2015 AAAS Annual Meeting (12-16 February 2015)

February 12 - 16, 2015

Innovations in Accelerator Science

Particle accelerator systems have been key drivers for a broad array of fundamental discoveries and transformational scientific advances since the early 20th century. Since their inception, they have also been core components of U.S. technological innovation and economic competitiveness. Fundamental accelerator science provides the foundation in knowledge and workforce upon which major advances in accelerator-driven technologies will be based. The symposium will address the current state-of-the-art in accelerator research and survey the fundamental limitations affecting the acceleration, control, intensity, and quality of particle beams. It will also discuss what novel approaches can be used to substantially increase accelerating gradients and how developments in other fields can lead to new approaches in accelerator science and beam physics. Breakthroughs are foreseen in many areas, including ultra-high accelerating gradients using plasma wakefields that could open a new regime of high-energy linear lepton colliders; ultra-small “accelerators on a chip” using laser-driven dielectric structures; fully coherent compact-free electron X-ray sources for photon science; highly efficient accelerator power sources; and a variety of novel accelerator implementations for medical, industrial, and homeland security applications.