SLAC

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, commonly referred to as SLAC, is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory operated by Stanford University on behalf of the DOE. It is located on Stanford University’s campus near Menlo Park, California. The laboratory traces its origins to the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, established in 1962 to advance high-energy physics with a linear accelerator.

Its centerpiece is the two-mile-long linear accelerator that initially accelerated electrons to energies up to about 50 GeV. Over the years, SLAC has hosted a range of research programs and facilities. Notably, it houses the SPEAR storage ring, which contributed to discoveries in particle physics, including the tau lepton, and the early evidence for quarks through deep inelastic scattering experiments. In the 2000s, SLAC developed the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS), an X-ray free-electron laser that generates intense, ultrafast X-ray pulses for experiments in chemistry, biology, and materials science; LCLS began operation in 2009 and is among the leading X-ray laser facilities worldwide.

Mission and status: SLAC is a national laboratory operated by Stanford University for the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science. As a DOE user facility, researchers from U.S. and international institutions conduct experiments here with access through competitive proposals. The laboratory supports accelerator science, photon science, and high-energy physics, and collaborates with universities, national laboratories, and industry.