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Accelerator Physics

Accelerator Physics

John Adams Institute for Accelerator Science

The accelerator physics group is part of the John Adams Institute, a joint venture between Royal Holloway, University of Oxford and Imperial College

There is PhD funding available within the Centre for Particle Physics group. For more information please check here.

Accelerators are complex devices to create beams of high energy particles, this could be for industrial processing, treating cancer and particle physics at worlds largest particle collider (Large Hadron Collider). Accelerators are challenging systems and research and development are needed to create, higher energy, more stable, efficient, performant machines.    

Accelerator physics is a wide discipline encompassing, mechanics, relativity, electromagnetism, optics, dynamical systems and instrumentation.  

  • High Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) the upgrade to the LHC
  • International Linear Collider (ILC) and Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) future lepton colliders
  • Beam loss simulations using Beam Delivery Simulation (BDSIM)
  • Medical accelerator simulations. Protons and X-rays are used to treat cancer and we perform simulations of these facilities
  • Beam Instrumentation. Devices to measure the position, charge, length, energy, polarisation of high energy beams
  • Advanced dielectric wakefield acceleration

Academics

Prof Stephen Gibson Group leader, deputy director of JAI - HL-LHC and FETs 
Dr Pavel Karataev Beam radiation and instrumentation
Prof Stewart Boogert Visiting Professor BDSIM

Senior scientists

Mr Gary Boorman Senior Research Officer
Dr Alexey Lyapin Visiting Senior Research Officer


Researchers

Dr Siobhan Alden Research Fellow in Accelerator Physics
Dr Alessio Bosco Research Associate
Dr William Shields Research Associate

Research students

Majid Ali PhD student
Max Bosman PhD student
Alec Clapp PhD student
Diya Dipac PhD student
Luke Eddowes MSc Physics by Research
Alex Keyken PhD student
Mark McCallum PhD student
Robert Murphy PhD student
Giusy Passarelli PhD student
Matt Pereira PhD student
Florian Stummer PhD student

 

Dr Helene Guerin PhD 2024
Dr Daniele Butti PhD 2024
Thomas Bass MSc by Research 2024
Dr Siobhan Alden PhD 2023
Dr Theodoros Christodoulou PhD 2023
Dr Helene Lefebvre PhD 2023
Dr Daniel Harryman PhD 2022
Dr Gian Luigi D'Alessandro PhD 2022
Dr Kirill Fedorov PhD 2022
Dr Andrei Oleinik PhD 2022
Dr Niki Vitoratou PhD 2021
Srinidhi Rajagopalan MSc Euromasters 2021
Dr Thomas Hofmann Honorary Research Associate
Dr Robert Kieffer Project Associate CERN
Dr Andrey Abramov PhD 2020
Dr Swann Levasseur PhD 2020
Dr Stuart Walker PhD 2020
Dr Michele Bergamaschi PhD 2019
  1. BDSIM: An Accelerator Tracking Code with Particle-Matter Interactions. arXiv:1808.10745 
  2. Direct Observation of Incoherent Cherenkov Diffraction Radiation in the Visible Range. Physical Review Letters, Vol. 121, No. 5, 054802, 01.08.2018.
  3. Experimental Validation of a Novel Compact Focusing Scheme for Future Energy-Frontier Linear Lepton Colliders. Physical Review Letters, Vol. 112, No. 3, 24.01.2014.
  4. Comparison between simulated and observed LHC beam backgrounds in the ATLAS experiment at Ebeam = 4 TeV. Journal of Instrumentation, 10.10.2018 
  • Beam-line simulation using BDSIM
  • HL-LHC beam instrumentation
  • FETS beam instrumentation
  • Advanced acceleration

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