. I will discuss its scientific promise as a driver for rare isotope beams and its potential use for the production of coherent and incoherent synchrotron radiation in a broad range of wavelengths, from THz and IR to UV and x-rays.

I will then discuss possible future directions for the field of particle accelerators and activities around the world towards their realization. I will conclude with the topic of accelerator science education and the initiative to establish strong partnerships between TRIUMF and Canadian universities as an important component to the advancement of accelerator science and technology education in Canada.