The Cockcroft Institute

November 23, 2015

Designing the Future of the LHC

The Large Hadron Collider has been providing proton-proton, nucleon-proton and nucleon nucleon collisions since it started operations in 2009. Thanks to the data collected by the experiments several contributions have been made to particle physics. Most importantly, a Higgs-like boson…

November 20, 2015

How to characterize exotic ion beams?

A crucial parameter needed for the operation of an accelerator of charged particles is the beam intensity, i.e. the number of charges crossing a certain area per unit time. For low energy, low intensity ion beams the most common detection…

November 13, 2015

Cockcroft members celebrate the HL-LHC project moving to the prototyping phase

[caption id="attachment_3276" align="aligncenter" width="640"] HiLumi LHC collaboration members[/caption] More than 230 scientists and engineers from around the world, including several from the Cockcroft Institute, met at CERN this October to discuss the High-Luminosity LHC – a major upgrade to the…

November 12, 2015

A Look into the Crystal Ball: Plasma Wakefield Experiments on Daresbury Campus

Following the success of Large Hadron Collider's (LHC) proton collisions such as the Nobel Prize winning discovery of Higgs boson, the next generation colliders are vital for complementing the LHC results for precision measurements. Historically, a tripodal scheme has been…

November 9, 2015

Antihydrogen – A Comprehensive Review

Antimatter, often the subject of science fiction on account of its conversion to energy when it comes in contact with matter, is very real and at the center of one of the great mysteries of physics. Current theory would predict…

November 2, 2015

EU funds Design Study for European Plasma Accelerator

Three million euros for European Plasma Research Accelerator with eXcellence In Applications (EuPRAXIA) project The European Union supports the development of a novel plasma particle accelerator with three million euros from the Horizon2020 program. The EU project EuPRAXIA (European Plasma…

October 28, 2015

Join the most exciting physics experiments

IOP National Particle Accelerator Open Day will be held at the Cockcroft Institute on the 25th November, with an interesting programme for undergraduate students. This will include talks, lab tours and the chance to talk to current PhD students,…

October 20, 2015

Accelerators take us ‘Back to the Future’ to discover new Materials

European Circular Energy-Frontier Collider takes us deep into space-time The world is gearing up for the biggest physics experiment ever and it will take us ‘back to the future’ according to Professor Carsten P. Welsch of the Cockcroft Institute/University of…

October 16, 2015

Cockcroft Institute awarded 4 M€ in EU Funding to Battle Cancer

Cancer is a major health problem and it is the main cause of death between the ages of 45 - 65. Although significant progress has been made in the use of particle beams for cancer treatment, extensive research is still…