The 2023 IOP Particle Accelerators and Beams Group (PABG) annual conference was held at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, on the 29th-30th of June. Accelerator physicists gathered in the Technology and Innovation Centre from across the UK and beyond, where they were welcomed by PABG chair Dr Melissa Uchida. They were then welcomed by Dr Mark Wiggins, manager of the Scottish Centre for the Application of Plasma-based Accelerators (SCAPA), a flagship Scottish high-power laser facility based at Strathclyde.
The first keynote talk was given on the Circular Electron-Positron Collider (CEPC) by the director of the Institute of High Energy Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Prof. Yifang Wang. This was followed the next day the second keynote talk given by Prof. Lia Merminga, director of Fermilab, on the future of the facility.
Across the two-day conference there were also five plenary talks by invited speakers on EPAC, CERN, muon colliders, fast-reactive RF tuners and novel laser wakefield acceleration. There was also a large programme of 22 parallel contributed talks on a range of topics in accelerator physics, given by both established and early-career researchers and students. This was accompanied by a poster session, with the poster prizes going to Adam Steinberg and Hannah Norman who are both joint students of the Universities of Manchester and Melbourne.
The Outstanding Professional Contribution prize talk was given by last year’s winner, Dr Brian McNeil of the University of Strathclyde, who received the award for his contributions to Free Electron Laser research. He gave a very entertaining talk about FEL physics and his career, and also the serious topics of the need for physicists to address the climate crisis and the problems facing early-career researchers wanting to pursue academia.
The conference also included a panel discussion on the future of accelerators for High-Energy Physics, and tours of the SCAPA facility’s 40 TW and 350 TW laser systems.
The conference reception and dinner were held in the opulent surroundings of the Glasgow City Chambers, which reportedly have more marble than the Vatican. Conference-goers were piped in by a bagpiper and addressed by the Lord Provost before enjoying dinner complete with accelerator Christmas crackers. The after-dinner entertainment was less formal and involved a bagpipe rock band, dancing and unlimited sausage rolls.