UK Accelerator Institutes Seminar Series Winter 2026 (Session 15)

Contribution List

26. Muon Collider Progress and Plans

Daniel Schulte (CERN)

29/01/2026, 16:00

A muon collider is a unique option to achieve lepton collisions at the 10 TeV scale with high luminosity. The high muon mass suppresses beamstrahlung allowing to accelerate and collide the beams in rings. The limited lifetime of the muon, however, poses challenges and calls for technology and design innovations to make the first collider a possibility. An international collaboration is...

22. British Cryogenic Council Prize Talk - From Bulk Niobium to Thin Films: Advancing SRF with High Throughput Cryogenic RF Characterisation

Daniel Seal

12/02/2026, 16:00

Superconducting radio frequency (SRF) cavities underpin many modern particle accelerators, enabling highly efficient acceleration with high duty cycle or continuous wave operation. However, this technology relies almost exclusively on bulk niobium cavities operating at around 2 K, bringing significant capital and operational costs while performance increasingly approaches theoretical limits....

23. LUXE: a new experiment to study non-perturbative QED and search for new particles in electron-laser and photon-laser collisions

Matthew Wing (University College London and DESY)

19/02/2026, 16:00

The LUXE experiment (Laser Und XFEL Experiment) is an experiment in planning at DESY Hamburg using the electron beam from the European XFEL. LUXE is intended to study interactions between a high-intensity laser pulse and 16.5 GeV electrons from the EuXFEL electron beam, as well as interactions between the laser pulse and high-energy secondary photons. This will elucidate quantum...

20. Upgrade of the CMS Experiment for HL-LHC

Dr Anne Dabrowski (CERN)

05/03/2026, 16:00

The High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HL-LHC) will mark a new era in particle physics, delivering around ten times more integrated luminosity than has been accumulated so far. To exploit this unprecedented dataset, the CMS experiment is undertaking a comprehensive “Phase II” upgrade during CERN’s Long Shutdown 3 (LS3), beginning in mid-2026. This ambitious programme will transform the...

16. A 100 Hz, 10TW laser facility at QUB for fundamental science and applications

Gianluca Sarri (Queen's University Belfast)

12/03/2026, 16:00

Laser-driven particle accelerators can drive a wide range of particle and radiation sources with unique characteristics, including femtosecond-scale durations, micron-scale source sizes, and ultra-high peak brightness. Their extreme versatility also enables fine control and tuneability of beam parameters and for the generation of a wide range of particles and photons (e.g., electrons, ions,...

21. Seminar 1 - TBC

24. Seminar 4 - TBC

25. Seminar 7

17. The Accelerator on a Nanophotonic Chip

Prof. Peter Hommelhoff (LMU Munich)

The highly successful RF accelerator technology is based on a structured vacuum, fit to the wavelength of the driving RF or microwave fields. The same principle can be used with light. Because the wavelength of light lies around 1 micron, acceleration structures need to be fabricated with a feature size on the sub-micron scale – a standard size for cleanroom-based nanofabrication. We will...