The Cockcroft Institute

October 31, 2018

How to characterize antimatter beams?

Antimatter particles, such as positrons, antiprotons and antihydrogen open unique insight into some of the most fundamental questions in modern physics. However, they are not only very difficult to produce – they also pose numerous challenges when it comes to…

October 25, 2018

If you invented a giant machine – what would it do?

Treat cancer? Generate energy? Make food last longer? The people of Liverpool are being invited to participate in a community-designed art installation more than 20 metres beneath the city’s streets. It will showcase the city’s acclaimed artists and ground breaking scientific…

October 23, 2018

Science knows no borders

International collaboration has probably never been more important than it is today. With human society facing a number of wide-ranging ‘global challenges’ such as food security, climate change, energy security and diseases, international collaboration in research is essential to find…

October 19, 2018

The Force is strong at CI

On 11th October 2018, the Star Wars universe came to Daresbury Laboratory. Professor Carsten Welsch, Head of the Liverpool Accelerator Science group, gave a special staff seminar on the Physics of Star Wars. This followed on from a highly successful…

October 11, 2018

World’s first crabbing of a proton beam

Crab cavities are special electromagnetic cavities that use electric and magnetic fields to rotate the bunch prior to collision in a particle collider so that the beams collide head-on rather than at an angle. This is one of the most…

September 7, 2018

Cockcroft aviation cargo screening linac achieves 3.5 MeV

A small scale particle accelerator for security X-ray scanning designed, and commissioned at STFC Daresbury Laboratory and the Cockcroft Institute has successfully accelerated an electron beam to 3.5 MeV. [caption id="attachment_5421" align="aligncenter" width="599"] The 3.5 MeV accelerating structure and electron…

August 31, 2018

Institute of Engineering and Technology make videos at Cockcroft on the role on Engineers working on accelerators

The IET has made a series of videos to promote the Particle Accelerator Engineering Network community within the IET (co-sponsored by the IMechE Mechatronics group). The videos were shot at Daresbury and The Christie Hospital and cover 4 themes, international…

August 29, 2018

AWAKE achieves first ever acceleration of electrons in a proton-driven plasma wave

Novel scheme paves way for entirely new range of particle physics experiments In a paper published today in the journal Nature, the AWAKE collaboration reports the first ever successful acceleration of electrons at CERN, using a wave generated by protons…

August 15, 2018

Observe. Explore. Experiment – CI contributions to BlueDot

Members of the Cockcroft Institute have once again discovered the intergalactic festival of music, science, arts and exploration of space that is Bluedot. Returning for a third year, the team from the Cockcroft Institute involving staff and students from the…