Cockcroft Institute

The Cockcroft Institute exists to provide the intellectual focus, educational infrastructure, and the essential scientific and technological facilities for accelerator science and technology research and development.

This will enable UK scientists and engineers to take an internationally leading role in accelerator science and technology, advancing the scientific frontier into uncharted domains and returning scientific rewards of the highest order.

The Cockcroft Institute brings together the Universities of Lancaster, Liverpool and Manchester, STFC’s Accelerator Science and Technology Centre (ASTeC) and relevant industries. Through collaboration between academia, national laboratories, industry and local economy, it creates a focal point for the best accelerator scientists, engineers, educators and industrialists to lead the UK’s participation in flagship international experiments.

Key facts

Among the facilities and capabilities are:

• Versatile Electron Linear Accelerator (VELA)
• Accelerators and Lasers In Combined Experiments (ALICE )
• Microwave and Radio Frequency Laboratory
• Superconducting Radio-Frequency Laboratory (SRF)
• Laser Test Laboratory
• Fibre-optic and Solid-state Ultrafast (femtosecond)
• High Power Lasers
• Optics Metrology Laboratory
• Vacuum Science Laboratory
• Photocathode Preparation Laboratory
• Surface Science and Novel Coatings
• Magnet Technology
• Cryogenics
• Mechanical and electrical engineering and IT facilities
• Access to University of Manchester’s Nano Science and
• Photon Science Centre facilities
• Access to University of Liverpool’s medical facilities and atomic interferometer laboratory