Abstract
This article examines the most recent history of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, with particular emphasis on how this laboratory shifted its research program from accelerator-based particle physics towards astroparticle physics, cosmology and multi-disciplinary photon science. Photon science became the central experimental research program through a series of changes in the organisational, scientific, and infrastructural set-up and in its science policy context. The article shows that SLAC’s reinvention unfolded in a science policy context in which funding priorities drifted towards the materials sciences and the life sciences at the expense of nuclear and particle physics, which had dominated science budgets during the Cold War. SLAC took a lead position in this global development by partly dismantling and also redeploying scientific and technical capabilities from its particle physics program for these new fields, thus, providing novel experimental facilities for user communities to expand across academia and industry.
Highlights
The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory is a dual-mission United States national laboratory for particle physics/particle astrophysics and photon science
The termination of the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) was only the culmination of a development that had been ongoing since the 1960s: within the field of particle physics, a concentration of efforts to fewer national centres occurred, spurred by the growth in size of the accelerator complexes necessary to maintain the pace of discovery, and this created a ‘mission vacuum’ for several of the national laboratories, most prominently Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory and Oak Ridge National Laboratory
The study group meetings, and the successful project proposal, Burton Richter understood that SLAC was in a unique position to build a free electron laser (FEL) because it had developed scientific and technical capabilities in its high-energy physics (HEP) program that turned out to be very valuable for that purpose
Summary
The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (formerly Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) is a dual-mission United States national laboratory for particle physics/particle astrophysics and photon science. The original 3 km linear accelerator (linac) for particle physics research that gave the laboratory its original name opened for use in 1966, followed by several new infrastructure projects (see Table 1) until the mid-1990s, all purpose-built for particle physics research; some of them, most notably Stanford Positron Electron Accelerating Ring (SPEAR), have been used in an auxiliary capacity as synchrotron radiation sources, supporting a growing program in what eventually has become the second major mission of SLAC, so-called ‘photon science’. We summarise our results and draw science policy conclusions
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
