Accelerator physics
Physics related to the study
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We include updates on Anatoli Bugorski, Frank Oppenheimer, Ernest Lawrence, Cyclotron, Van de Graaff generator, Electron microscope, Luis Walter Alvarez, Leo Szilard, Helion Energy, Synchrotron, Ray transfer matrix analysis, Klystron, Free-electron laser, Collimator, Electron gun, Collider ... and more.
| 2025 | The Copernicus device is expected to attain net energy gain, with an approximate reactor cost of $200 million and planned operating temperatures of around 100 million°C for deuterium-tritium fusion validation. |
| January 13 2025 | Stepped down as director of Fermilab, with Young-Kee Kim named as interim director. |
| 2024 | ESA and PSI signed an agreement to establish the European Space Deep-Tech Innovation Centre (ESDI) near the PSI campus, including a research platform called Phi-Lab. |
| 2024 | PSI researchers, in collaboration with ETH Zurich, published a study suggesting that digitalisation could reduce Switzerland's energy consumption by 10% to 20% by 2050 compared to 2020 levels, using a detailed energy system model with six million equations and variables. |
| 2024 | PSI researchers set a world record for X-ray imaging precision at SLS, achieving a four-nanometre resolution using ptychography. The collaborative work with EPFL, ETH Zurich, and University of Southern California was published in Nature, demonstrating high-resolution 3D imaging of a computer chip. |
| 2024 | Helion projects achieving fusion breakeven, with their prototype now having a 10 tesla magnetic field. |
| 2024 | Projected completion of Project Polaris, Helion Energy's seventh prototype, which is designed to be 25% larger than the previous Trenta model and capable of generating plasma pulses at a dramatically increased rate of one pulse per second for short periods. |
| 2023 | PSI researchers, working with Indian institutions, investigated night-time smog formation in New Delhi, discovering a unique process where emissions from wood and waste burning condense into fine particles in cooler temperatures. Their findings were published in Nature Geoscience. |
| 2023 | PSI developed the RADEM radiation detector for ESA's JUICE mission to Jupiter. |
| 2023 |
Leo Szilard
Leo Szilard was portrayed by actor Máté Haumann in Christopher Nolan's biographical film Oppenheimer, bringing his historical significance to a wider audience.
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| 2023 |
Luis Walter Alvarez
Alvarez is portrayed by actor Alex Wolff in Christopher Nolan's biographical film Oppenheimer.
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| 2023 | TAE Technologies published a peer-reviewed paper reporting the first measurement of p-11B fusion in magnetically confined plasma at the LHD in Japan. |
| 2023 | Became a finalist for the GeekWire Best Workplaces of the Year. |
| May 10 2023 | Announced Microsoft as their first customer, with a commitment to provide fusion power to Microsoft starting in 2028. |
| 2022 | Lia Merminga became the first woman to be appointed director of Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, a significant milestone in her professional career. |
| 2022 | Initiated design of Ursa Major (8th prototype), expected to be twice the size of Polaris. |
| 2022 | TAE Technologies planned to start construction of the Copernicus device, a hydrogen-powered fusion reactor project. |
| 2022 | Initiated design of the 8th prototype. |
| 2022 | Selected as one of five finalists for the GeekWire Awards in the fusion energy startup innovation category. |
| April 5 2022 | Officially announced as the next director of Fermilab. |
| 2021 | PSI launched the FLAME measuring station at the Swiss Muon Source (SμS), expanding its research capabilities with a new instrument for materials science and particle physics experiments. |
| 2021 | Published 'Introduction to Quantum Mechanics' through World Scientific Publishing |
| 2021 | TAE Technologies reported raising its total investment to around $880 million. |
| 2021 | TAE Technologies announced a joint three-year research project with Japan's Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS) to study the effects of hydrogen-boron fuel reactions in the NIFS Large Helical Device (LHD). |
| 2021 | Helion Energy was valued at three billion dollars, with total investment reaching $77.8 million by late 2021. |
| 2021 | Helion Energy announced its sixth prototype, 'Trenta', completed a 16-month test cycle with over 10,000 pulses, reaching 100 million degrees Celsius - the minimum temperature for a potential commercial nuclear fusion generator. The prototype demonstrated significant achievements including magnetic compression fields exceeding 10 Tesla, ion temperatures over 8 keV, and electron temperatures over 1 keV. |
| 2021 | Helion Energy began development of its seventh-generation prototype, Project Polaris, aiming to significantly improve fusion plasma technology with increased pulse rates and higher temperature capabilities. |
| November 2021 | Helion Energy received $500 million in Series E funding, with an additional $1.7 billion in milestone-based commitments, primarily led by Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI and executive chairman of Helion. |
| September 2021 | TAE Technologies established a new division called Power Solutions to commercialize power management systems developed from the C-2W/Norman reactor, targeting electric vehicle, charging infrastructure, and energy storage markets. David Roberts was appointed as the CEO of this new division. |
| April 10 2021 |
Lynn Stevenson
Passed away on April 10, concluding his life as an accomplished physicist and professor.
