FACET - Facility for Advanced Accelerator Experimental Tests
FACET opened to scientists in Spring 2012 as a test bed for technologies that will power the next generation of particle accelerators. It also hosts experiments that require extreme electric and magnetic fields. Visit FACET website »
With the aid of powerful electron and positron beams from a section of SLAC's 2-mile-long linear accelerator, FACET is exploring how to harness plasmas and specialized materials to quickly boost particles to tremendous energies over very short distances. The goal is to shrink particle accelerators for high-energy research and to produce more compact accelerators for use in medicine and industry.
Scientists are also using FACET to study magnetic properties in materials, with applications in data storage; high-energy sources of terahertz radiation, with applications in materials science and chemical imaging; and diagnostics for future accelerators.
FACET experiments are typically conducted with a series of tabletop instruments. For the plasma-based experiments, researchers shoot ultrashort pulses of electrons and positrons into a hot gas within a sealed chamber, and use a spectrometer to image the results. FACET is also set up to measure characteristics of the particle bunches on a pulse-by-pulse basis. This diagnostic capability is critical for the correct interpretation of data from experiments.