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| 2020 | PSI becomes the only institute in the world providing four key probes for researching condensed matter structure and dynamics (neutrons, muons, synchrotron radiation, and X-ray free-electron laser) on a single campus for the international user community. |
| 2020 | PSI had treated over 7,500 patients with ocular tumours, with a success rate of over 98 percent for eye therapy using the OPTIS facility. |
| 2020 | Published 'Introduction to Classical Mechanics' through World Scientific Publishing |
| 2020 |
Plasma acceleration
Under the HORIZON 2020 Framework Programme, 74 scientific institutes collaborated to develop the Conceptual Design Report for the EuPRAXIA project, exploring plasma acceleration technologies including laser-driven, electron beam-driven, and hybrid acceleration approaches.
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| 2020 | Helion became the first private company to successfully demonstrate thermonuclear fusion plasmas exceeding 9 keV, achieving expected deuterium-deuterium fusion reactions and neutrons, with a triple product greater than 1 × 10^20 keV·s/m3, meeting the Lawson criterion. |
| September 2020 | The second beamline ATHOS of the SwissFEL free-electron laser was scheduled to begin operations in autumn 2020, further enhancing the institute's research infrastructure. |
| August 2020 |
Plasma acceleration
Scientists demonstrated the longest stable operation of a plasma accelerator, running continuously for 30 hours.
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| August 2020 |
Plasma acceleration
Scientists achieved a milestone in laser-plasma accelerator development by demonstrating their longest stable operation of 30 hours.
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| June 2020 | SINQ returns to operation after upgrade, now capable of providing an average of five times more neutrons for experiments, and up to 30 times more in special cases. |
| June 21 2020 |
SuperKEKB
SuperKEKB broke its own previous world record by achieving an instantaneous luminosity of 2.40×10^34 cm−2s−1.
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| June 15 2020 |
SuperKEKB
SuperKEKB set a world record for the highest instantaneous luminosity in a colliding-beam accelerator, achieving 2.22×10^34 cm−2s−1 at 20:34.
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| June 15 2020 |
SuperKEKB
SuperKEKB set a new world record for the highest instantaneous luminosity for a colliding-beam accelerator, achieving 2.22×10^34 cm−2s−1.
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| 2019 | PSI initiates a comprehensive upgrade of SINQ's neutron guide systems to improve neutron transport efficiency. |
| April 2019 | Helion Energy was criticized by retired Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory researcher Daniel Jassby in the American Physical Society newsletter Physics & Society, who accused the company of practicing 'voodoo fusion'. |
| 2018 | Joël Mesot, PSI Director from 2008 to 2018, was elected President of ETH Zurich. |
| 2018 | PSI team awarded the Watt d'Or by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy for developing a method to extract more methane gas from biowaste, tested using the Energy System Integration (ESI) experimental platform in collaboration with Energie 360°. |
| 2018 | The first beamline ARAMIS of the SwissFEL free-electron laser came into operation, expanding the institute's advanced research capabilities. |
| 2018 | Returned to Fermilab as director of the Proton Improvement Plan II (PIP-II) project. |
| 2018 | Published 'Introduction to Electricity and Magnetism' through World Scientific Publishing |
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This contents of the box above is based on material from the Wikipedia articles Lynn Stevenson, Helion Energy, Lia Merminga, Plasma acceleration, Paul Scherrer Institute, John Dirk Walecka, Leo Szilard, SuperKEKB, John D. Lawson (scientist), TAE Technologies & Luis Walter Alvarez, which are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.